Randy Enos – DarylCagle.com

Man’s Achievements in an Ever Expanding Universe

The Ugliest Woman in the World

Tags David Mamet, Faye Kellerman, Harlen Coben, James Rollins, Randy Enos

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Bulldog Bennet

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date April 20, 2020

No coronavirus cartoons today (you should go to Cagle.com for that). My legendary cartoonist buddy Randy Enos shares another story about his early days as a cartoonist.

Email Randy Enos

Visit Randy’s archive –Daryl

We had all heard the stories, of course, but we didn’t really believe them. So, when I graduated from the 5th grade at the Merrimac Street School in 1946 and was about to start at the Parker Street School, I went with no real idea about the awful terrors I, and my doomed classmates were about to encounter.

Life at Merrimac had been sweet and carefree. Behind the medieval- looking building, there was a nice little playground. I envied my best friend Ottello because he lived but a few strides across the street. He could wake up late and just saunter over to school, whereas I had to often brave snowstorms that pushed so hard on my little body as I crossed the Common that many times I almost gave up to go back to my warm house.

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Each morning all the classrooms assembled in the halls, upstairs and down, as we pledged allegiance to the flag. An old Victrola was hand cranked. The little wooden doors on its base were opened and the creaky sounds of The Star Spangled Banner wafted up the stairway to our young ears. Ah, the good ol’ days… we’d soon be missing them … very … very … soon.

I went on through the 6th grade at Parker St. School and then it happened. In the 7th and 8th grade, for the first time we had a home room and went off to other rooms for other classes. My home room was my English class. I had a wonderful teacher, Mrs. Brown, who happened to live in my neighborhood . I would see her sometimes sitting on her front porch rocker.

Across the hall was my history/geography class presided over by a viciously cruel and petty teacher… the absolute WORST teacher in the New Bedford school system known all over town by kids who didn’t even go to this school … the infamous, BULLDOG BENNET!

Parker St. School

She was very short and squat with a pile of grey hair on her head and squinty slanted eyes and a face that looked EXACTLY like a bulldog. She had a permanent scowl. We never saw her smile. We came to think that she wasn’t even capable of smiling. Almost everyone in class was in terror of her and kids could be seen visibly shaking as they entered her class every day. Of course there were a few goody- good “teacher’s pets” who sailed through the two years unscathed, but certainly not your humble narrator. I got insanely awful grades. My father, a former dirt-poor immigrant kid who had never attended school in his whole life, was a stickler for me getting good grades (which I did achieve in Geometry, surprise surprise) and English. But, fortune, never the less, shined down on me due to the fact that Miss Bennet was an ardent right-wing, very outspoken bigot and snob. My father was an ardent Socialistic union man who loved Roosevelt. When my dad heard my terror tales of the horrors going on in my history and geography class, he forgave my bad grades … PHEW! He hated her as much as I did.

She loved to embarrass us kids in class. One time she made us stand and tell what church we went to. I was a product of an atheist household without benefit of a religion so I had to make up a lie about going to some Portuguese church to avoid the obvious confrontation that would have ensued. Anything she could pick on with a kid-victim was fodder for her seething, snarling scorn. Each day she would feed us her political propaganda woven into the history and geography lesson and I would report it back home to dad.

My home room, with the wonderful Mrs. Brown, was my safe haven. One day, knowing my interest in becoming an artist, she asked if I would like to undertake a mural for the classroom. It was to go all the way around the room except for the front blackboards which were used for the lessons. For some reason we were blessed with blackboards on the sides and back of the room. Supplied with colored chalks, I decided I would create a detailed jungle masterpiece peopled with parrots, monkeys, vines and colorful flowers. Sometimes Mrs. Brown would excuse me from the regular class involvement (remember I got good grades in English) to work on my project while the other poor slobs had to recite and compose and read. I loved my mural commission and really got lost in the jungle, inventing the swooping branches, vines and flora that housed my acrobatic monkeys and wildly colorful parrots. I’d stay late in class after school often to work on it.

One day, as I was engaged in my artistic endeavor with only Mrs. Brown at her desk, I became aware of another presence in the room. I turned slowly around to see the awful Bulldog Bennet standing in the doorway glowering at me. Time stopped dead as she spoke … “If he spent half the time attending to his lessons as he does to his art, he’d probably make something of himself!” By Mrs. Brown’s expression and the comments, she made at that point, I could tell that she shared my dislike for our neighbor across the hall.

Bennet went on for those two years bragging that when she was a schoolgirl she would weep if she got only an A, instead of an A+. She would invite the two or three girls who were her favorites to her house for tea and then, the next day, tell us all what fun they all had.

When we all finally graduated to New Bedford High School it was like a deadly curse had been lifted from our battered psyches.

