chuck wainwright
A Gift for Gags
W
alk down the stairs into the cozy basement studio of Dan Reynolds ’81, and I guarantee you will have an involuntary and uncontrollable urge to laugh. You can fight it, but a smile will appear, then a small chuckle, soon a giggle and eventually full-blown guffaws will emanate from your belly. Because, except for a Boston Red Sox banner or two, his Oswego diploma and mementoes of Reynolds’ days aboard the USS Nimitz, wherever you look, every inch of wall space is covered with cartoons. Cows, pigs, chickens and snowmen doing the most outrageous things. The familiar figure from Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” opens his mouth in wordless horror as he gazes at his weight on a scale. A little farther down the wall a hunter leads a group of deer in calisthenics with the caption “Mike Thins Out the Herd.” A barnyard gang playing poker hold their noses as a bovine raises the bet with — what else — cow chips. Reynolds isn’t offended by your outburst. He’s used to this. The most published cartoonist in Reader’s Digest history — his “Reynolds Unwrapped” cartoons appear in nearly every issue — he’ll wait until your sides stop heaving
Oswego
l
Summer 2010
Prolific Reynolds Unwraps Laughter By Michele Reed
and the tears in your eyes start to dry. And then he’ll pull out a handful of greeting cards with his gags on them, and off you go again in paroxysms of laughter. As a regular contributor to American Greetings cards, Reynolds’ work can be found in major retailers around the country. Birthday, get well,
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friendship, Boss’s Day: You name it, Reynolds’ fertile imagination has found a way to poke gentle fun at it. “Everybody needs to laugh,” he says modestly, shrugging his broad shoulders and rubbing his shaved head. “This is my way of contributing to that.” He may be modest about his craft, but his output is anything but. This prolific artist works eight to 12 hour days, creating an average of four cartoons a day, every day. “I don’t have Saturday and Sunday off. I draw every day. I shower every day, too,” he says. He’s on target to produce upwards of 580 cartoons this year. Over his career of 20 years, he has drawn thousands. But, you can’t help asking, despite the question’s cliché status: How do you get so many ideas? “That’s the most often asked and hardest to answer question,” Reynolds says. “I don’t know. It’s sort of a mystery.” The Oswego psychology major speculates half-jokingly that it might have to do with some sort of brain dysfunction or an enlarged right lobe, but he has a favorite theory. “It might be a big part of exercising my mind to see things at least twice,” he says. “Most people look at things and continued on p. 34