Zavier & Boop

by WILL RYAN

If you’ve never heard the phrase, “Boop Oop a Doop,” you’ve probably had your head in an inkwell for the last 90 years. Betty Boop, of course, is the world’s most recognized progenitor of that delightfully squealy insinuation. She is the now-classic cartoon femme fatale who was single-handedly rescued from near-obscurity in the 1970s by a talented teenaged artist and author, Ojai’s own Zavier Leslie Cabarga, formerly known as Leslie Cabarga.

Cabarga grew up in New York, where watching black-and-white 1930s cartoons recycled for 1960s television was a primary delight. “There’s a visual quality to those old cartoons, especially the ones with Betty Boop, and Popeye the Sailor, that I loved. The titles crediting the Fleischer Studios seemed very mysterious to me. The animated drawings, bizarre characters, sound effects, joyous music, and strange voices were utterly fascinating. The cartoon backgrounds were painted in gray tones to contrast against the sharp black and white of the foreground characters who were always moving or bouncing, usually to wonderfully jazzy 1930s tunes. The buildings and lampposts in those backgrounds were always curvy and disheveled, and the crazy cartoon architecture was probably what I liked best about those cartoons.”

Cabarga knew early on that the cartoon world was for him. “I was always drawing pictures in class, and one day a teacher took a bunch of my drawings to the front of the room and began ridiculing them. ‘Look how Leslie wastes his time,’ she said. So I’m seven years old and I’m sitting there thinking, what is she talking about, my father makes a living at this!” Indeed, young Cabarga planned early on to follow in the footsteps of his commercial-artist father. Describing himself as “a classic scholastic under-achiever way before Bart Simpson,” he left school at 15 to pursue his dream of becoming a comic artist. The memory of those old Betty Boop cartoons remained a chief stylistic inspiration. He even tried to research the old cartoons. Max Fleischer’s rival, Walt Disney, had become a household name, but despite a search through the massive New York Public Library, other New York collections, and even the local phone book, Cabarga could find no information about Max Fleischer, whose Manhattan studio had produced those favorite cartoons.

But Cabarga’s ongoing Boop research received a lucky break. “I made an appointment to show my portfolio at Topps Chewing Gum, Inc.

When I got o the subway in Brooklyn, the air smelled of cherry lollipops from the emissions of the Topps factory three blocks away. I showed my samples to the art buyer, Woody Gelman, and pointed out one piece that I’d done in imitation of the Betty Boop cartoon style.” To his surprise, Gelman replied, “Oh, I used to work for Fleischer Studios, and in our art department, two of the former Fleischer animators are here working for me.” Cabarga “flipped” and after meeting the men, arranged to interview them at their homes. “And before I left their offices, Topps assigned me several ‘Wacky Packages,’ a popular bubblegum product, to illustrate.” When Cabarga returned to present his finished art, he also showed Gelman an article containing the animators’ interviews that he’d edited and designed as a potential magazine article. “Gelman, who as a sideline ran a comics-related publishing company, was impressed and said “If you expand this into a book I’ll publish it.” That was quite a coup for a 16-year-old! “I left on cloud nine.” “It took me about four years, during which I read books on how to write, and interviewed and corresponded with dozens of former Fleischer Studios artists. While I kept up my regular work as a comic artist, I researched, wrote, designed, and illustrated the book that was published in 1976 as The Fleischer Story. Almost immediately after the book came out, I was asked to create new art for greeting cards, ceramics, and other products featuring Betty Boop. I became the go-to guy for Boop illustration, eventually painting over 50 greeting cards, Betty’s first-ever LP album cover, and designs for dozens of ceramic mugs and figurines.” The Fleischer Story, meanwhile, found a second publisher after Gelman passed away and remained in print for nearly two more decades.

In the meantime, Cabarga’s cartooning career was moving along — thanks in part to newspapers, small publications, and the newly-flourishing “underground” comic books. After a few years of earning a reputation in that realm, he gravitated to illustration. As Wikipedia puts it, “By the early 1980s Cabarga had become one of the most popular illustrators in New York, creating covers for Time, Newsweek, and Fortune, to name just a few.” He was also turning out dozens of album covers for America’s largest recording label, Columbia Records, featuring many of their top country artists.

“I loved emulating different kinds of art, so I didn’t have just one style. Rolling Stone liked my cartoony work, often done with watercolor or air brush, and The New York Times preferred my more serious, woodcut-engraving style that I replicated using brush and ink. The latter work attracted the attention of TIME magazine and I ended up eventually doing four covers for them. It was a major thrill to see your work on the end rack of every supermarket checkout line — even if only for a week.” By his own account, “There was a period of about 15 years where not a week went by that my work could not be seen in one to five publications. Every day was another frantic deadline!”

“In 1981, I got a call from a company called Nintendo. They wanted an illustration to announce a new video game they were going to call Donkey Kong. I had no idea what it was all about but I based my drawing of Mario the Plumber on Popeye the Sailor, giving the little mustachioed chap the classic ‘30s-animation white gloves. The massive Donkey Kong I likened to Popeye’s nemesis, Bluto, and Pauline the damsel in distress I based on the figure of Betty Boop (with a smaller head). Only years later did I learn that Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Donkey Kong, had actually been greatly inspired by a classic 1934 Max Fleischer Popeye cartoon.”

An important ongoing aspect of Cabarga’s career is as a writer, designer, and publisher of books. One of his earliest books, A Treasury of German Graphics, contained the very pared-down, iconic logos and trademarks by German designers from the pre-war era. It was the first time present-day designers had been exposed to this surprisingly modernlooking work. The book has been credited as having ushered in the age of the computer icon.