Years and years later, after I was well into my illustration and cartooning career and my mother had died and my father had retired and was doing volunteer work for the Red Cross, he told me that he was regularly taking residents of a nursing home for drives in his car just so they could get out and around a little. He said, “You’ll never guess who is one of my regular ladies … Bulldog Bennet! He said that she was a little shriveled and quite senile version of her old self. He also told me that he always stopped somewhere to buy the ladies an ice cream cone on their trips. He said that the only thing he would ever hear out of her little high, squeaky, cracked voice was… ” Ice cream … ice cream … ice cream!”

And, so, that’s the way it ended for the infamous Bulldog Bennet … a tiny pitiful voice pleading to my dad “Ice cream … ice cream … ice cream!”

Read many more of Randy’s cartooning memories:

Me and My Axe

Man’s Achievements in an Ever Expanding Universe

The Ugliest Woman in the World

Tags cartoonist, connecticut, Merrimac Street School, New Bedford High School, Parker Street School, Randy Enos, Red Cross, school

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Me and My Axe

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date March 31, 2020

We’ll take a break from the pandemic for my brilliant cartoonist buddy Randy Enos who shares another story about his early days as a cartoonist illustrator. (I must say, Randy’s experience sounds remarkably like my own experience as a cartoonist illustrator in Manhattan 15 years later.)

Email Randy Enos

Visit Randy’s archive –Daryl

In 1955, I shared a room in Boston with a friend of mine from high school who was attending the New England Conservatory of Music which was practically across the street. He was a classical trumpet player who talked like a jazz musician. He woke up late one morning and ran around our small room screaming, “Where’s my axe? Where’s my axe?” He had forgotten where he had put his trumpet case and he was late for school.

Years later when I became an illustrator, I discovered that some illustrators called their portfolios axes. I liked that so I adopted the term. I, and my axe, made the rounds on the New York streets for many years visiting art directors every single Thursday. As I mentioned in a previous story, I took my annual 3 week vacation from the Famous Artists Schools by taking off every Thursday until my vacation had been used up. To prepare for these visits to the Big Apple, I would go through all the magazines on a newsstand and take down the phone numbers of the art directors. At Grand Central Station there was a huge bank of phones in the center of the main floor where now stands a big international magazine store. I’d settle myself down in one of the phone booths and proceed to call one art director after another telling them that I was just in for the day and could I drop by for just a few minutes with a portfolio. In those days, all the art directors set aside Thursdays for looking at portfolios. So, I’d lug my axe up and down Madison Ave., Fifth Ave., Lexington Ave., and all the streets in-between.

I had a lot of guts in those days and would blithely walk into Time magazine, Fortune, Business Week, The New York Times, a newcomer with barely any published work except a few little awful spots I had done for The Famous Artists Magazine. The bulk of my samples were crazy and very off-beat creations I had drawn using an ink bottle stopper or pen and ink or a combination of both. I thought that if I were to make a success at this illustration business, I would have to have an eye-catching original style. Well, for the most part, my early work only found its way into the girly magazines like Escapade where I discovered young daring ADs who would take a chance on a crazy style like mine. The focus of these magazines was, of course, photos of sexy girls and they were willing to experiment with avant garde illustrations for which they paid very little. Because of the low pay, illustrators were given lots of freedom and often worked without having to submit roughs first. Attached to this article are examples of some of these early samples of mine. In the early 1960’s, when I lucked into my first Playboy jobs and could show tear sheets from that prestigious publication, I found doors opening in much classier markets. In Playboy, I did my very first linocut which was to set my style for good.

On Thursdays, as I mentioned, The ADs were seeing lots of artists so the visits were brief. You’d walk in, open your axe and he or she would riffle through the samples, usually stone-faced making no comments and that would be that. You’d leave a photostat or print of some kind and a business card (mine were hand-made).

As I went on in my first few years, I stuck to “high-end” publications because I realized that working in what some called a “sophisticated” style I wouldn’t have a chance with magazines that had a more common appeal. My markets eventually became publications like Time, Life, Fortune, Forbes, airline magazines, lots of food magazines and political and social satire magazines like The Nation, The Progressive, Avant Garde, Monocle, The Atlantic, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone and the National Lampoon. I also did work for Sports Illustrated, New York Magazine, The New York Times, Washington Post and lots of other newspapers all over the country.

