Grimm and Bear It
Copyright The HUMOR Project, Inc 1992 -- All rights reserved I first had the pleasure of meeting Mike Peters at the Gerald Ford Symposium on "Humor and the Presidency" (see Volume 4, I was impressed from the beginning with Mike's incredible energy, warmth, and zest. He is definitely a high energy cartoonist who is both thought-full and thought-provoking. Mike Peters is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist who is also a two-timer-- he has won the coveted National Cartoonists Society Reuben Award twice. As political cartoonist for the Dayton Daily News, his editorial cartoons are syndicated in more than 500 newspapers. Mike has appeared on numerous television shows (e.g., Today, Good Morning America, ABC's Issues and Answers, CBS Morning News). He also hosted a 14-part interview series, "The World of Cartooning with Mike Peters" for PBS, and his work is featured frequently in such publications as Time, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, etc. Mike also is the creator of Mother Goose and Grimm-- the fastest- growing syndicated cartoon in the country (over 650 papers). This Fall saw the successful debut of his Saturday morning CBS cartoon show "Mother Goose and Grimm." Mike came to our neck of the woods-- in 1991, he and Lynn Johnston (see Volume 7, I also had the pleasure of spending some delightful time with Mike, his wife, Marian, and his staff at his home base in Florida. As he and I did this interview, he was about to scurry off on book tour. Even while facing pressing deadlines, he was very much alive! Our thanks to Mike for permission to reprint his cartoons with this interview. The editorial cartoons are copyright the Dayton Daily News and United Feature Syndicate. The Mother Goose and Grimm cartoons are copyright the Tribune Media Services, Inc.
Joel Goodman: Are deadlines usually omnipresent? Mike Peters: Definitely! I'm just a month ahead right now, and I'm supposed to be two months. I'm about to go on this book tour, so I'm trying to do a couple extra weeks of editorial work to cover myself. The best book tour is always the first book tour. At the same time, it's always good to get out and meet people and hear what they have to say. Cartoonists never do. Cartoonists usually stay insulated. JG: You seem to enjoy getting out. MP: I love it. Everybody tells me I work all the time, and I do. I do work all the time. I work until... the average time is 11:30 at night. But cartoonists tend to do that. They do work all the time, at least strip cartoonists work all the time, because it's just always there. JG: The never ending battle for truth, humor, and deadlines... MP: It's not that I don't enjoy it. It's fun, and that's why I do it. If it ever ceases to be enjoyable that's when I should be doing something else. But I sure love it. I've been doing the editorial cartoons for over 20 years. After about 15 years in Dayton, I became like the old man of Dayton and had done every cartoon that I was excited about. Everybody said, "Oh boy, you're wonderful." It was too easy, and I needed some friction. Eight years ago, I started the strip as a way of having friction, to have that abrasion I needed to help my career. I was looking for a change, and I didn't understand why I needed the change. That forced me to do better work. JG: An extra Mother Goose. MP: But I was worried that the comic strip would dim all my lights. JG: When I interviewed Cathy Guisewite (see Volume 6, MP: It's true. I don't know why people start second strips. I moved to Florida because I work all day. I realized that this was crazy. I was going to kill myself if I didn't take the breaks that I needed to be taking. So the opportunity came where the Dayton Daily News allowed me to work for them and live somewhere else. I love it everyday here. Today was fabulous. My wife, Marian, made up some sandwiches and said, "Come on, let's go down to the beach." Greatest thing in the world. We went down there on our bikes. In a minute and a half we're on the beach. We were the only people on the beach with the pelicans. It was fabulous. We hardly ever miss a sunset, and it's only us and one other couple who are usually down there. There's not a day I don't thank God that I'm allowed to do this. It is a childlike perspective, and I love to keep that. JG: So, you deserve (and take) a break today... what else drives you and your art? MP: We had a couple of Russian painters here one night who had stopped by. We were talking about perestroika and what that is doing to the arts in Russia. The greatest literature in the last 20 years that I've read has been Russian literature. That's where the pain is, and the pain breeds great art. It's that abrasion I was talking about. My abrasion is the editorial cartoon. It's not drawing editorial cartoons; I love them. But it's being upset about world events; it's getting mad every morning, and I do, I do. I read things that just send me up the wall. JG: How is your process similar or different for creating editorial cartoons and for doing a strip? Do you do one against the other so the abrasion is there? MP: Yes, it's two different parts of the brain, which is really fascinating. I thought it was going to be the same. I stayed away from doing strips for a long time, because it would mean doubling my work. I thought, "I already spend 12 hours on an editorial cartoon. Am I going to spend 24 now?" Well, the first thing that happened was I found that I organized my time much better. It used to be that I would get up and watch TV at 7, read the paper, the editorials, and The New Republic. I'd get to the office at around 8, go to the newspapers, get my topics by around 10, and I would know what I was going to say on those topics. Then, I would go through this four or five-hour period of coming up with lots of ideas on the same topic. JG: It's clear that you value divergent thinking as reflected in that book I saw at your office, the big thick "bug book" with all the ideas and categories. MP: What was your