Basil Wolverton was an extremely talented cartoonist, but when he looked through the artist's version of a fun house mirror, his characters became some of the most unique -- and uniquely grotesque -- in comics history. He described himself as a "Producer of Preposterous Pictures of Peculiar People who Prowl this Perplexing Planet", and THE NEW YORK TIMES went even further by calling him "the Michelangelo of MAD magazine". His "spaghetti and meatball school of design" -- coined by the editors of LIFE magazine -- has few comparisons, and along with EC Comics and early animated cartoons, his work was the inspiration for many underground cartoonists, including one of the greatest, Robert Crumb. SoCal car customizer and cult cartoonist phenom Ed "Big" Daddy Roth also named him as an influence. Wolverton gained national fame when his "Lena the Hyena" interpretation won a contest and ended up on a MAD magazine cover parody of LIFE (#11, May 1954), as well as several appearances in DC's humor comic, PLOP.
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| A young Basil Wolverton hamming it up in a photo booth. |
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| An early Wolverton cartoon. |
Lena the Hyena of Lower Slobbovia was originally an idea by Al Capp dreamed up in 1946 for his newspaper strip LI'L ABNER. Instead of revealing her face (which would supposedly drive people insane), he asked fans of the strip to send in their ideas as a contest, the winner who would receive the princely sum of $525. The judges were Salvador Dali, Frank Sinatra and Boris Karloff (!). The response from readers was overwhelming and it has been said that there were over 500,000 entries, Wolverton accounting for seven of them. Other contestants were Carl "Uncle Scrooge" Barks and Jack "Plastic Man" Cole.
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| MAD magazine #11 (May 1954). |
On 21 October 1946 the winner was announced and Wolverton's hideous visage was printed in LIFE and newspapers across the country, insuring his celebrity status -- at least for a short time -- as well as a place in popular culture.
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| PLOP #1 (October 1973). |
What? Don't worry -- Spacehawk, Powerhouse Pepper and more Wolverton to come!
See more Wolverton posts HERE.
The "Lena the Hyena" segment of Al Capp's LI'L ABNER:
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Basil Wolverton's interior work MAD #11:
Basil Wolverton was *amazing*-- the way all those meticulous small pen marks combined to create that "spaghetti and meatball" texture, all of it in service to his unforgettable distortions of the human form and reality in general. It's one of the most distinctive art styles ever, and while it's inspired a lot of followers, none really match him.
ReplyDeleteEven his most sedate work still has that unique edge-- I'm thinking of a series of Hollywood caricatures of stars like Joan Crawford, Bing Crosby & Bob Hope, and Boris Karloff that seem to have been done in the late 40s. The facial distortions here are about typical, but the texture of the inking is what makes it stand out, in addition to that way of enhancing structures of things like ear whorls so they come out like pasta shapes.
I always love seeing his work, and I'm looking forward to part 2! Thanks again, John!
-- hsc
There's only a short list of comic artists who can be truly called originals -- Wolverton is one of them. Milton Caniff, Alex Raymond, Hal Foster and later, Graham Ingels come to mind as artists that inspired many other artists. By and large, Crumb got his big-footed, goofy characters from early animated cartoons, in particular the Max Fleischer characters, but his meticulous lines are a tip of the hat to Wolverton I think.
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