And, speaking of the phone bank at Grand Central, my wife did her share of usage there when she started doing theatrical work in New York. She would go into the city and immediately hit the phones. One day I had to get a job into my old friend Mike Gross who was then working at Exxon. I was busy with other jobs so I asked my wife to take it in for me and IMMEDIATELY deliver it to Mike across the street from the train station. I said, “Do not stop at the phones… he needs this right away.” Of course, being a dutiful wife, she got off the train and went IMMEDIATELY to the phone banks. At that moment, across 42nd St., a bomb went off in a small office at the base of the Exxon building. Everyone was evacuated. Mike went into panic mode because he knew that Leann would have been right there at that spot at that time. He found a phone on the street and called his wife, Glennis, and told her to call my home and discreetly inquire about Leann. I think Mike found Leann, at that moment, casually sauntering into the melee of police, ambulances and whatnot.

Back to my axe. At first, I’d go into the city and lug it around to potential clients all day with no success. I got used to it. Leann got used to it. After a while, she wouldn’t even ask if I got anything. It was a given that I hadn’t.

One day, I walked into Harper’s Magazine to see the editor. They didn’t have an art director per se. I actually recognized his name and face because I had seen him on television being interviewed. I opened up my axe and, as always, he flipped through the pages very rapidly and closed it. I gathered up my sample book and thanked him politely and headed for the door. He said, “Where are you going? I have a job for you!” I couldn’t believe my ears. He reached into a desk drawer and produced a manuscript and handed it to me. I HAD RECEIVED MY FIRST MAJOR MAGAZINE JOB! I wasn’t used to this. It wasn’t part of my ritual. It was a major shock to my system. I was nervous on the train going home clutching my axe for good luck.

I worked like the devil on that little black and white job. He hadn’t asked for rough sketches. I was so unsure of my concepts for it that I did 4 or 5 finished solutions just to cover myself. I remember the illustration. It ended up being a pen and ink drawing of a guy lying in the crater of a volcano puffing on a pipe and emitting a trail of smoke. I’ve looked high and low for that sample and, alas, I just can’t find it.

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Read many more of Randy’s cartooning memories:

Man’s Achievements in an Ever Expanding Universe

Tags Avant Garde, Business Week, Escapade, Famous Artists Schools, Fortune, illustration, Monocle, Mother Jones, new york, Randy Enos, Rolling Stone and the Lampoon, The Atlantic, The Nation, The New York Times, The Progressive, Time Magazine

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Baseball Soup

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date February 9, 2020

Our legendary cartoonist, my buddy Randy Enos, loves kale soup with bugs.

Email Randy Enos
Visit Randy’s archive –Daryl

In 1993, a former illustrator, named Pam Sommers, asked 84 well known illustrators to contribute to a book she was putting together called “Recipes for Disaster“. In essence, she wanted the illustrators to write out and then illustrate their favorite recipes. Some of the artists chose to take a conceptual approach such as a “recipe for a riot”. We had complete freedom to interpret “recipe” any way we wanted to but most of us did actual recipes of our favorite dish. I was one of those and I decided to combine my text and picture into one linocut illustration. The words became part of the picture.

My favorite food dish is Portuguese kale soup. It’s nickname is “baseball soup” because of the large baseball sized potatoes in it. It also blends the flavors of the Portuguese sausages, chourico and linguica with cabbage, lima and red kidney beans and soup chuck with the large bunch of kale. It’s a thick soup, almost like a stew sometimes although some people, like my Aunt Angie used to make a thinner watery version of it. My father and mom taught my wife, Leann how to make it and she does a PERFECT replica of the version I grew up with … except for the bugs floating in it. You see, we grew our own kale in a little garden in our yard and it was impossible for my grandmother, who lived with us and did most of the cooking, to wash out all these tiny little bugs that were embedded in the kale leaves. So, they got well cooked into the soup. When you were eating it, you could see the tiny little critters who looked like fruit flies floating in the lovely greenish soup. The first time Leann ate at our house and saw the bugs, she was a little put off by them. My father assured her that they were well cooked and perfectly harmless.

I love kale soup. It is truly the best dish I have ever eaten in my life… it’s heaven. And it is truly delicious the days after it is created when the flavors have mingled and steeped. We always make a very big pot of it that lasts a few days.

I decided to do my illustration in a whaling theme because the largest concentration of Portuguese immigrants are located in my home town of New Bedford which was the greatest 17, 18 and 19th century American whaling port in the world. I decided that I would depict whalemen trying to harpoon two large potato/whales. One whaleman shouts, “Baleia Branco”… which means “white whales”,referencing Moby Dick which was written by Herman Melville who shipped out of New Bedford on a whaling ship when he was 25 years old and later wrote probably the greatest novel ever written.

The water, in my picture, is composed of the wavy lettering that makes up the recipe text. White on black at the top of the picture listing the ingredients and black lettering on white in the larger bottom part of the picture listing the cooking procedure.

It was a lot of work and it was very very tiring cutting all those letters backwards… BUT, well worth it for KALE SOUP!

