Creeping Death from Neptune: The Life and Comics of Basil Wolverton Vol. 1 - preview

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CREEPING DEATH

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FROM NEPTUNE

THE LIFE AND COMICS OF

BASIL WOLVERTON VOLUME ONE 1909–1941 WRITTEN AND PRODUCED BY

GREG SADOWSKI

FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

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To Monte Wolverton CREEPING1layout.indd 6

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CONTENTS 4 COMING*OF*AGE 42 art pages 80 PIONEER*OF*A*NEW*MEDIUM2 102 art pages 144 FUNNIES*INCORPORATED 163 art pages 238 DOWN*TO*EARTH 268 art pages 304 acknowledgments

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Basil Wolverton, at about eighteen years old, c. 1927

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COMING OF AGE 1909–1936

A NATIVE OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST, Basil Wolverton grew up during the 1920s, when the peace and prosperity following World War I helped lift the country into the modern age. Like many of his generation, he straddled eras. His first years were spent on a homestead without electricity or running water, yet a year out of high school he was creating tales filled with rocket ships, spacemen, and the accoutrements of the future. He grew up enthralled by the technological advances of the era, especially as they applied to the mass-communication media of radio, motion pictures, and publishing.

His parents had taken adventurous steps to leave their old world behind. In 1904 thirty-two-year-old Clarence Wolverton, a New Brunswick Canadian, married Olive Hayes, eighteen, from the bordering town of Easton, Maine. After discovering that a developer from Sunnyvale, California (today in the heart of Silicon Valley), was offering free train rides to entice Easterners to relocate, the Wolvertons headed west in 1905, with Clarence most likely securing a job in the thriving fruitpacking industry.

They built a home in Sunnyvale, where their first child, Wilma, was born in 1906. But that year’s Great San Francisco Earthquake left them understandably shaken (their house was badly damaged), and a year later they relocated north to a homestead in Ashland, Oregon, where Clarence found work as a railroad construction foreman.

Olive delivered their son Basil on July 9, 1909, in nearby Central Point, where they had friends who could assist with the birth.

The boy made his first cartoons at the age of four. As Wolverton related six decades later to interviewer Dick Voll, “They. . . depicted, by circles and ovals, various kinds of human beings, mostly fat ones. An imaginative psychiatrist would have drooled over the drawings.”

In 1918, while living outside of Eugene, in Leeburg, Oregon, where Clarence had purchased 173 acres of land for farming and sheep ranching, nine-year-old Basil filled a discarded 3 ½ × 5 inch telegraph copybook

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with drawings of comic strip characters copied from the funny pages, as well as four original illustrated short stories featuring boy adventurers.

It opens with the seven-chapter “The Great Hall,” Wolverton’s earliest existing narrative. The story concerns three boys who fall through a magical hole, leading them to a long dark hall flanked by a series of doors opening into mysterious rooms. The first door reveals an “old woman” who orders the lost boys to climb into her boiling cauldron to “cook all three of [them] alive.”

When they refuse, she unleashes her dragon, the “Harleaxa,” who swallows them whole, causing them to pass out. Chapter six begins as the boys regain consciousness. chapter si hen the o s came to themselves they were in a room. It was very hot and the walls of the room shook and wiggled.

“This must be inside the Harleaxa’s stomach,” Henry said. “Let’s open the door and see where we come to,” said Chet.

So they opened the door and they were inside the Harleaxa’s mouth. “Let’s jump out,” they said.

They ran to the dragon’s mouth and were going to jump out when they saw a large girl sitting on a throne. They jumped out anyway and she said, “I am the Great Enchantress and I have sent all of these things on you because you have entered the door to my room. Go out into the Great Hall.”

The boys obeyed and went out a door—and they were in the Great Hall again.

“How shall we get out?” said Henry.

“Go up to this end of the hall, I guess,” said Chet. So they went up to that end—or rather they tried to go through—they walked and walked till their feet were sore but they never got there. But at last they came to a door in the Hall and it said: “Santa Claus.”

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chapter seven “I wonder if this is Santa Claus’s home?” asked Jack.

“I guess so,” the others agreed.

“Who’s going to go in?” asked Henry.

“I,” said Chet.

So Chet led the way into a room where there was books everywhere. There were shelves and desks of books. Even the chairs and tables had books on them. Henry approached and took a book and began reading it—it ran this way: “The Night Before Christmas.”