observation about that? JG: It reminds me of the humor notebook I keep myself with literally thousands of ideas that cross my brain. MP: Well, that's what my bug book is-- it is an extension of the way that I create. If I were going to do a cartoon on the Equal Rights Amendment to say that women are getting shafted when they voted it down, I'd draw a wheel with "ERA" in the center. I'd draw 25 spokes coming out. Then for every spoke I'd force myself to fill it up with something about a woman-- some famous woman, Eve, Alice in Wonderland, Madame Currie. I'd just go around the circle and fill it up. Then I'd start juxtaposing, "Madame Currie and the ERA, Alice in Wonderland and the ERA. How can you do Alice in Wonderland falling down a shaft? You know here she's getting shafted." That's how I think, that's how my brain has always worked. Now I no longer do a spoke but I still go through the process. JG: I'm really intrigued because that describes exactly one of the tools that we teach people in our workshops. It's called the "defuzzing wheel" where we have people put in the center of the circle a topic about which they're interested or concerned. Then they freely associate around that topic, brainstorming anything and everything that comes to mind in relation to the topic. Then we do the mixing and matching, and generate comic combinations. MP: That's great. You know, you could do that in a computer. JG: In fact, there are now computer programs available that are doing just that-- the kind of matrix thinking that you did naturally. MP: It's a way for me to not be afraid of a blank piece of paper. That's the biggest thing. Every cartoonist is afraid of that blank sheet of paper. What I learned was that the editorial cartoons all come from without. I've got CNN on-- audible wallpaper. I've got the newspapers in front of me. I'm reading what's going on in Washington and New York. I'm observing what's going on around me. I'm reading any editorial page I can find and listening to all the topics. I'm watching the news programs, writing down topics. On the other hand, the strip comes all from within. I sit down with a blank sheet of paper. I never, never use outside influences. I sit and think about what I care about, what I feel about. I think about what I did that day or the last couple of weeks that was funny. I started putting Grimmy (my character) into situations that I feel strongly about and seeing what I would do in those situations. I started getting wonderful feedback that I was touching the core. And the core I was touching was me, rather than just doing a gag a day. I find that when I'm working on an editorial cartoon and I get to that point where it's a blank wall and I don't know where to go, I go over and play with the strip. I'm totally refreshed for the strip, because that part of my brain has been on neutral. So then I play with the strip a little bit. After about two hours of thinking on that, POW!, I go back to the editorial cartoons-- and I'm totally refreshed because that's a different part of the brain. JG: So the strip is really, "This Is Your Life." You have a chance to do an autobiography of sorts. MP: Exactly, exactly. I often told Marian, "Boy, you could get a doctoral thesis done by just taking five cartoon strips over a period of ten years and go through them and show how the strips are mirroring those cartoonists' lives. Do a graph, do a little quick visual of their lives. Show the strips during that time, and you'll find correlations, heavy correlations. JG: Do you find that they ever overlap? It seems like one thing is common to both your editorial cartoons and your strip-- you're doing cartoons about things you care about, whether it's the editorial where you feel angry or impassioned, or the strip where it's something meaningful in your personal life. Do you find that there are points of intersection? MP: Even though the editorial cartoons are more political and topical and the strips are more social or personal, yes, there are always points of intersection. There are always things that I'm working on in the strip-- like homelessness. As a dog, Grimm loves being out on the street. He loves eating out of trashcans; he loves living in a dumpster. Usually every Thanksgiving I try to do him out on the street, and I try to do a series of five or seven or maybe even 14 homeless comic strips that are making a point. I did that after I met with homeless kids living outside of The White House. JG: What seems to evoke a response in your readers? MP: There's a yin and yang of humor. The political cartoons are meant to make people angry. They are used more as an art form bludgeon-- as satire; on my comic strip side, I just try to tickle somebody. When I do editorial cartoons, I love getting bad letters; I love it, I love it, because that's what I'm supposed to be doing-- making people angry so that they can think of something on their own. But when I do my comic strips, all I want is love and letters saying, "Oh, thank you, Mr. Peters, you made us laugh!" Ironically, I get more hate mail from my strip than anything. Whenever I have my dog, Grimm, drink out of toilets, everybody gets mad, and I lose cities. People cry, "You can't do that! This is terrible!" It's probably because it makes the seat wet. Humor is like Star Wars-- you can use the Force for good or for evil. I find that in my editorial cartoons, there are certain subjects that I deal with that I am too close to. And when I get too close to a subject, all I want to do is preach. The NRA just sends me up the wall-- I am so right, and they are so wrong in whatever they say. I can spout for hours about how wrong the NRA is. I realize that my only weapon is my humor. On issues that I feel very strongly about, I've found I have to stand way far back and throw my emotion out, and say something using humor-- because that's what people are going to remember. JG: Do you have a crystal ball for yourself? It seems like you're really on a role (in the aisles). Over 600 papers