Read many more of Randy’s cartooning memories:

Man’s Achievements in an Ever Expanding Universe

Tags illustrators, Kale Soup, Portugal, Randy Enos, recipe

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The Lady With The Moustache

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date January 28, 2020

Our legendary cartoonist, my buddy Randy Enos, loves Mexican icon, Frida Kahlo.

Email Randy Enos
Visit Randy’s archive –Daryl

Frida Kahlo by Randy Enos

My obsession with Frida Kahlo started when I turned the page of an Artforum magazine I was reading on the train to New York back in the early 80’s. It hit me with a jolt! Here was a black and white photo of a scowling woman slouched in a chair seated next to a pot bellied man holding a monkey in his arms! The man I recognized as Diego Rivera, the famous Mexican mural painter. I’ve been a fan of his work since I was a kid. Due to his influence, I even painted a couple of murals in our house in the entrance way to my childhood attic studio. Alas, they are no longer there. I recently was alerted, by my niece, Kerry, to a real estate website that showed our old re-modeled home for sale … no murals were to be seen in the entrance way to what now is an attic guest room.

The woman in the photo, apparently Diego’s wife, was the focus of my attention (which was soon to become an obsession). She had on a decorative blouse covered over by a shawl. She had large heavy earrings. Her eyebrows grew together in one line across her brow and she had a moustache! She was gazing directly at the camera. Diego meanwhile was looking askance at the monkey, who I later learned was named Caimito de Guayabal.

In the weeks and months that followed, I couldn’t get her image out of my head. I cut the picture out of the magazine and framed it to hang on my studio wall. Then, I proceeded to try to track down information on this apparition. I had very little luck. I did find out that she was indeed Diego’s wife. I saw somewhere that there was film of her with Diego. I searched for that footage. I had to see this woman in movement … in action. What was she like? I had no luck whatsoever in finding any movies of her.

Frida Kahlo and her husband, Diego Rivera.

Then in 1985, Hayden Herrera’s book, “Frida” was published and the smoke cleared. It informed the world about Frida Kahlo. The big thick book answered all my questions. It told about her terrible childhood accident when she was impaled through the groin when a trolly hit her school bus in Mexico City. She spent the rest of her life mostly corseted up or bed- ridden, going in and out of surgery for her injured spine. There were a few times of mobility when she could walk around and even make visits to the U.S. when Diego was painting murals in Detroit, New York and California. She was an exotic creature wearing long Mexican folk dresses (which helped to hide her polio-withered right leg) and many rings, bracelets and heavy looking necklaces. On the walls of her bedroom hung the pictures of her heroes Marx, Mao, Lenin and Stalin. She had an affair with Trotsky when he escaped from Stalin and lived with the Riveras in Coyoacan, a suburb of Mexico City. She flitted in and out of the Communist Party switching allegiances from one faction to the other from time to time along with Diego. When she died, there was an unfinished portrait of Stalin on her easel which I saw when I visited her famous “blue house” in Coyoacan. She loved animals and had many hairless dogs, tiny deer, parrots and monkeys. She led a fabulous bohemian life creating endless self portraits and cultivating a small cadre of students which were affectionately known as Los Fridos. She was kind and loving and passionate and I was in love with her … and still am.

SO, lots of my friends, family and fellow cartoonists give and send me Frida stuff. I have her images all over the house and 36 pictures of her in my studio alone. I have tee shirts with her picture on them, key fobs, various pins, sticky notes, shopping bags (3), a candle, postage stamps, greeting cards, matchbooks, and on and on and on. Almost all of them have been given to me by friends who feel the need to feed my obsession. I even have an earring which is a little “hand” that matches the earrings that Picasso once gave her.

Frida Kahlo

Of course I’ve made pictures of her and I’ve met her biographer, Hayden, and I’ve collected 16 books on her including her cookbook, her diary, a book of her personal photos, her sketchbook, many biographies and so forth. She had a lot of bed time so she propped up a little easel and mirror and painted more self portraits than probably any other artist that ever lived. She did NOT paint flattering pictures of herself but rather pictures of her sorrow, her ailments, her passion. She had a mirror on the canopy of her bed so she could study her predicament from that angle. The Surrealists loved her and invited her to Paris to exhibit with them. She found most of them to be insufferable snobs and bores.

My wife and I visited her house (now a Frida Kahlo museum) in Coyoacan and I swiped some blue chips of paint that had peeled off the house and fallen in her beautiful garden to put in a frame with one of her pictures in my studio. I picked up some small pieces of lava rock also to make into an earring for myself. See what I mean about obsession?

I’m posting here my favorite photo of her with beads in her mouth, the original photo I saw in Artforum and a large color linocut I made (that’s me on her shoulder as her favorite monkey, Fulang- Chang). Also, a small linocut of her with Diego. I gave a print of this to Hayden Herrera.

