Above: The first National Lampoon cover under Michael Gross’s tenure as art director (#8, Nov. ’70) sported art by renowned painter Louis Glanzman, brother of Sam (who’s a favorite comic book artist at CBA) and Dave (former Charlton Comics staffer)! Sam tells us that Lou used himself as model for the guy in the background. ©1970 National Lampoon, Inc. Inset right: Michael Gross, the award-winning art director for National Lampoon, sits for a portrait in 1972. Courtesy of M.G. Below: What Michael Gross describes as the best magazine cover he ever designed, the “If You Don’t Buy This Magazine, We’ll Kill This Dog” cover (a concept since swiped a quadrillion times), which graced the “Death” issue (#34, Jan. ’73). See Mike’s ad on page 65 to order a facsimile of the artist’s original concept sketch. Courtesy of Michael Gross. ©1972 National Lampoon, Inc.
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geared for youth, or was it just hip? Michael: Oh, it was for the younger generation. We did a photo spread on the making of the movie, Alice’s Restaurant. It was rock ’n’ roll… the Stones were on the cover, y’know? CBA: It lasted six months to a year? Michael: Right. The whole thing lasted less than two years. They wanted to carry Coca-Cola ads. But Rolling Stone was really tearing down the track at that point. All the editors really wanted to do another Rolling Stone. So it was caught in this noaudience weirdness-thing. CBA: That was a strange time for magazines in general, too, right? The Saturday Evening Post, Look, Collier’s… they were already gone by that point… and Life was in trouble. Michael: General interest magazines just weren’t working. It was a very scary time. I couldn’t even tell you what else was being published at that time. CBA: What did you have your eye on? Did you want to do your own magazine? Was that always your dream? Michael: That’s still what I wanted to do. I wasn’t looking to change careers or anything. George Lois was doing the covers for Esquire as a freelancer, even under other art directors, and it the only magazine probably that did that. Sam Antipit, who became the art director at Esquire, even when Lois was doing the covers, Sam went on to have a design firm called Hess and/or Antipit. Somehow it was contracted that I wouldn’t do the covers for Eye magazine; Sam Atchison would do the covers. So he had the same deal with Eye that Lois had with Esquire. It was fun working with Sam. I really respected him and he did a beautiful job. When the magazine folded, Sam said, “Why don’t you come work for me? I have a design firm.” At that point, I even thought, “I’ll have a design firm someday.” There were great firms around in those days. Bob Pellegrini, who I worked with in Mexico… at the end of our stay in Mexico City, I said, “Bob, when we get back, you’ve gotta meet David Kaestle. You, David and I will start a design firm.” So I went back and we all went onto other jobs and other things, but from Eye magazine I went to Sam Atchison and learned the design business.
Things didn’t work out for a lot of reasons: Design is not a great business, and it wasn’t for me, being in my position, because I couldn’t make enough money and it was drudgery. It was just hard. By now, I was starting to feel the pinch of changing jobs a little too often, but while I was there, Jan Wenner somehow came to me and he said, “Do you want to design a magazine called New York Scene? I’m going to have a magazine in every city: New York Scene, Chicago Scene, etc. Little lifestyle magazines. Small, black-&-white, cheap. I’ve got a guy there selling ads. Will you design it?” I said, “Okay.” But it was a freelance job, so I had to then work out of somebody’s office to do this magazine. The real problem with that was that I would go broke. I couldn’t pay my bills. But I worked for Jan Werner starting this little magazine where I had an art budget of $100 a page, and I would draw half of it myself. So it was pretty cool. We did some neat things and I did meet some excellent people, but I couldn’t keep doing it, and it folded. Finally, I looked for a real job again, and I went to work for Family Health magazine, a general interest health magazine, and they wanted it to be designed better. I did a nice design job, but it was slick, boring, and… that was a classic case of where I didn’t want to be. I had my own magazine, but it wasn’t first-rate. I just didn’t care what was in it; I was just doing a good enough job. So, naturally, I started looking for a job again, and my assistant was also looking for a job because he wasn’t happy. So he came to me and says, “I was just called in on a job that you should go for. I’m not right for it. This new magazine, National Lampoon, is looking for an art director.” I said, “Are you kidding me?” Now, before that, I came home one day with that parody of Time magazine which the guys had done, which was what gave birth to the whole thing. I remember sitting in my kitchen and laughing my f*ckin’ ass off reading this stuff out loud to my wife and saying, “These guys are brilliant!” So that was it! I went down to the newsstand, looked at an issue designed by Cloud Nine, and I remember going home and telling my wife, “This is the magazine I want to art direct. I know how to do this.” That was the only time in my life she thought I made a wrong decision! To this day, she’s the first to say, “Boy, was I wrong about that!” But she didn’t get what I saw in the magazine. You’d think that National Lampoon would have been a step back for me. Wasn’t I moving toward book design? Wasn’t I moving toward art directing the slickest, biggest magazine of all? Wasn’t I destined to get Playboy someday? So what the f*ck is this Lampoon thing? A friggin’ underground? But, see, I understood. That was it, that was the progression that got me to Lampoon… CBA: What was it that you saw? Obviously, Peter Bramley and Cloud Nine were giving the magazine this underground, pseudo-R. Crumb kind of look, epitomized by that duck on the cover of the first issue. Generally speaking, even though the magazine used some first-rate illustrators— Rick Meyerowitz, Arnold Roth, Gahan Wilson—the overall look of the magazine was, putting it kindly, not the best it should have been. Michael: But let’s step back. When I was in college and wanted to do a magazine, one of the people I had lunch with was Gahan Wilson. And Gahan, as a Playboy cartoonist… what separated him from the rest of the magazine, in my eyes, what the difference with him was, he was like the Jonathan Winters of this situation. We were the new sensibility. National Lampoon… what happened in there? Who were these guys? Why was there a Monty Python and NatLamp at the COMIC BOOK ARTIST 24
April 2003