Then Henry knew that this was where Santa Claus lived so he called the other boys and they went on. They opened another door and they were in a room where there was all kinds of musical instruments. They opened another door and they were in a room where there was toys of all kinds.

They did this a lot of times and saw all kinds of things and the last door was the candy kitchen and in it was—Santa—Old Sant the great. Old Santa the boys had never believed there was any. As soon as they opened the door, Santa looked up quick.

“How’d you get here?” he exclaimed.

“We are lost,” said Jack.

“Well! Well! And I just like to know how you got here,” he added.

So the boys told him their story and he listened attentively. “There is no more doors in this hall,” he said. “But if you go farther you will find your way out.”

And then after giving them each a sack of candy, he showed them the way out. They had to go a long ways and they came to the same hole.

“Jump up,” said Santa.

So the boys jumped and just as soon as they jumped they began to fly right up and as they neared the large stone Henry had sat down on to read it fell down and let them through. Then just as they were on ground once more the stone went back to its place with a rumbling.

And so these three little boys had some strange adventures and they wanted someone to write it for them and that is why you read it.

The End

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Copy book drawings, 1918: opposite: two pages from “The Great Hall”; above: boy aviator ideas; right: copying popular strips Mu! and Jeff and The Katzenjammer Kids

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This page, clockwise from top le!: Basil Wolverton’s earliest photo, with mother Olive and sister Wilma, c. 1910; Wilma and Basil at their Ashland, Oregon, homestead, c. 1911; a well-dressed Basil and Wilma on the porch of their eleven-room home in Leeburg, Oregon, c. 1913. This house on a 173-acre farm and sheep ranch, with hot and cold running water in five rooms, was a considerable step up from their Ashland home, underscoring father Clarence’s speculative lifestyle; Basil with pooch, c. 1915 Opposite page, all taken in Vancouver, Washington, clockwise from top le!: Clarence and Basil, c. 1920; Basil at about eleven, c. 1920; Basil at about fi!een, c. 1924

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Diary drawings from December 26, 1923, and July 6, 1924 (opposite)

In 1919 the Wolvertons settled in Clark County’s Vancouver, Washington, just over the northern Oregon border, directly across the Columbia River from Portland.

This rural yet cosmopolitan area suited Basil; apart from a six-month sojourn to Hollywood in 1936, he stayed in the vicinity his entire life.

When he was eleven, Basil drew a weekly cartoon of a famous comic strip character to sell for fifty cents at the local farmers’ market. His favorite cartoonists were Rube Goldberg (Boob McNutt, Lala Palooza), E. C. Segar (Thimble Theatre), and Sidney Smith (Old Doc Yak).

For Christmas 1923 he received a diary, in which he would report notable events during the following year. It opens with a short autobiography and his list of presents.

Hello folks, my name is Basil Wolverton and the first writing in this book was put here Dec. 24, 1923, the night before Christmas. I live in Vancouver, Washington. I have one sister, one mother, one father and no brothers. Thus only four in the family. I was born in Central Point, Oregon, July 9, 1909. I am now fourteen years old.

I got all my Christmas presents tonight and I sure am happy. I got a necktie, a pair of arm bands, a pair of swell gloves with gauntlets, a Tarzan book, two pounds of plaster paris, a hair brush, this diary book, two dollars, and some candy. I think that’s a good bunch of swell presents.

Over the next 110 pages Wolverton sheds light on his time in high school and his advancing interest in Christianity, cartooning, scientific magazines, vaudeville, and movies. He writes of escapades with his friends, which include building tunnels with secret passages, diving off piers, and spying on wandering drunken men, with public intoxication being particularly scandalous during the Prohibition era. Like most boys he counted the days until summer vacation . . .then counted the days until school resumed. He went to church and Sunday school every week, read the Bible regularly, and attended Evangelical revival meetings with his father, who instilled in his son a deep Christian faith.

On New Year’s Day 1924, Basil visited Portland with best friend Ken Evans and his parents, who ran the neighborhood grocery. After dining they took in a silent movie, which in those days included vaudeville acts between each feature. His delight at what would later be known as “Borscht Belt” comedians would inspire Wolverton to create a vaudeville act of his own in a few years.

I ate a lot of dinner and then went to the show and laughed so much at the comedy that I’d of liked to split the front of my shirt and the seat of my pants and maybe my collar or my stockings.