I was at a party once, with a bunch of lefties, years ago … I remember my friend, the cartoonist Roy Doty, was there and also an old woman who actually had known Frida. Unfortunately, by the time I found this out, she was on her way out the door leaving the party.

Diego once said that everybody who meets Frida falls in love with her.

WELL … evidently, you didn’t even have to meet her.

Read many more of Randy’s cartooning memories:

Man’s Achievements in an Ever Expanding Universe

Tags bohemian, Communist Party, Coyoacan, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Hayden Herrera, Lenin, Mao, Marx, Mexican icon, Mexico City, Randy Enos, Roy Doty, Stalin, Trotsky

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The Day I Got Dizzy

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date January 12, 2020

Here’s a new story by my cartoonist buddy and legend, the great Randy Enos.

Email Randy Enos
Visit Randy’s archive –Daryl

Years ago, my wife was doing a lot of theater work both acting and directing with small groups mostly in New York. One time, however, in June of 1989, she was called to Washington, D.C. to direct a play there. A few days later, while she was there, our anniversary came along and we decided that I would take the train down to Washington to celebrate it with her.
When I got to Washington, my wife had arranged an evening out at a small jazz club she had been told about called Blues Alley. It turned out to be a small, brick-walled, intimate little place with a small stage and little bar at the rear. The performance that evening was a quartet whose leader was not “small” or “little”at all. It was none other than the legendary Dizzy Gillespie. I couldn’t believe it. There he was a few feet in front of us with that trumpet bell pointed up at the ceiling wailing away. Every player had a mic on their instrument which I thought was odd because the place was tiny and it didn’t seem to require any amplification at all. It was incredibly loud but … what the hell, it was Dizzy Gillespie.

Dizzy’s autograph!

I had this great icon standing right in front of me so decided that I should make a sketch that I could take home and amplify into a nice caricature. I had drawn him for Playboy back in the 60’s from photos but here was my chance to draw him in the flesh, with those big cheeks of his, blown out like a squirrel packing nuts. I scribbled away on a napkin feverishly. When I finished, he was finished playing and went to the back bar to have a drink. I showed my drawing to Leann. She said, “I’m going to give it to him!” I said “NO, I need it, I’m going to do a major caricature of him from this when I get home!” Naturally, she snatched it from me and got up. I said, “You can’t go over there and bother him –he’s DIZZY GILLESPIE!”

My caricature of Dizzy for Playboy.

She went right over to him. He was alone at the bar. I watched her chatting away to him for about 5 minutes before I got up the courage to go over. He asked where we were from, and when we said “Westport, Connecticut,” he said, “Oh, I know Westport, I’ve been there, I have friends there!” To which I replied, “Oh, of course you do, Dave Brubeck and Gerry Mulligan live there!” He said, “Well Brubeck is a friend of mine but not Mulligan.”H-m-m-m-m … I don’t know what that was all about but I didn’t comment on it.

We continued chatting away for some time. He talked about his wife, family etc., and he asked about ours, and he was so “down-to-Earth”, so “ordinary”, so “regular”, that I quite forgot that I was talking to one of the most famous and greatest jazz musicians of all time.

I broke my rule of never asking for autographs so he scribbled one out for me on the back of a stained little bar menu. It hangs on my studio wall.

It was a good trade for my little sketch.

Read many more of Randy’s cartooning memories:

Man’s Achievements in an Ever Expanding Universe

Tags Dizzy Gillespie, Randall Enos, Randy Enos

Blog Newsletter Syndicate

Enos Decade!

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date December 17, 2019

Here are Randy Enos’ favorite cartoons of the past decade! Randy is a legendary illustrator and one of the founding creators at The National Lampoon.

See Randy’s favorite cartoons on USA Today, where you can click on each cartoon and see it blown up to fill the screen with a pretty, high-resolution image. See the complete archive of Randy’s syndicated cartoons here.

Look at our other, great collections of Cartoons Favorites of the Decade, selected by the artists.
Pat Bagley Decade!
Nate Beeler Decade!
Daryl Cagle Decade!
Patrick Chappatte Decade!
John Cole Decade!
John Darkow Decade!
Bill Day Decade!
Sean Delonas Decade!
Bob Englehart Decade!
Randall Enos Decade!
Dave Granlund Decade!
Taylor Jones Decade!
Mike Keefe Decade!
Peter Kuper Decade!
Jeff Koterba Decade!
RJ Matson Decade!
Gary McCoy Decade!
Rick McKee Decade!
Milt Priggee Decade!
Bruce Plante Decade!
Steve Sack Decade!

