An Early Influence
The arrival here of a handsome collection from Fantagraphics, Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant Vol II: 1957–1958 has caused me to think about early influences. Over the years I’ve made much of how important James Thurber’s work has been to me, beginning in the half-dozen years leading up to my getting into The New Yorker. But of course there were a number of other influences pre-Thurber. Heck, just about everything I saw or did or read could be tossed into that category. I believe that cartoonists knowingly and unknowingly catalog everything they experience for future use. But sticking, for now, with just cartoons, or comics or comic books, the education and inspiration came from five sources: the color Sunday comics section, the black and white daily comics, comic books, MAD Magazine, and televised cartoons.
“Prince Valiant” falls into the color Sunday comics column. I never read it, I just looked at the drawings. As a kid (and even now) for whatever reason, I didn’t have patience for a lot of words accompanying comics. I’ve no idea what the “Prince Valiant” story line was (and still don’t). My interest was strictly in the visuals. My memory is that another big influence, “Blondie” was at the top of the fold every Sunday, with “Prince Valiant” just below it. The contrast in styles was a real see-saw for the eyes. Each “Prince Valiant” panel was realistically drawn, graphically complex. The material itself (knights, castles, etc.) was the real draw (so to speak), but the way the strip was executed was what captured my attention. To this day, the “Blondie”/”Prince Valiant” graphic tug of war exists on the page as I draw, but the “Blondie” school always wins. Discovering Thurber’s work inspired me to forget about trying to draw realistically. To paraphrase a bit of dialogue E.B. White had with Thurber when White saw Thurber doing some cross-hatching on a drawing:
“Don’t do that. If you ever got good at it you’d be mediocre.”