The comedy was so funny that I was behind in my laughs when funny things came along and I didn’t get to laugh enough at everything, but when I got home I made up for it by laughing a lot.

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One of his hobbies was building and listening to crystal “cat’s whisker” radios, early receivers that worked without electricity and were capable of receiving radio signals through a thin wire connected to a semiconducting crystal mineral (the faint signal could only be heard through headphones). His favorite show, The Hoot Owls, featuring local comedian Mel Blanc, aired every Friday night over Portland’s KGW. He kept a log of the stations he received and noted excitedly on January 26:

He told all the people He’d climb the church steeple, But he slipped and fell down with a rattle There was a young man from Bombay Who thought that he’d walk all the way From China to France In one pair of pants But the britches on him wouldn’t stay

Something wonderful happened last night. I got Oakland, California on my crystal set. KGO California. I could barely hear them. I think that is not so bad for a crystal set.

There was a young kid named Lou Who cried all the time “boo-hoo!”

He fell down the stairs And broke all the chairs And turned both his ears black and blue

By February he had stopped making daily entries.

After a lapse of over four months, he offered a paragraph on July 6. It contains his first mention of working at the local Washington Canners cannery, a seasonal job that he maintained on a part-time basis into his adulthood, eventually attaining foreman status.

[Sunday, July 6, 1924] great lapse of time Pardon me for leaving out so much of my diary but I have forgotten and neglected to write it.

Well, it is summer and school has just been out for a month. Therefore only two months left. I went to Sunday School and Church today. I have been working in the cannery. I have earned sixteen dollars in seven days. I guess all the work is over now. I went to the show yesterday that is the second show in 1924.

Wolverton resumed making daily entries for three weeks in August, inspired by a revival meeting at which his commitment to religion took a notable leap forward.

[Sunday, August 10, 1924] Dad and I went to Camp Meeting this morning. At the afternoon service I gave myself up to God, and now I am going to be something for him. After I grow up I will be a preacher or a missionary, maybe. Maybe I will do some kind of drawing that will help out in some way maybe.

Two days later he attended the annual Prune Harvest Festival organized by the Prunarians, a local group of businessmen seeking to promote Clark County as the “prune capital of the world.” (Sounding like something out of one his later comics, its leader was known as the “Big Prune.”) Held at Vancouver’s Esther Short Park, 1924’s “Super Picnic” was the largest Prune Harvest Festival to date, with all amusements free to the public.

Wolverton’s August 18 entry displays a wariness of strangers, a self-deprecation that continued throughout his life, and the casual racism typical of the era.

I tried to get work at the cannery this morning but couldn’t. I was inside and Ronson told me to get out. I got. It is still raining. I saw the suspicious bum over at the cannery this morning. I wonder what he thinks he is doing around here. I guess I will put in another one of my foolish poems and another one of my bum pictures so here goes for something foolish.

On August 6 Wolverton wrote of coming down with “the poet’s craze” and jotted down a few original limericks.

The absurd sense of humor and love of wordplay found in his later humorous comics was already evident.

There was a young chink named “Ling” Who loved to hee-haw and sing He sung every song He could find in Hong Kong But was shot and killed by the king

There was an old man from Seattle Who loved to chatter and prattle

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Diary drawing, August 18, 1924

Drawing of boyhood friend Albert Fagaly, c. 1925

The next entry came two months later, on October 17, when Wolverton reports having made enough at the cannery to purchase a more modern battery-operated electronic tube radio kit. He also notes his reading of eight Bible chapters, his father’s new job as a painter at the paper mill, and a zeppelin flying over Vancouver at 4 a.m. on its way to Portland. (“The fire whistle blew to announce its coming.”)

Wolverton let another two months lapse before he managed a few entries in December. On the fifteenth he writes of the first snow of the season, always a cause for celebration, and of his worries that his father won’t have enough money to buy him an accordion for Christmas. His fears were laid to rest on Christmas Day, as he recorded three days afterward.

[Sunday, December 28, 1924] Well, Christmas has come and gone. For Christmas I got two books, a poem called “If” by Kipling, with a swell frame and glass and a very pretty picture for the background, a box of candy, a year’s subscription to the American Boy (Ken gave me this) and last but

not least—a card with the words on it—“Good for one accordion the first time I go to Portland. Dad.” He later writes of winning twenty-five dollars for taking second prize for best essay in the “Home Lighting Contest,” a promotion to educate families on the practical application of home electricity. This early windfall encouraged Wolverton to become a chronic contest applicant during much of his adult life.