Read many more of Randy’s cartooning memories:

Man’s Achievements in an Ever Expanding Universe

Tags Best of the Decade, border patrol, Constitution, disney, editorial cartoons, Elephant, Elizabeth Warren, Emoluments Clause, Fox News, FrackingSandy Hook, Medicare for All, Notre Dame, paris climate accords, Randall, Randy Enos, republicans, unemployement, USA Today

Blog Newsletter Syndicate

I Was The Green Canary

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date September 29, 2019

This is by my green, canary, cartoonist buddy, Randy Enos!

Email Randy Enos
Visit Randy’s archive –Daryl

I know exactly where I was standing when I heard that President Roosevelt had died. I was standing on our sun porch. I was also on that same sun porch when Babe Ruth died. When I heard that World War 2 had ended, I was just about to jump into my red cart on the top of the Campbell St. hill and take a fast ride down. People burst from the houses shouting and crying out the news! When President Kennedy was shot, I was standing next to Barney Thompson’s drawing board at The Famous Artists Schools talking to him when someone burst in to tell us the news. One of the other cartoonists said, “Good!” I was working on a Playboy illustration in my studio when I heard that Bobby Kennedy was shot. We tend to remember where we were when these important events took place.

I was sitting on the front steps of Ottello Breda’s house with 2 or 3 friends when we saw the first issue of Mad Comics in 1952. We were stunned. A comic book in black and white that made fun of EVERYTHING!

Ottello was one of my best friends and when we were younger in the primary school years, he was the only other kid I knew that was a member of Captain Midnight’s Secret Squadron and possessed a secret decoder badge (free with several labels from Ovaltine) by which one could get clues as to what was going to happen in the next day’s radio adventure of Captain Midnight who came on at 5:15. “The Shark will cause trouble for Captain Midnight!”

I had millions of comic books like every other kid and we could always be found on somebody’s front porch steps reading, trading and discussing them. My very favorites were, “Captain Marvel Jr.” (I was lucky enough in later years to work with and learn from the artist of that book, Barney (Bud) Thompson), “Little Lulu” and “Hawkman” (I thought he had the coolest costume of all the super heros). Another was “The Boy Commandos”. God, I loved the Boy Commandos. They were 4 kids from the U.S., England , France and Holland who, with the help of their leader a grownup named Captain Rip Carter, fought the Nazis. My favorite kid was the one from the U.S. named “Brooklyn”. He wore a red derby and carried a machine gun. They were all orphans and they were tough. The only thing that always bothered me about them was that the French kid, Andre, was always saying “Oy oy!” It was many years before I realized that what he was saying was the French word “Oui”.

But, of course, there were hundreds of other comics and I devoured them all despite my father’s warnings that they would rot my brain. When I went off to art school, he cleaned out my precious collection. In those days we were all under the scornful eyes of our disapproving parents but we continued on with our sinful pursuit.

One of my favorite comic book trading friends was Brian. We walked to school each morning together. All we talked about was comic books. We lived in a comic book world of our own so it wasn’t hard for me to convince Brian that The Green Canary was, indeed, a real superhero who walked among us. Over a period of time, I had created this fictional character who, I insisted, really existed in our town of New Bedford. I knew people who had seen him, I told Brian. He was skeptical, of course, so it behooved me to go further in my deception. I started to leave little notes to Brian and myself on the path we took to school. It was my habit to walk across the Common to his house in the morning and then we’d go back a block or two to the Common and walk up to our school which was at the top. I would place the notes off to the side of the path we took and then zip down to Brian’s house to pick him up. As we’d walk along, I would suddenly spy something off near a bush.

“Hey, Brian, looks like a little piece of paper over there with some writing on it!”

Young Randy in knickers.

We’d rush over and read the latest note from The Green Canary. Brian was so caught up in this fantasy world of super heros that he actually was buying my little trickery. I, of course, was starting to actually believe that I was, indeed, a super hero named The Green Canary. Why I came up with that absurd name for a champion of justice, I’ll never know. We always had canaries in the house when I was a kid so that was probably the problem right there. It reached a point that I started to create a costume for myself from handy items in my wardrobe with the help of a towel cape and other stuff.. I also had a black (or was it green?) mask (Lone Ranger style). I had boots. I fashioned some sort of hood for my head, etc.. I was dying to make an appearance to Brian to clinch the deception I had engineered, so one day, the note on the path was an invitation for us to actually SEE the Green Canary. A date was written there along with a time and a place for us to be when the hero would make his appearance. Coincidentally enough, the “viewing” was to be at the corner of Campbell St. and Smith St. where my house was. Brian and I were to be there at 2 in the afternoon and we were to look down the street one block to Pleasant St. where the Canary was to appear.