By 1990, the Macintosh Apple computer had become a viable option for artists and Cabarga took it up with zeal. He had always wanted to create fonts — a task that was not really viable for

an individual to accomplish in pre-computer times, but Cabarga was an early adaptor. By 1995, he had released a suite of Art-Deco-inspired script fonts that achieved immediate acceptance in the fi eld. “A friend called me up one day and exclaimed, ‘I saw your face on the cover of Rolling Stone!’ He meant my typeface!” Prominent among Cabarga’s fonts are “Streamline,” “Raceway,” and “Magneto Bold,” the latter of which received wide distribution through Microsoft and has become a classic. Another font Cabarga midst of orange blossom time. We were enchanted. (He was exhausted!). “On our fi rst visit to Ojai, with Sergio, we stopped at the Krishnamurti Library. They had some orange trees and I picked an orange — first I apologized to the tree — then took it home to ‘interview.’” The orange “told” him:

“This library was blessed by the energy of the man and his ideals. Before he left we all were imbued with the lasting light of his radiance. I am happy that you were so drawn to us that you wanted a “free sample” and that we appealed to you, friend. How divorced you are from the earth that it brings a thrill when you see us in our natural state of growing! You experienced the bliss and serenity of our fi elds as you drove through.

“The people in this town love their way of life. They’ve all come, attracted by the unspoiled nature and peace. But they soon begin to take over and ironically threaten our existence. Humans don’t mean to upset nature (so we cannot blame them). As they come near they tend to take over. Then it’s as if we become a quaint decoration. Some people would rather see this ‘real estate,’ now covered in fruit orchards, utilized in other ways.” Up to that point in his life, Cabarga had never dared argue with an orange, and he was not about to begin now. He and his family immediately packed up their Los Angeles belongings, moved to Ojai, and never looked back. Cabarga says, “I’ve always noticed that Ojai seems to accept some people who come here, and reject others if it’s not a good fit.” I guess it worked for me because it’s been 15 years and I never tire of gazing up at the mountains surrounding this valley. When I was a kid my mother would say, ‘Go outside and play,’ and I would reply, ‘Whataya mean? There’s no pencil and paper out there!’ I spent my life at desks making art, but I have become a devotee of the River Bottom and Ojai hiking trails and really miss them if I don’t get out often enough.”

whimsically named “Ojaio,” presaging his eventual move to this community.

Even as a child, there had been a foreshadowing link to Ojai for Cabarga. In the book The Feminine Mystique, author Betty Friedan described ‘60s housewives running screaming into the streets, frustrated by their limiting and confining routines. Cabarga remembered: “That’s exactly what my mother did. One evening she fl ed to the home of a friend who offered tea and sympathy, and a little book by J. Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living. K’s philosophy was the balm she needed and my mother became a lifelong fan. I grew up almost spoon-fed on ideology through my mother from this deep well of wisdom. It was somehow synchronistic that I would wind up in Ojai, the town Krishnamurti called home.”

By 1995 Cabarga was living with his small family in Los Angeles. “Eventually we decided to leave the hub-bub of Los Angeles and settle in Ojai. Although the move did nothing for the marital relationship, we all thrived here and still remain very close, literally and figuratively. My kids attended Oak Grove School, and my son just graduated from Chaparral.”

Cabarga continued creating books on the art and design that he loved, such as Dynamic Black and White Illustration, The Designer’s Guide to Color Combinations, and the bestselling Logo, Font & Lettering Bible. Cabarga’s book Talks with Trees; A Plant Psychic’s Interviews with Flowers, Vegetables and Trees reflected new dimensions in his developing interests. Cabarga had met the brilliant and prodigious MAD Magazine cartoonist Sergio Aragonés at comic book conventions. “Sergio invited me and my family to visit him in Ojai and he gave us a really extensive tour through the Arcade, Arbolata, and the East End, that was then in the delicious-smelling

“In 2014, I toured a tiny house on wheels created by local architect Vina Lustado. I admired it, but thought little about it until four months later when I was suddenly struck with the idea, ‘I wanna build one of those!’ I’d been a woodworker since I made go-carts as a kid. Through the years, I’d renovated several houses and one day, while building a new Craftsman-style kitchen for my house in Los Angeles, I said to myself, ‘This is the most fun I’ve ever had,’ and I resolved to switch my career to cabinet-maker.”

One revealing indication of Cabarga’s later-stage career change was that, little by little, the graphic design books in his collection began to be exceeded by books on architecture. “It’s more satisfying to actually walk through one’s own designs in 3D than just appreciating them on a piece of paper,” Cabarga says. “What I loved about building a tiny house — with Craftsman, Jugendstil, and Bauhaus influences — is that the entire thing became a piece of fine furniture.”

Having heard he was focusing on carpentry, a friend asked Cabarga to build a simple shelf over his bed. “I don’t really do ‘simple.’ The result was a shelf with a cherrywood sunburst and glass mosaic sun rays that was loosely inspired by Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann’s 1930 Lit Soleil bed. The client was ecstatic!”

A mid-century-style bathroom suite followed, and then, “I was hired to remodel the interior of a 1953 Spartan Royal Mansion house trailer, which I did in authentic Art Deco style. I love working in period styles and I believe my experience as an illustrator enables me to draft more complex and fl owing designs than builders who are often limited by the geometric shapes favored by computer programs.”

Zavier Leslie Cabarga, this Jack and master of many disciplines — in all known dimensions still enjoys all the things that have ever held his interest, from Betty Boop to Bauhaus, from J.S. Bach to Irving Berlin, from Krishnamurti to Eckhart Tolle. But it’s what is yet to come that intrigues him most, and he is committed to letting the Universe reveal what next lies ahead, in its own good time.

And that, as for many locals, is pretty much the Ojai way.