The last ten pages of the diary begin at the end of July, with Wolverton now submitting his cartoons to national newspaper syndicates.

[Wednesday, July 29, 1925] Seven months is quite a long time. It is almost August already, and vacation is going fast. I was elected president of the Lower Junior Class for the coming semester and will be president of the Upper Juniors during the last semester. I am sixteen years old now. Mom wanted to take her trip back East this summer but there is not enough money. I thought sure we were going to get to take it but I guess now

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A healthy list of non-athletic activities accompanies Wolverton’s photo in the 1927 Vancouver High School yearbook; classmate Eugene Oliver’s copy contains an original Woozy Woofer–type pooch. (Courtesy Laura Oliver and Heritage Auctions)

we are not. I worked a little over a month now in the cannery, right after school and earned $96.88, which helps a little bit.

I am now trying to sell my cartoons to some syndicates. I made a few strips and called them Simple Simon and These Modern Inventions, and sent them to the King Features Syndicate at New York. The King Features Syndicate sent them to the International Feature Syndicate, just a block away. They both had no use for the cartoons, so sent them back and I made some more, only they were not in strip form but were just one big picture, and were called Funny Features. I made a four line verse to go with each of them and then sent them off to the N.E.A. Service at Cleveland, Ohio. I haven’t got them back yet, though. I sent them sixteen days ago. This morning’s mail hasn’t come yet; they might be coming this morning.

Dad has been gone for about six weeks. He lives in Portland now. I will go out and saw some more wood and then come back and write down whether my pictures came this morning.

My pictures are coming tomorrow, I guess.

I got a letter today saying that the syndicate had no use for them. C. N. Landon of the Landon School of Cartooning is the art director of the syndicate, so of course he wants me to take a course in his school, and then I’ll get a job. I won’t do that but I’ll make eight more pictures and send them to another syndicate.

the scores of artists who subscribed and benefited. Wolverton took pride in learning cartooning on his own, more affordable, terms, i.e., by copying the work of those he admired and putting in a prodigious amount of concentration and practice. While this approach resulted in technical deficiencies, particularly in anatomy, it also infused his work with a deeply personal aesthetic that may have got lost had he absorbed Landon’s teachings.

Though Wolverton only mentions it in passing, his father Clarence had left his family in June 1925. As Basil’s son Monte Wolverton explains, “My grandfather may have unknowingly sold some bad securities/stock to some businessmen in Vancouver—and he needed to get out of town—and he didn’t want to implicate his family. He lived in Seattle for a while and then back to Portland.” Basil wrote of continuing to attend church services and Sunday school, but his resentment toward his father’s leaving, plus the death of his sister Wilma from rheumatic fever in 1927, severely shook his faith. Until the early 1940s, he considered himself an atheist.

On July 30, Basil notes sending seven cartoons to New York, then going swimming with cartooning friend Al Fagaly. (From 1944 to 1963 Fagaly illustrated the successful syndicated strip There Oughta Be a Law.) They would remain friends and keep tabs on each other throughout their careers.

On August 2, 1925, Wolverton looks forward to an upcoming trip to his boyhood area of Eugene, especially since it meant riding the rails.

The course he declined to take, Charles Nelson Landon’s “School of Cartooning and Illustration,” was the preeminent correspondence course for budding cartoonists.

Milton Caniff and Roy Crane, two of Wolverton’s favorite comic strip creators (as well as his future comic book contemporaries Jack Cole and Will Eisner), were among

If there’s anything I like to do it’s ride on a train.

I go wild about them and have got the “ChooChoo Blues,” as the song goes. Even as I write these words down there is a passenger train just stopping (It stopped just as I wrote the word “stopping”) at the Depot. It is the Oriental Limited which pulls into Vancouver at 8:30 every night and goes to Spokane.

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Opposite: four penand-ink illustrations for the opening pages of the 1927 Alki, the Vancouver High School yearbook; Wolverton was on the staff as picture editor.

Yearbook shot of Wolverton with fellow members of Vancouver High School’s Board of Entertainment, 1927; their primary function was to raise money by choosing movies and presenting them to the student body, with alternate free and pay shows. They raised a respectable $150.

Wolverton’s first published cartoon, for the magazine America’s Humor, 1926

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