The day arrived and so did 2 o’clock which found me suitably attired in my patchwork quilt of a costume and waiting for my gullible friend. THERE HE WAS! He peered down at me in disbelief. I struck the best super hero pose I could come up with and waved my hand in a comradely gesture and then… dove off where he couldn’t see me and quickly tore off my costume and ran around a back way to the corner where Brian stood. I apologized for being late and asked if he had indeed seen the Canary. HE HAD! And I had missed the chance of a lifetime.

Well, that was long long ago. It was back when you had to wait an hour after eating a tuna fish sandwich before you could go swimming at the beach.It was a time when all else would vanish and you could get swept up and lost in the intoxicating world of flying heroes and evil, fantastic villains. Goodness and bravery always won. A time when Joe Palooka and Superman took time out of their busy schedule to do combat with Hitler himself. Where a force so evil would sometimes take the combined effort of super heros from different comic books that would come together to make this world a better place. A heady, hypnotizing world where you shut out the real world as you turned the pages of a 10 cent comic book and could just faintly… ever so faintly, hear your mom and pop shouting “You’ll rot your brain”.

SO, if, by any chance, you happen to be out there, Brian, and you just happen somehow to be reading this story, I feel… I guess that I can now finally reveal that I…was………… The Green Canary!

Read many more of Randy’s cartooning memories:

Man’s Achievements in an Ever Expanding Universe

Tags Barney (Bud) Thompson, Captain Marvel Jr., Captain Rip Carter, Hawkman, Little Lulu, Ottello Breda, Randall Enos, Randy Enos, The Boy Commandos

Blog Newsletter Syndicate

Why I Started Drawing

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date August 19, 2019

Learn why my cartoonist buddy Randy Enos started drawing!

Email Randy Enos
Visit Randy’s archive –Daryl

It all started with the son of my father’s best friend, Jose. The kid’s name was Jerry and he was about my age. I must have been 8 or 9 when Jerry seriously stole my father’s affection by being very skilled at drawing. Jerry would go to the zoo, come back home and draw all the animals from memory. My father would rave about these drawings.

As I mentioned in another story, I would read the comics every Sunday with my dad and he would pour over the details of the drawing in the strips. He didn’t know much about art but wanted to. So this kid, Jerry, was encroaching on my territory with my father. One day, my father showed me a pencil drawing of an ear of corn that Jerry had made. It was, honestly, pretty damn good, with lots of neat shading and detail. My dad said that Jerry was taking classes at The Swain School of Design, New Bedford’s only art school. He asked if maybe I’d like to take some classes there. I wanted to get some of that admiration from my dad, so I went to the Swain school one summer and it was the most boring, tedious and frustrating experience of my life. The only thing I remember about the teacher was that he had one eye that refused to look in the same direction as the other one, which was a little unnerving. I was forced to hone my pencil to a wedge shape with a sandpaper block and then to draw smooth, even, parallel strokes close together. I filled page after page of these pencil strokes only to be told that they weren’t up to par. We also made strokes that graduated from light to dark –over and over and over again. We would not be allowed to draw anything else until we mastered these exercises. I was failing miserably. I quit.

When I was about 10, I think, I was walking with a fellow classmate, Barbara Camara, down at the bottom of the street where I lived and where her father had a hardware store. All of a sudden, I saw a new little shop that hadn’t been there before. It was just a tiny place next to the hardware store. It was a store front with two windows, one on either side of the doorway. It seemed to be the studio/shop of a commercial artist. A small sign said “Art Lessons”. I went in and met the artist inside seated at a drawing board. He told me the price of lessons. It wasn’t very much. I rushed home and told my dad and he agreed to me taking some lessons there.

This was a whole other world from the Swain school. I went down to the shop once or twice a week and the guy sat me on a stool at a drawing board right next to his and encouraged me to draw anything I wanted. I wish I could remember his name but it escapes me. He gave me India ink and a brush and a pen with which to draw. I told him what interested me and he helped me in that direction. Milton Caniff was making a big impression on me at that time so our efforts were on replicating some facsimile of Caniff’s brushwork. I didn’t know cartoonists used brushes as well as pens until this fellow told me about it. He showed me how to draw half-lock folds. He showed me how to crosshatch. He inspired the hell out of me. He had a friend who often dropped by and they would include me in their “art talk”. I realized, at a certain point, that their main source of work was in drawing the corny little spots you see in the phone book. They were two very small-time commercial artists but they had big hearts and they shared my enthusiasm about drawing and comics etc.. I was finally getting excited about the world of art and illustrating and cartooning. They showed me books and discussed the leading artists of the day.