carry your strip, the editorial cartoons are syndicated widely and appear in Newsweek and Time, and the licensing is escalating. MP: In five years where are we going to be? Hopefully I'm going to be right here. I've tried to make it so that everyday is like my last. I'm trying to make it so that we're appreciating every single moment together. That sounds hokey, but I've had a number of friends who were my age who have died over the last few years. We're at that point where we're seeing that we're not immortal, and this is not a dress rehearsal. We had better start living the life that we want to live now, rather than waiting 'til we're older. Almost every nursery rhyme has the same message as what I'm saying: that you came to Oz for a heart or for a brain, but you've already got a heart and a brain, because you couldn't get here without them. The process is the product. I'm going to enjoy the process. JG: Speaking of nursery rhymes, how did the land of fairytales make their juxtaposition in the title of your strip: Mother Goose and Grimm? MP: You talk about how people come up with ideas. I knew I wanted to do a strip with a dog, because I always related myself with a dog. I've always drawn that dog, and I like that dog. Usually the worst thing that can happen to you is that all your dreams will be fulfilled. You've got to come up with an idea; it better be something that you love and you're going to love 10, 15, 20 years from now. A comic strip is like a marriage-- it's all the good things and the bad things about a marriage. If you do a strip and they take it out and they sell it, and you start gaining newspapers, you could be doing that strip for the rest of your life. So, whatever strip you do, it better be you. It better be the thing you feel most natural with. I was trying to figure out what I was going to feel most natural with. I took out a bunch of 40 of my favorite editorial cartoons, and I spread them on the floor. A good way of telling about yourself is by seeing what you've done before. I made a little list, in fact, about what each of these cartoons told me. Well, they told me that mainly I loved to draw animals, and second, I loved fairytales and Walt Disney. So I started thinking, "Well, maybe I should have the dog with some literary character, some fairytale character." I put him with different literary characters and nothing happened. Then I decided the heck with the fairytale stuff. I put the dog with a funny bag lady. I was drawing the bag lady, and she had a big nose and a real skinny neck. Then I thought of Mother Goose. I drew her like the bag lady. All of a sudden it started working for me, because I could do anything I wanted to do and have it be under Mother Goose. Then I had to find a name for the dog, and I tried a whole bunch of different names. I started thinking of Grimm brothers, Brothers Grimm, and I thought, "'Grimmy' is a good name for the dog, because it is kind of grim." So that's how I came up with it. JG: What's intriguing is that you have such nice energy and enthusiasm. You are the flip side (literally and figuratively) of "grim". What is your energy source? MP: Most cartoonists I know have had some kind of outside force pushing you to go within yourself, entertain yourself. I had a terrible stutter when I was a kid. My mom, who hosted a TV show in St. Louis for about 25 years, was a manic-depressive and blew up a lot. I'd go in my room and be doing my drawings and having a nice time drawing cartoons. My mom sent me to an all-boys, military Catholic high school. It was a Christian school for the criminally insane. We got all these weird messages-- we'd wear uniforms and scapulars with a picture of Jesus on one side and George Patton on the other. You didn't know what to do-- should you kiss people or shoot them? During my four years at the school, all I did was draw. I started the Poster Club, I drew cartoons for the school paper, I drew on all my test papers, I drew in the margins of my books. I was the only kid in my school whenever I'd sit in the men's room and do lewd pictures, I'd sign my name... because I was proud. Then there was Brother Bernard, who was 380 years old. I used to caricature him, because he was such a funny character. Whenever I drew a cartoon about him, I'd get in trouble. Many years later, I was asked to come back to this high school to make a speech, because they thought I was hot stuff. Now I thought this was kind of unusual, because I hadn't changed inside me-- I was still that same little kid who drew cartoons. But they thought I was famous. So I thought, "What should I do?" A lot of these guys were still at the school, including Brother Bernard, now 580 years old. I could get up in front of all these people and do Brother Bernard's picture-- and he can't send me home because he paid for my way out here. I looked up in my old yearbook the teachers' faces, so I could remember how to draw them. I hadn't looked at them for 20 years. I found a picture of Mr. Morgan, who was my senior year English teacher. Mr. Morgan hated me-- in fact, none of my teachers liked me, because I did nothing but draw. Mr. Morgan had me sit in the back row of his class... and he called that row his "Vegetable Garden." He had us sit in the back row, because it was closest to the window. He said if you don't get anything else out of this class, at least you'll get sunlight... and then maybe, through the process of photosynthesis, you'll grow. & JG: Famous last words! MP: The genius of the greatest strips is that you take those memories of things that have hurt you, and you make use of them, and share them. We've all had the Little Red Haired Girl that Charlie Brown wants to meet. That's probably our greatest value: that a cartoon can say something that volumes cannot say. It says it so easily that you can remember it. Being a cartoonist is fun. It starts with a grain of sand that turns into a beautiful pearl. We make our life what we want it to be. |
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