One memorable sunny day, they said that they were going out to paint watercolors in the outdoors. They asked me if I wanted to go along. Do bears do poo poo in the woods? Of course I wanted to go along and paint with two professional artists, so off we went. We arrived at a farm house. We trudged out into a field and split up, each finding something interesting to paint. So, I’m there with my little watercolor box and my brushes and I settle down to paint the barn I see before me. Halfway into my very enjoyable foray into the plein arts, I became aware of a presence off a way to my left. I turned my head to see a big cow bearing down me! I had never had a large cow bearing down on me before and didn’t quite know what to do about it. She very determinably strode directly at me and was gaining speed all the while. I leaped up and stepped away from my watercolors, brushes and watercolor pad which were on the ground. The cow didn’t seem interested in me but, rather my painting of the barn, because she didn’t come at me anymore, but strode directly at my painting and stopped. She lowered her head to my picture. Then, this giant cow tongue came out of her mouth and slurped across my freshly painted watercolor. Then, she looked at me and walked back from whence she came. My watercolor had this big “splootch” right across the barn.

Afterwards, I enjoyed showing people the watercolor that a cow helped me paint.

And, Oh … remember Jerry back up there in the beginning of this story, the kid who was a drawing genius ? He became a car mechanic and never drew any more.

Read many more of Randy’s cartooning memories:

Man’s Achievements in an Ever Expanding Universe

Tags art school, commercial art, cow, drawing, half-lock folds, Milton Caniff, New Bedford, Randall Enos, Randy Enos, Swain School of Design, watercolor

Blog Newsletter Syndicate

Take It Off … Take It ALL Off!

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date July 28, 2019

Here’s another memory from my cartoonist buddy, Randy Enos.

Email Randy Enos
Visit Randy’s archive –Daryl

In the late 60’s, most of us red blooded American men were enthralled by a beautiful Swedish girl that appeared in Noxzema medicated shaving cream commercials. As a man with a lathered face started to shave in rhythm with some “stripper” music, the girl’s face appeared in close-up on the right side of the screen. Her sultry gaze looked straight out at us as she intoned, ” Take it off, take it ALL off”.

Her name was Gunilla Knutsen. Here’s the old commercial on YouTube …

A photographer named J. Barry O’Rourke saw some psychedelic art I had done somewhere and called me up. He had a job for Look Magazine and needed my help. He was photographing Gunilla for a feature in the magazine and he needed someone to paint psychedelic designs on her face and body. I said, “Gee, sorry, I’m busy”!

NO, I did not say that. I packed up some acrylic paint and some sable brushes and off I went to his New York studio.

It certainly was the era of psychedelic art. I was doing a lot of it. The artist Peter Max was in the forefront of it all. Max was a master promoter. One day, I looked out of the window in the office of one of my art directors at NBC and gazed across 6th Avenue to see a new building going up. Max had supplied the gigantic hanging tarps that they used to shield the floors under construction. So, all the way around the building, in VERY large letters it said ” Peter Max, Peter Max, Peter Max”.

This is the picture I used to show my father when he said that I should have become an insurance man like him.

So, I arrive at O’Rourke’s studio and there is the Swedish beauty herself in a silver bikini. Barry instructed her to just lie on the floor and I was to work on her there. So, I crouched beside her, squeezed out some color on my palette and started in working around her navel. My circular design developed with curlicues and circles in many different colors. I was inventing it as I went along, I had no sketch or anything, I just let it build any way it wanted to.

Right off the bat, I noticed one thing. Gunilla had incredibly soft and ultra smooth skin. My brush just glided across my “canvas” beautifully. I have never worked on such a remarkable surface. She just lay there with her eyes shut and didn’t move a muscle. When I finished with her stomach area, I proceeded to her face. I confined my design to just the right side of her face. I used Liquitex acrylics because they were bright and colorful, dried quickly, lasted quite a long time and were easy to wash off. I had done a little face painting at that point and I had also painted my entire ’61 Volkswagon Beetle with psychedelic designs when its original bright red color had started to fade. I covered the entire car with spirals and swirls and curlicues from stem to stern. I n later years when the car started to fall apart on me, I gave it to a friend of my son, who was collecting Volkswagon parts for his friends. For years after that, I would be downtown in Westport and see things like a plain blue VW drive by with a wildly painted hood or side door. My old car lived on like that for a long time. The paint remained pretty much as bright as it was when I first painted it.

But, I digress… back to my Gunilla painting chores. After I finished painting her face, I wrapped up my gear and I told Gunilla that it should wash off easily after she finished posing for the spread. She said she’d probably wash off her stomach but she was going to leave the designs on her face because she was going to a party later that evening and she thought it would look pretty good and unusual to go with her face painted.

SO… the woman who was famous for “Take it off”, actually… left it on!

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Read many more of Randy’s cartooning memories: