Speaker 1: Also media, Ah, what's raising my children? If you're the
Speaker 1: subject of today's episode, the answer is no one really.
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast
Speaker 1: about terrible parents. We've just finished our Steve Jobs episodes
Speaker 1: who was a Shitty parent for the history books, And today, folks,
Speaker 1: we have a horrible, horrible man who was also a
Speaker 1: horrible horrible parent for you. That is boy howdy, this
Speaker 1: guy much worse than your guessing he's going to be.
Speaker 1: And before I introduce our subject for this week, this
Speaker 1: is a cartoonist who we're going to be talking about.
Speaker 1: And whenever I bring on a cartoonist, bastard and there
Speaker 1: are many, we have our resident official Behind the Bastards
Speaker 1: podcast cartoonist Randy Millholland Grance.
Speaker 2: Thank you so kindly. That was a lovely intro. I
Speaker 2: really can't wait for this best because you're talking about
Speaker 2: his property is done by the same syndic that I
Speaker 2: work for.
Speaker 1: Good Well, speaking of that, you are the creator of
Speaker 1: the webcomics Something Positive and you are currently pop by
Speaker 1: the sailor Man's uncle. I think is I think so?
Speaker 2: I think I'm his adoptive father.
Speaker 1: Now this pot Yeah, yeah, his adoptive father. You draw
Speaker 1: him to this day, and actually we'll be talking a
Speaker 1: little bit about that, about how comics go on when
Speaker 1: they're original artist no longer one's tour is able to
Speaker 1: draw them and stuff. That's part of the story here.
Speaker 1: But our bastard for this episode is the Dennis the
Speaker 1: Menace guy. And I know what you're saying. People, The
Speaker 1: term history's greatest monster gets thrown around a lot, especially
Speaker 1: mostly by me. Yeah, mostly by me, But obviously, who
Speaker 1: could be a better pick for the worst human being
Speaker 1: in history than the guy who draws Dennis the Menace?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm actually surprised you didn't try to do the Hitler
Speaker 3: of comics because you also throw that alout on.
Speaker 1: I've done a lot of the Hitler of X titles
Speaker 1: over the last couple of year, Sophie. I'm not a
Speaker 1: very creative man. I know, Randy, What can you tell
Speaker 1: me about the Dennis the Menace creator, Hank Ketch him
Speaker 1: not spelled like the guy from Pokemon.
Speaker 2: Well, I know that he served in the Navy during
Speaker 2: World War Two. I know the names of a few
Speaker 2: his ghost artists who worked on the comic and the
Speaker 2: comic book. I also know that around the time Dennis
Speaker 2: the Minists launched in America and Britain, a comic also
Speaker 2: named Dennish the Menace, Completely Unrated launched. I know he
Speaker 2: was not rumored to be the nicest dad.
Speaker 1: Not that we'll be talking a lot about him as.
Speaker 2: A dad, not to his first son anyway, not to
Speaker 2: his first kid. Yeah, ef fact, I would say that
Speaker 2: there's definitely a lot of like sadness involved with children,
Speaker 2: because like the TV show, I know there were some
Speaker 2: sad things happening to Jane Orth as well.
Speaker 1: I'm nervous.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 1: This is an interesting story obviously, like we're talking about
Speaker 1: a lower stakes bastard than a lot of our war
Speaker 1: criminals and genocide airs here. But I think it's interesting
Speaker 1: both because Hank's career kind of straddles the birth of
Speaker 1: animation as a field, and he has involved in some
Speaker 1: of like the early acts of bastardry within animation as
Speaker 1: it relates to like Disney and labor issues. And he's
Speaker 1: also just a fascinating case study of like where's the
Speaker 1: ethical line about creating art that's inspired by your life? Right?
Speaker 1: Because most people who do some sort of fictional art,
Speaker 1: especially for like an audience and an ongoing basis. Their
Speaker 1: real life experiences play into that somehow. It's like a
Speaker 1: common joke that like writers and whatnot, you know, takes
Speaker 1: stuff from their lives and put it into their stories.
Speaker 1: And is there actually a moral line? There is there
Speaker 1: a degree to which that's like wrong? Like what is
Speaker 1: the extent to which you should do that when it
Speaker 1: starts to have an effect on the real people that
Speaker 1: you're inspired by. These are actually some kind of tough
Speaker 1: questions that I think will be rolling over a little bit.
Speaker 1: But I will tell you Hank does the wrong thing
Speaker 1: in every possible instance. So oh no, yeah, oh god, Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Hank King Ketcham was born on March Fourteen's you
Speaker 1: say king King is his middle name? Yeah, is a
Speaker 1: king of God. And again not like ash Ketchum of
Speaker 1: the Pokemons, that's k e tchu Wim. Hank is k
Speaker 1: E tch a m And he was born on March fourteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty, in the flooded hellscape of Seattle, Washington. His
Speaker 1: father's first name was Weaver, which I don't like. I
Speaker 1: don't think that's a very good name.
Speaker 2: It's a weird one.
Speaker 1: It's a fine last name if you want to get
Speaker 1: shot by the FBI, or at least have several members
Speaker 1: of your family shot by the FBI, but a bad
Speaker 1: first name. And his mother's first name was Virginia, which
Speaker 1: I'm neutral on. When he was six years old, he
Speaker 1: met an illustrator who was a friend of the family.
Speaker 1: And this is like his inciting incident as a kid
Speaker 1: who wants to become a cartoonist. And here's how Hank
Speaker 1: describes that moment. A lot of artists I and I
Speaker 1: guess basically everyone who becomes an artist has a moment
Speaker 1: like this. Hank describes his in his autobiography, which has
Speaker 1: the most insufferable title of a famous cartoonist attabious, imaginable.
Speaker 1: Do you know what this autobiography is named? I am
Speaker 1: dreading this so you know he's the guy who created
Speaker 1: Dennis the Menace, right, not weird that people might want
Speaker 1: an autobiography for that. What do you call that? I'm
Speaker 1: the Dennis the Menace guy, you know, Hank Ketchum a
Speaker 1: life in cartoons now.
Speaker 2: Drawing trouble. That that's why I go drawing trouble.
Speaker 1: Sure, all of these are fine titles. He calls it
Speaker 1: the Merchant of Dennis the Menace, Oh, like the Merchant
Speaker 1: of Venice for no reason, because there's no similarity, like
Speaker 1: other than the fact that there's an iss in both that, like,
Speaker 1: there's no through line between the Merchant and Venice and
Speaker 1: drawing Dennis the Menace. I'm so angry about this, and
Speaker 1: I shouldn't be, And like, I don't normally say this,
Speaker 1: but Hank Ketchum should have been murdered by the government.
Speaker 1: What else can you say about that? I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: The next National Cartoon Society meeting after this podcast, my
Speaker 2: next editors meeting, where they're like, hey, heard you were
Speaker 2: on a podcast about talking about property distribute, But.
Speaker 1: Seriously, why would you call it the Merchant of Dennis
Speaker 1: the Menace.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you thought it, and I'm sure he had
Speaker 2: no one who was willing to say no.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it is a little telling because past a
Speaker 1: certain point in his career, this is just a property
Speaker 1: he's marketing, rather than which I mean, I don't actually
Speaker 1: hold that against him, right, Like, if you draw a
Speaker 1: doodle of a misbehaving little kid and it makes you
Speaker 1: a very wealthy man, you kind of ride that ship
Speaker 1: as long as you can, right, Who wouldn't you know?
Speaker 2: It's also really common in comics that a lot of
Speaker 2: times you'll have cartoonists who will get ghost artists and
Speaker 2: ghost writers, and you know, once you get big enough,
Speaker 2: you can like Jim Davis hasn't drawn Carfield probably decades.
Speaker 1: God has been, of course not. And we're well on
Speaker 1: the record of saying there's nothing wrong with Jim Davis.
Speaker 2: Really not a lot of my friends. In fact, a
Speaker 2: lot of cartoonists like Jim Davis Scott their start in
Speaker 2: this field. Yeah, being ghost artists, it's a very common.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And of all the ways to get that
Speaker 1: kind of money, drawing a little a weird little guy
Speaker 1: is like one of the least problematic ways, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's not as much exploitation normally with Hank there kind
Speaker 1: of is because his child is like the sacrifice he
Speaker 1: makes for his comic to work. But I've gotten ahead
Speaker 1: of myself.
Speaker 2: Oh God.
Speaker 1: Anyway, here's how he describes first getting pilled on the
Speaker 1: wonders of working as a cartoonist. As I watched him
Speaker 1: scribble some quick sketches of Barney Google, Moon Mulleins and
Speaker 1: Andy Gump. I couldn't wait to borrow his magic pencil
Speaker 1: and try my own hand at drawing these comic strip characters.
Speaker 1: It looks so easy and such a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: I couldn't have been more than six years old at
Speaker 1: the time. Well, the two men sure came up with
Speaker 1: a good way to get rid of me. In a hurry,
Speaker 1: I moved over to the creaky roll top desk, found
Speaker 1: some thin sheets of paper, and remained there until dinner,
Speaker 1: slavishly tracing the visitor's sketches. Quite sure the pencil was magic.
Speaker 1: And uh, yeah, I think that that's not an uncommon
Speaker 1: kind of story, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think it's how a lot of us start off.
Speaker 2: Either we see it or we just are lucky enough
Speaker 2: to start doodling one day you just can't stop.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And that's what happens with Hank. He starts doodling.
Speaker 1: When this guy comes over, he sketches his drawings. He
Speaker 1: actually has the opposite experience I had his little kid
Speaker 1: where his teacher finds his cartoons and takes them on
Speaker 1: in front of the class to be like, look at
Speaker 1: how good Hank is it drawing, And she has him
Speaker 1: like draw for the class to like praise him, not
Speaker 1: as like a to punish him or whatever in.
Speaker 2: This garbage you were doing, piece of shit. I had
Speaker 2: those teachers. I had a lot of those teachers.
Speaker 1: Yeah I got. I got in trouble because my cartoons
Speaker 1: were way too violent and in a post column by
Speaker 1: in America, you didn't want to your teacher to find
Speaker 1: your notebook with those drawings.
Speaker 2: Oh shit. I didn't realize how lucky I was to
Speaker 2: graduate in nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I would have been in so much trouble for
Speaker 1: so many things. Yeah. I mean it's only gotten worse since,
Speaker 1: like I was not there and nearly as bad as
Speaker 1: it would become. But like I did have, I did
Speaker 1: catch some flak for some of my cartoons. So in
Speaker 1: his autobiography, Hank describes himself as lucky. And I find
Speaker 1: this interesting because he's aware that, like other kids spend
Speaker 1: years trying to figure out what they're going to be,
Speaker 1: and like often never really do And he knew from
Speaker 1: like is, basically as long as he could remember, he
Speaker 1: knew the only thing I want to be is a cartoonist.
Speaker 1: It is interesting he's got that kind of self awareness
Speaker 1: that is a blessing, right knowing that you have this
Speaker 1: one very specific thing, and it's the only thing you'll
Speaker 1: ever want to do.
Speaker 2: I can relate. Actually, that's something my earliest memory was bluring.
Speaker 2: People can draw for a living, and that's why I
Speaker 2: wanted to do. I God, I hope that is the
Speaker 2: only similarity between us.
Speaker 1: I'm I also hope that's the only similarity between you.
Speaker 1: In his autobiography, he describes himself as like becoming increasingly
Speaker 1: obsessed with cartoons as a child. The Wondrous World is
Speaker 1: inhabited by Barney Google, Harold Teene, Mutt and Jeff, the
Speaker 1: Tuonerville Folks, and the Gumps, and like I went through
Speaker 1: those and I was like, I have not heard of
Speaker 1: any of these fucking people. M Jeff A little bit,
Speaker 1: A little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Andy. The Gumps was actually one of the first
Speaker 2: comics to have continuity. It started just before Simple Theater did.
Speaker 2: It was also had like one of the first storylines
Speaker 2: where a character died. It was a national event.
Speaker 1: People freaking wow. Yeah, like America for a while. Oh
Speaker 1: like wow, that dates it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like it was like I think it was Spanish
Speaker 2: flu or some It was something that a woman got sick,
Speaker 2: and it was a very big deal.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: Granted today I would probably get fireball and for doing
Speaker 2: the same thing. But at the same time.
Speaker 1: That is I don't know. I don't know if kids
Speaker 1: today are having these experience, but I like one of
Speaker 1: the first things I remember learning about death was from
Speaker 1: a Calvin and Hobbes cartoons.
Speaker 2: So oh the bird or the phone?
Speaker 1: No it was it was the raccoon, I think. Sah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it really was. And one one of the fun things
Speaker 1: about cartoons is that they never die, at least if
Speaker 1: they're successful enough, they never die.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: The reason I bring that up is because some of
Speaker 1: these comics I hadn't heard of. I looked up and
Speaker 1: in the case of Bunkie and Barney Google and Snuffy Smith,
Speaker 1: which is a cartoon I was not aware of, it
Speaker 1: was created the year before Hank was born, and it
Speaker 1: is still in print today under a new cartoonist. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh cool.
Speaker 2: Oh, Rose is a sweetheart. He's a wonderful man. Again.
Speaker 2: It's the King Features And like Bimble Theater, it's a
Speaker 2: comic that started off about one character, Barney Google. Yeah,
Speaker 2: eventually they're brought in Snuffy Smith, and Snuffy kind of
Speaker 2: outshine Barney and he just kind of vanished from the comic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they like killed him or took him away for
Speaker 1: a while, and he came back back.
Speaker 2: Every once in a while the current artist does his
Speaker 2: best to bring him back and actually bring back a
Speaker 2: lot of old characters from the old days.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I had not heard of this comic at all,
Speaker 1: but I you know, when I came upon the name,
Speaker 1: I was immediately like, I wonder if this has anything
Speaker 1: to do about like Google, the search engine, and you know,
Speaker 1: the Barney Google comic, I think obviously exists before the
Speaker 1: concept of computers in most people's mind. But the answer
Speaker 1: is probably. As a matter of fact. In the book
Speaker 1: That Hidden History of Coined Words, published by Oxford University Press,
Speaker 1: author Ralph Keyes argues that Barney Google was probably the
Speaker 1: inspiration for the term goggle, which is the term for
Speaker 1: a very large number, which is what inspired the name
Speaker 1: for Google. So you know, what does all this mean?
Speaker 1: Should you burn down Google headquarters and draw and quarter
Speaker 1: there's c suite in public as vengeance for Barney Google suffering.
Speaker 1: Maybe I haven't read the comic. I don't know. Pop
Speaker 1: Probably I feel like I.
Speaker 2: Should say at this point no opinion here expressed as
Speaker 2: an opinion of King Features Syndicate or their parent company
Speaker 2: hurst uh want to get fired?
Speaker 1: Yeah, none of these are even my opinions usually. So
Speaker 1: the first animated movie that's going to come out that
Speaker 1: that Hank is going to be aware of as a
Speaker 1: kid is the French film Phantasma Gory.
Speaker 2: Oh probably, Yeah, I've heard of that. I haven't seen it.
Speaker 1: Seen some ancient stuff, and like we're saying probably because
Speaker 1: like a lot of media from them was lost, so
Speaker 1: you can't ever say, like for certain nobody tried it before.
Speaker 1: But if you look at least from the clips I've
Speaker 1: seen and stuff, it actually kind of reminds me a
Speaker 1: little bit of Don Hertzfeldt's work, Like a lot of
Speaker 1: it's like stick figure style animated art. There were also
Speaker 1: some pseudo animated movies that kind of predated Phantasmagori, but
Speaker 1: they were all animated by like putting images on a
Speaker 1: wheel and projecting light through it and like moving the
Speaker 1: wheel around to make the images move or some shit,
Speaker 1: which is like it's not considered like it's not animation
Speaker 1: in the same way that like traditional animation is done
Speaker 1: right now, cartoons grew up fast from this point in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty eight, we get Steamboat Willie, a short film
Speaker 1: by Walt Disney and UBI Works that is generally considered
Speaker 1: the first Mickey Mouse cartoon recently enter the public domain.
Speaker 1: As I think we're all aware.
Speaker 2: I'm doing a comic based off of it right now too. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I want to see if I get sued.
Speaker 1: Where is that line You're allowed to call him Mickey?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm also a Mickey. He's not allowed to have
Speaker 2: read shorts. He's not allted have gloves.
Speaker 1: I love copyright law.
Speaker 2: It's a little dance we do. And I know there's
Speaker 2: there's some poor lawyer in the basement of Disney whose
Speaker 2: job is every day like as he fucked up.
Speaker 1: It is fucked up. It is wild, like is like
Speaker 1: a seven or eight year old Hank's watching Steamboat Willie
Speaker 1: with no idea that like, in the not too distant future,
Speaker 1: this mouse will be worth more than most of the
Speaker 1: nations on Earth, Like he will absolutely change large aspects
Speaker 1: of how life is lived and creativity functions for a
Speaker 1: huge percentage of the human population. Yep, it's so fucking
Speaker 1: crazy where that all goes. But yeah, so he loves
Speaker 1: this as a little kid. He's enthralled by all animation.
Speaker 1: You have to think about animation in the period where
Speaker 1: Hank is a kid. It's not like we animation today
Speaker 1: is like, yeah, kids like animated movies, right, and so
Speaker 1: do adults. Animated movies are a big deal. Animation is
Speaker 1: kind of like it's close to the Internet than it
Speaker 1: is to like a type of entertainment. Yeah, because the
Speaker 1: idea that you could just like draw pictures and have
Speaker 1: them move and have that on a screen is like
Speaker 1: such a wild like it really has this almost hallucinogenic
Speaker 1: effect on people in the day because it's such a
Speaker 1: new concept. Like you have to imagine going from like
Speaker 1: dying of the Spanish flu to seeing Fantasia is quite
Speaker 1: an experience, you know, Oh my.
Speaker 2: God, or seeing the goddamn donkey transformation in Pinocchio.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that shit's intense, you know. And I do think
Speaker 1: that like really or you know, it might be better
Speaker 1: than compared to the Internet, compared to like how YouTube
Speaker 1: videos impacted the development of kids who were born like
Speaker 1: after the two thousands. Right, It's both in some good
Speaker 1: ways and some bad ways. It's this thing that just
Speaker 1: like utterly captures a generation. And Hank is right in
Speaker 1: the center of the blast radius. Hank saw cartoons from
Speaker 1: a very early age, not just as a method of
Speaker 1: self expression, but as a path to money. His first
Speaker 1: job was when he was ten years old. A classmate
Speaker 1: with a rich dad offered to pay him twenty five
Speaker 1: cents cash. He writes it in his book if he
Speaker 1: drew one hundred cartoon heads, and he describes this as
Speaker 1: like a nightmare job. It was like the first time
Speaker 1: he took a horrible gigwork animating piece and was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: this sucks. Why would anyone do this?
Speaker 2: Every cartoonist has that job in their history. I'm glad
Speaker 2: he got out of the system.
Speaker 1: Really back in his day, like that was the equivalent
Speaker 1: of mid journey is find a kid who's good at
Speaker 1: sketching and give him a quarter. His childhood was not
Speaker 1: all cartoons, of course, and they seem to have served
Speaker 1: as at least a partial escape from his world, you know,
Speaker 1: And he grows up in a world you might want
Speaker 1: to escape. He's kind of comes into being right after
Speaker 1: the Spanish Flu and shit calms down, and he grows
Speaker 1: up right in the teeth of the Great Depression, and
Speaker 1: his own description of his father's discipline style sounds unpleasant
Speaker 1: to say the least. Quote. My sister Joan is two
Speaker 1: years younger than I, and we grew up as too normal,
Speaker 1: well behaved, insecure, terrified kids. Dad served in the Navy
Speaker 1: during the First World War and was by nature a
Speaker 1: stern disciplinarian. I don't know what prompted it, but one
Speaker 1: evening he brought home a horsewhip, a stiff, tapered thing
Speaker 1: about three feet long that he solemnly placed in the
Speaker 1: corner near the front door. My first thought was, oh boy,
Speaker 1: when is he goin to bring the horse? The rules
Speaker 1: were quite simple, no whipping above the knees. Now, maybe
Speaker 1: this is as it should be on horses, but on skinny,
Speaker 1: little underfed kids, it's murder. However, it did stimulate the
Speaker 1: circulation on cold afternoons, and I developed various techniques of
Speaker 1: fancy footwork that to this day have given me the
Speaker 1: reputation of being an agile dancer, which is like a
Speaker 1: very funny and lighthearted way of saying, yeah, like, my
Speaker 1: dad beat the hell out of us when we were
Speaker 1: bat Oh my god, love the old times.
Speaker 2: I'm sure that's not gonna come back later in any way,
Speaker 2: that's not the effect anything in the future, is it.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, his kid might have done better
Speaker 1: if he'd been like there and just smacking him sometimes
Speaker 1: as opposed to like this is a weird case of
Speaker 1: like honestly, if he'd just been there at all, it
Speaker 1: might have been better. Fuck, I don't know. I can't
Speaker 1: make a conclusive stance.
Speaker 2: There still like what a what a fuck of a thing? Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we grew up as normal terrified children. That's not fucking normal.
Speaker 1: Dad brought a whip and just laid it in the room,
Speaker 1: so we had to think about it for a while.
Speaker 2: Oh my Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: I mean I had I had the healthy version of
Speaker 1: that as a kid, which was my dungeon Master bought
Speaker 1: a copy of The Book of Vile Darkness and just
Speaker 1: like set it out on the table for like five
Speaker 1: sessions before he ever used anything from it. And the
Speaker 1: instant we're in a fight and he like grabs it
Speaker 1: from the middle of the table and opens it up.
Speaker 1: We're all like, oh fuck, that was my having a switch.
Speaker 2: That book, wasn't it.
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I had a book that was awful, great,
Speaker 2: great source book. I never used him a player once,
Speaker 2: couldn't so.
Speaker 1: Hank doesn't claim to we have had a bad relationship
Speaker 1: with his father, who actually supported his ambitions to be
Speaker 1: an animator. I do think that description of himself as
Speaker 1: his and his sister as insecure and terrified shouldn't just
Speaker 1: be read as a joke. We should maybe use that
Speaker 1: as a little bit of like a oh, yeah, the
Speaker 1: boomers make a lot of sense, or in their predecessors, like,
Speaker 1: I'm not surprised they've done some of the things they've
Speaker 1: done as a generation.
Speaker 2: Nope, not remotely.
Speaker 1: Hank would later claim that the first animated thing that
Speaker 1: really had a huge impact on him was The Three
Speaker 1: Little Pigs. This is a Disney short film that's released
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty three, and this is what makes him
Speaker 1: want to be an animator specifically. He always wants to draw.
Speaker 1: He's like, because you know, there's a bunch of different
Speaker 1: jobs for animations. You could do advertisements, you could do cartoons,
Speaker 1: Film animation is new, and it's Three Little Pigs that
Speaker 1: makes him want to become specifically a Walt Disney animator.
Speaker 2: Also of the early color ones as well.
Speaker 1: Wasn't that Yes, yes it is. It comes out in
Speaker 1: thirty three, and then four years later is the very
Speaker 1: first animated film of all time, Snow White and Some
Speaker 1: Dudes Yes right, which still actually looks great, you know
Speaker 1: it does.
Speaker 2: It has never like they really worked hard, like the
Speaker 2: work that is core. It was groundbreaking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's such a cool thing about animation is that
Speaker 1: like it ages, but not in a way where it
Speaker 1: like it doesn't look worse with age. Good drawings are
Speaker 1: always good drawing. You can date them because like, people
Speaker 1: don't draw the way they did for Snow White anymore,
Speaker 1: but they don't look bad.
Speaker 2: Well. Across town, the Fleischer Studio did their Goalvers Travels movie,
Speaker 2: which you know, hell lot of rotoscope and actually even
Speaker 2: the Popeye meets Sindbad thirty minutes short they did it
Speaker 2: is still one of the most stunning things I've ever seen,
Speaker 2: as the actual real background that they rotated and it
Speaker 2: sells over.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love when they I mean, I grew up
Speaker 1: on a lot of rotoscope stuff, like I'm a big
Speaker 1: I'm a big like Fritz the Cat Boxhi fan, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Bakshi y rotoscope Oh yeah yeah. He couldn't get enough
Speaker 1: of it. And that was when you're nineteen years old
Speaker 1: and hallucinating every weekend recreationally like rotoscoped movies hit different.
Speaker 1: He didn't have hallucinogens, probably, but he did have cartoons.
Speaker 1: And as he kind of grows into an adolescent, he
Speaker 1: continues to like love drawing, and he gets what's weird
Speaker 1: is he describes it as like this is what makes
Speaker 1: him a cool kid, Like I've never actually I've read
Speaker 1: a lot of car because I like cartoons. I've heard
Speaker 1: a lot of cartoonists autobiographies and memoirs. I have never
Speaker 1: heard of cartoonists say that it got them late, not once.
Speaker 1: But Hank Ketcham makes that claim. And here's what he says.
Speaker 1: I accepted most any request for a funny drawing. It
Speaker 1: was a splendid ego massage. I received as much attention
Speaker 1: from the girls as the muscular athletes and was never
Speaker 1: out of breath.
Speaker 2: That sounds like he was getting dates from both, which
Speaker 2: is the headcanon I want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if I really believe that, Hank,
Speaker 1: just because I've never heard of it of a guy
Speaker 1: drawing cartoons getting that kind of attention from it. But
Speaker 1: perhaps that happened.
Speaker 2: I mean, I did meet my spouse because of my comic,
Speaker 2: But I.
Speaker 1: Still like in high school it was like in high school.
Speaker 2: Oh god no, I was like, oh, could you draw
Speaker 2: this horse? I'm gonna give it to my boyfriend? Okay,
Speaker 2: here you go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely not. But I don't know, maybe it was
Speaker 1: a different era. Disney animators were the U. I don't
Speaker 1: know what's a sexy job? Is any think sexy anymore?
Speaker 2: Took your bills?
Speaker 1: Yeah, having more money than rent costs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty hot.
Speaker 1: So after he graduates from high school, Hank hitchhike to
Speaker 1: Hollywood and talked his way into a job at an
Speaker 1: ad agency. He hitchhiked, Yeah, he hitch set Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: down to It's not that you're not like, no car's
Speaker 1: gonna go particularly fast and begin with but damn. And
Speaker 1: he makes the claim that, like, you could never do
Speaker 1: this today. Everything's too dangerous today. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: I have I have friends who hitchhike. Now, it's not
Speaker 1: that much worse. You may just be more scared of
Speaker 1: the way would argue dangerous back then got murdered. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was nobody to check.
Speaker 2: Sometime from Texas that's the same time period. In a hotel,
Speaker 2: he just threw people to alligators. I mean, it's just
Speaker 2: he's not lucky.
Speaker 1: This is why I keep trying to start an alligator
Speaker 1: farm in my backyard, and my neighbors on the property
Speaker 1: keep saying, Robert, you can't just buy. You can't keep
Speaker 1: alligators alive in the Pacific Northwest by just buying hundreds
Speaker 1: of them and the body heat works out. That's not
Speaker 1: the way alligators are. If they love each other, they'll
Speaker 1: find a way, That's what I say. And that's kind
Speaker 1: of how Hank feels, because he loves Walt Disney. And
Speaker 1: he says that as he's hitchhiking down to Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: the only thing on his mind is Walt Disney. He
Speaker 1: gets a job doing like some kind of like you know,
Speaker 1: scrub work here and there, and this is this shows
Speaker 1: how easy it is to like break into Hollywood. He
Speaker 1: like moves to Hollywood with nothing. He gets like a
Speaker 1: gig doing like a little bit of work for a studio,
Speaker 1: making twelve dollars a week, and his bedroom, which comes
Speaker 1: with three cooked meals a day a cost six dollars
Speaker 1: a week, Like without food, you're lucky if you're doing
Speaker 1: that well. Income as a percentage of rent in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles these days, it is such a different fucking world.
Speaker 1: It's so different, Oh my god. And it's different also
Speaker 1: in that like there's just it's opportunity is easier to
Speaker 1: find because like he has this first job and then
Speaker 1: that leads him to get a gig at Universal that
Speaker 1: pays a little bit more as an animator's assists. Because
Speaker 1: he's working as an animator's assistant based on the strength
Speaker 1: of showing up and shaking some guy's hand. He's in
Speaker 1: the right place at the right time when Disney is like, shit,
Speaker 1: we've got this movie Pinocchio, and we're trying to finish
Speaker 1: The Son of a Bitch, and we did not realize
Speaker 1: Pinocchio was going to be such a complicated endeavor. So
Speaker 1: we need a fuckload of people really fast, and we'll
Speaker 1: pay them twenty five bucks a week, which is a
Speaker 1: lot of money back then. And so that's how he
Speaker 1: gets his first job with Disney.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, like Disney paid better than whe else,
Speaker 2: but you also worked way more hours than were yes too, sorry.
Speaker 1: Call yeah, yeah, and this is I mean, this is
Speaker 1: going to be a lot of work, but it is
Speaker 1: like because the industry is so this is a little
Speaker 1: tip for all you kids out here. Find a thing
Speaker 1: that people have just started figuring out how to make
Speaker 1: money on and then walk into the room and say, hey,
Speaker 1: do you have anything for me to do? That's that's
Speaker 1: how to get yourself a job. And was Pinocchio before
Speaker 1: the Big Strike. Yes, we're coming to the Big strike.
Speaker 1: But first, you know who never strikes.
Speaker 2: Would be these fine ads and.
Speaker 1: That's right, they have no need to strike because we
Speaker 1: love them too much. And they shoot strikers, don't they? Well, yes,
Speaker 1: occasionally allegedly, probably not now with live ammunition.
Speaker 2: The Goal people absolutely do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the Reagan Coin people and look to be
Speaker 1: entirely honest. We've had the Washington State Highway Patrol on
Speaker 1: our show and they have definitely shot some strikers in
Speaker 1: their day. You know, we're not gonna say nobody shoots
Speaker 1: strikers who advertises on this podcast, but probably not. Sorry, Sophie,
Speaker 1: we're back and speaking of shooting strikers. A guy who
Speaker 1: didn't shoot strikers but probably made emotional peace with shooting
Speaker 1: strikers if he had to, was Hank Ketchum's boss at Disney.
Speaker 1: The most legendary animators in all of animation history, Ward Kimball.
Speaker 2: Wait, we're kimble' that's your sweet guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he was we'll talk. He's not the worst
Speaker 1: guy in the story, but we're building to that. I
Speaker 1: was like, oh no, there's some shade on the fella.
Speaker 1: So Kimball is one of the first professional animators period, Right,
Speaker 1: he's of the first generation of people who do this ever. Right.
Speaker 1: The old Men, Yes, yes, there's a there's a termu'l
Speaker 1: here when you people talk about Disney this period, Disney's
Speaker 1: nine Old Men, which is the core animation team that
Speaker 1: ran the studios projects from the start in the twenties
Speaker 1: to the really to the beginning of like the Reagan years.
Speaker 1: A lot of these guys are still in there. And again,
Speaker 1: when you think about Disney at the start, we're actually
Speaker 1: talking about the period where Disney changes into the company
Speaker 1: that it's going to become. At the in the early
Speaker 1: days in the twenties, when like Hank is in love
Speaker 1: with what these guys are making, Disney is kind of
Speaker 1: closer to like a tech startup than anything. No one's
Speaker 1: ever done this before. It's hugely profitable, it's really sexy.
Speaker 1: It's like this thing that people are fascinated by, and
Speaker 1: it's this like team of self taught weirdos who all
Speaker 1: come together. There's not really much of a hierarchy for
Speaker 1: a long time. It's very much not a traditional workplace,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, yeah, everyone's figuring everything out as they're
Speaker 1: doing it. How could you have a traditional business structure right,
Speaker 1: like where you've got like bosses telling.
Speaker 2: People being as you go along.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Ward is again like undoubtedly one thing no
Speaker 1: one can argue. One of the greatest animators who's ever lived. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: he was also a strike breaker during the Disney animation
Speaker 1: revolt of My Team. Dude. Yeah yeah, andre Ward will
Speaker 1: talk about being sad about this. I don't know how
Speaker 1: much that should get you. I'm not I'm not here
Speaker 1: to absolve anyone's soul, but I am going to try
Speaker 1: to tell the story.
Speaker 2: Ass as I guess. I'm a Union kid, so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. So one of the great animators that was
Speaker 1: central in Disney's early success and in the work that
Speaker 1: had so inspired Hank was a guy named Art Babbitt.
Speaker 1: Art worked at Disney through the thirties on productions like
Speaker 1: Snow White and Fantasia, and Hank Ketchum also worked on
Speaker 1: some of those. When he's like new to Disney. But
Speaker 1: as the Great Depression is kind of going on, as
Speaker 1: it's like hitting its peak and whatnot, workers are unionizing
Speaker 1: in the US at a pretty unprecedented rate. And Babbitt
Speaker 1: is looking around at Disney, which is turning from this
Speaker 1: kind of small shop where a bunch of weirdo geniuses
Speaker 1: are making great stuff together into like a real sizable business,
Speaker 1: and he's like, we should probably have a union, you know,
Speaker 1: we should probably get this locked down before this place
Speaker 1: gets much bigger. Right, Yeah, Walt Disney is not gonna
Speaker 1: like this, right, No, I'm not a union man. You know.
Speaker 2: He did a cartoon on his Alice Comedies that literally
Speaker 2: was making fun of the idea of unions, and the
Speaker 2: heroes literally start harassing all these chickens are trying to unionize.
Speaker 1: Hear that that's such a Walt Disney thing.
Speaker 2: This really fucking is. The villain of the cartoon is
Speaker 2: a communist rooster named little Red hens Key.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, oh beautiful, that is actually the story.
Speaker 1: You have just summarized the story of the Great Disney Revolts,
Speaker 1: the Disney animation revolt of nineteen forty one. So Art
Speaker 1: and another other employees are like, hey, let's organize. They're
Speaker 1: trying to organize their shop. They're talking to their co workers,
Speaker 1: and eventually there's like a big fight, you know, at
Speaker 1: the office between Disney and art, and Disney fires art, right,
Speaker 1: and not just art, he fires a number of employees
Speaker 1: who were trying to organize workers. And this sparks a strike.
Speaker 1: And in a very good book on the subject, The
Speaker 1: Disney Revolt by Jake Friedman, Jake writes, quote the salaries,
Speaker 1: and this is him trying to explain, like kind of
Speaker 1: where the workers are coming from here. The salaries of
Speaker 1: the Disney artists average less than those of house painters.
Speaker 1: Read a press bulletin the Disney Girl. Inkers and painters
Speaker 1: received between sixteen to twenty dollars dollars a week on
Speaker 1: snow White. The much publicized bonuses did not even compensate
Speaker 1: the artists for the two years of overtime they worked.
Speaker 1: Snow White made the highest box office gross in history,
Speaker 1: over ten million dollars. All the other major cartoon studios
Speaker 1: in Hollywood have Screen Cartoon Guild contracts. The Disney studio
Speaker 1: is the only non union studio in Hollywood. The union
Speaker 1: demanded a ten percent wage increase across the board, a
Speaker 1: twenty five percent wage increase for the lower bracketed artists,
Speaker 1: and the reinstatement of the nineteen animators who they argued
Speaker 1: were fired for union activity. So what's happening here shouldn't
Speaker 1: be surprising is Disney artists are making bank. They have
Speaker 1: just had the highest, the most success. This is snow
Speaker 1: White is the fucking Avatar of its day, except unlike Avatar,
Speaker 1: it's deeply influential and people will not shut up about
Speaker 1: it for years, right, Like it is in every conversation.
Speaker 2: People forget they saw Avatar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, nothing against it or for it particularly, but
Speaker 1: like snow White Gully, it's just fucking Ferngully. Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: kind of forgotten because it's been so long. How much
Speaker 1: of a pop culture bomb in like the successful way,
Speaker 1: not like yeah, I shouldn't use the term bomb, Like
Speaker 1: there's nothing, very little that is Like The Matrix is
Speaker 1: actually probably the movie in our lifetimes that's most like
Speaker 1: Snow White in terms of like everyone is obsessed with this.
Speaker 1: It completely changes the way movies are made. It's copied
Speaker 1: a million times, Like that's probably the closest thing you
Speaker 1: could have And none of these animators who Disney is
Speaker 1: keeping nights and weekends for months while they're working for years,
Speaker 1: while they're working on this thing, get any kind of
Speaker 1: like profit sharing or any additional wages for the fact
Speaker 1: that this movie that they break their backs on makes
Speaker 1: a bunch of money. So it's not hard to see
Speaker 1: why these guys are like, well, we probably should have
Speaker 1: to strike if we want to get any kind of
Speaker 1: better deal. Now. Hank Ketchum is just another Disney animator
Speaker 1: during this period of time, and he's one of the
Speaker 1: guys who all of his coworkers around him are unionizing,
Speaker 1: and so he's going to be pressured directly to participate
Speaker 1: in this. And this is what he says about the
Speaker 1: strike in his autobiography. A handful of dissident artists organized
Speaker 1: a group of unhappy employees, and, with the gleeful assistance
Speaker 1: of the Teamsters union, Disney was presented a list of grievances.
Speaker 1: To no one's surprise, a general strike was called. Most
Speaker 1: of the men in my unit were recently married, just
Speaker 1: starting a family, and scratching to make monthly mortgage payments,
Speaker 1: barely making ends meet. They had every reason to join
Speaker 1: the picket line at the gate. Now that's a promising start, right.
Speaker 1: There's that little weird thing about like the teamsters unions
Speaker 1: were so happy to do this. But he's like, I
Speaker 1: understand why all my coworkers wanted this. They had a
Speaker 1: good reason to need to unionize. They had families to support, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And for a few days, Hank joins the picket line,
Speaker 1: right for a little while, he does what you should
Speaker 1: do when your coworkers unionize, right, And this is the
Speaker 1: thing what he's kind of insinuating there by saying I
Speaker 1: get why my coworkers wanted to is like, well, I
Speaker 1: didn't really benefit from this for me. This was good
Speaker 1: paying work for me. I was exactly where I wanted
Speaker 1: to be, so I didn't want to strike. And like, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: that's a strike. Don't always do it for you, you
Speaker 1: are in any time you're striking, it's never just for
Speaker 1: you or even just for your co workers. It's for like,
Speaker 1: especially in a creative discipline the field, like the art.
Speaker 2: Form, you will benefit from it eventually, if you're not
Speaker 2: benefiting from now, years down the road, when you have
Speaker 2: health benefits, when you are getting paid over time, when
Speaker 2: you have like something, you will benefit from it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And honestly, the pictures I've seen of the Disney strike
Speaker 2: line cross God, Sam, guillotine.
Speaker 1: Yes, these guys are so fucking radical. And part of
Speaker 1: why they're so radical is they're very young. The average
Speaker 1: Disney employee is under twenty five, right, So these guys
Speaker 1: number one, they all grew up during the Depression. This
Speaker 1: is a time when socialism is in a very different
Speaker 1: place in American public consciousness, Like it is a lot
Speaker 1: more people are openly calling themselves socialists as a percentage
Speaker 1: of the population back then than tend to today, right,
Speaker 1: And a lot of these are very radical young men
Speaker 1: who are also talented artists, And so there's a lot
Speaker 1: of cool shit that gets made for the Disney. There's
Speaker 1: some yeah, yeah, the worst people to like have drawing
Speaker 1: posters for a strike if you're the boss. It's a
Speaker 1: bunch of fucking Disney's.
Speaker 2: Pissed off Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse posters. And then
Speaker 2: the guillotine. They brought a goddamn guillotine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, fucking if only they'd used it. So, because
Speaker 1: strikes b the way strikes do. A bunch of people
Speaker 1: who worked for Disney and other outside of animation who
Speaker 1: were unionized joined the strike. Disney carpenters, machinists, teamsters, and
Speaker 1: food service workers all refused to cross the picket line.
Speaker 1: And this is along with most editors and cameramen, right
Speaker 1: because those are all unionized positions too, And everybody's like, no,
Speaker 1: you know, we're not going to fucking scab. And this
Speaker 1: is the Disney strike again, is super organized and very militant.
Speaker 1: One of the things they do is this is a
Speaker 1: twenty four hour a day's strike. There are never not
Speaker 1: animators out in front of the Disney building doing a picket,
Speaker 1: and one of them is always kind of around the
Speaker 1: side where like the scabs are driving through to like
Speaker 1: go work at Disney offices while the strike is going on,
Speaker 1: and they take pictures of every single person who scabs,
Speaker 1: like they have like a spy unit there so that
Speaker 1: they can shame them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: On the line itself, workers took full advantage of the
Speaker 1: fact that they were the best animators on the planet.
Speaker 1: Here's how Friedman describes the picket. About five hundred men
Speaker 1: and women were on their feet walking in a large
Speaker 1: circle in front of the entrance. Nearly one in ten
Speaker 1: carried a wooden picket sign all painted with cartoon characters.
Speaker 1: It's not cricket to pass a picket, warned Jimminy cricket.
Speaker 2: I'd rather be a.
Speaker 1: Dog than a scab, chided Pluto. I sign your drawings,
Speaker 1: you sign your lives, taunted a caricature of Walt, Michaelangelo,
Speaker 1: Rafael Leonardo da Vinci, Rubens Rimbrandt all belonged to gilts.
Speaker 1: That what I like a little bit less than the
Speaker 1: I sign your drawings, you sign your lives, Walt Disney
Speaker 1: cart did they tried? They tried, like I like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, most of those are pretty good, you know, yeah, no, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really good ones in there. But yeah, and the
Speaker 1: number six hundred shows up a lot, because that's how
Speaker 1: many artists are striking. One of their handouts reads one
Speaker 1: Genius against six hundred guinea pigs, and then another reads
Speaker 1: snow White and the six hundred Dwarves. I guess they're
Speaker 1: they're comparing Walt to snow White there, which.
Speaker 2: He did, and what was going on around I'm sure.
Speaker 1: Sure probably hit a lot of poisoned apples. So I
Speaker 1: think this is all kind of cool. Like everything I
Speaker 1: read about the Disney Animators revolt is like pretty dope.
Speaker 1: Hank is really pissed off about this.
Speaker 2: He considers all of.
Speaker 1: These signs and cartoons that his coworkers are drawing and
Speaker 1: repurposing for the strike to be He calls it quote
Speaker 1: infantile behavior, and he grows and enraged at his coworkers
Speaker 1: and specifically the teamsters, who he considered quote a bunch
Speaker 1: of heavy handed spoil sports interrupting my life of Riley.
Speaker 1: He is very clear about, like, I am angry about
Speaker 1: this because my life was good. Well, don't workers, bro,
Speaker 1: like you know, they have a problem. You should care
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, he decides to betray his colleagues and
Speaker 1: returns to work. So this is the thing that he
Speaker 1: does that is like his first bastard move is he
Speaker 1: joins the strike initially, and then he decides to scap
Speaker 1: Like he leaves the picket line and crosses and goes
Speaker 1: to work drawing for the company. Okay, not remotely, Okay,
Speaker 1: not remotely Okay. He rides to the office with his
Speaker 1: roommate who's the brother of a Disney manager and is
Speaker 1: on the side of management. And this, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: this actually kind of says a lot about the man.
Speaker 1: You don't get much about his experiences during the depression,
Speaker 1: other than he talks about what a bad time it was.
Speaker 1: But he notes at this point in the book that
Speaker 1: kind of the straw that broke the camel's back was
Speaker 1: when some of the wives of his fellow animators started
Speaker 1: cooking meals for everybody in a big communal kitchen. It
Speaker 1: reminded him of a soup kitchen. And the line he
Speaker 1: says is like, well, that was in the past, and
Speaker 1: I'm only a guy who wants to move forward, right,
Speaker 1: so I didn't. That's made me decide to scab on
Speaker 1: the union as seeing a soup kitchen. I don't want
Speaker 1: to do stuff from the past. You know, that's such
Speaker 1: a weird justification for betraying your colleagues.
Speaker 2: That, Like my dad was a union president. I remember
Speaker 2: like a lot of union stuff, and it was this
Speaker 2: common thing. You know, you have a large catherine, there's food,
Speaker 2: You've got to make sure everyone's fed. It's just life.
Speaker 2: And what a weird fucking thing. Oh no, we're taking
Speaker 2: care of each other. I can't handle have this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, whenever you have like you've got like a coal
Speaker 1: mine strike, right, and you've got it's especially in this
Speaker 1: period it's like white workers striking the minds won't hire
Speaker 1: black people normally, and then suddenly they get a chance
Speaker 1: to work at the mine and make more money than
Speaker 1: they otherwise would by scabbing. I got nothing against those people,
Speaker 1: right like they're in an impossible This is the opposite
Speaker 1: of that. Yeah, you saw you saw free food and
Speaker 1: got angry, so you scapped? Is so weird to me, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's weird to the other Disney animators. This is
Speaker 1: the kind of thing they take very seriously. And Hank
Speaker 1: recalls being screamed at as he drives through the picket line.
Speaker 1: I scrunched myself down between Kenny and Albertino, two protective linebackers,
Speaker 1: hoping to be invisible as the Mercury convertible ease through
Speaker 1: the mass of chanting, wild eyed revolutionaries. But they spotted me,
Speaker 1: and I instantly became king of the pinx and the
Speaker 1: target of other creative terms of outrage and venom. The
Speaker 1: loudest insults seemed to come from those who I once
Speaker 1: considered very good pals. It was a shattering experience for many,
Speaker 1: as in any civil war, the house was divided and
Speaker 1: close friendships evaporated. Years later, the stigma remained. I'm like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course your good pals are pissed. They're striking because
Speaker 1: they need to pay their mortgage and they just found
Speaker 1: out you don't care about them.
Speaker 2: Man, I'm going to try to hide bet between these
Speaker 2: looks of larger men. Yeah, what a fucking worm.
Speaker 1: Such a worm. Oh my god. So, as a result
Speaker 1: of his craven nature, Hank is going to miss one
Speaker 1: of the defining moments payment labor history. Now, Walt Disney,
Speaker 1: one thing you got to say for him, The man
Speaker 1: was a formidable foe, right, this is this is not
Speaker 1: an incompetent guy to go up against as a union.
Speaker 1: But again, the Disney animators, among other things, had youth
Speaker 1: on their side. They split the whole crew into two
Speaker 1: or three hour shifts, and so they keep a twenty
Speaker 1: four hour picket line. They never give up on like protesting.
Speaker 1: And this is because, yeah, we'll get into that. So
Speaker 1: because a lot of these guys become famous later, you
Speaker 1: get some quotes from the ones who broke trying to
Speaker 1: explain their behavior. And this brings me back to Ward Kimball.
Speaker 1: Right Ward is Hank's boss. He is one of the
Speaker 1: guys who scabs, and he says of it quote, I
Speaker 1: felt terrible. Friends on the inside waving to me to
Speaker 1: come in, friends on the outside pleading with me to
Speaker 1: stay out. Jesus I was on the spot. I won't forgive, like,
Speaker 1: you know, his decision to scab here, but at least
Speaker 1: he provides more of like a description of like why
Speaker 1: this would be complicated. Some people you care about a
Speaker 1: lot are in management. They don't, you know, you feel
Speaker 1: torn as opposed to who's just like well, I saw
Speaker 1: a soup kitchen and got pissed, But it is.
Speaker 2: It has to be like a hard thing to decide on.
Speaker 2: And like you said earlier, he's been there since almost
Speaker 2: the start. Yeah, it was his friend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And like I get how that's I'm not like
Speaker 1: saying it was okay, But I get that more than
Speaker 1: I get what Hank is describing as his reasoning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everything about what what Ketchum was saying is just
Speaker 2: kind of weasley. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the union issues a warning that animators who
Speaker 1: stayed would be fined five dollars a day plus one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars penalty once shit resumed normality inside Disney. One
Speaker 1: of the Disney executives Norm Ferguson told Hank and everyone
Speaker 1: else who crossed the picket line that any deal that
Speaker 1: was signed would protect them and like cover that amount
Speaker 1: of money if they stayed loyal. The thing that was important,
Speaker 1: the thing that everyone had to do who was scabbing,
Speaker 1: was finish Dumbo. So this is the movie they're working
Speaker 1: on at the time, and when this the strike interrupts
Speaker 1: finishing Dumbo, and this comes at a critical moment for Disney.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons people are pissed is Disney had
Speaker 1: prior to about this moment basically been like set up
Speaker 1: in a series of just like kind of shacks, right,
Speaker 1: And after they make all this money from snow White,
Speaker 1: Walt decides, rather than paying a lot of that money
Speaker 1: to his employees, decides to reinvest it into building an
Speaker 1: elaborate new campus. And he's still he can't fund it
Speaker 1: with the money they have. He has to get a
Speaker 1: loan from Bank of America. And Bank of America is
Speaker 1: willing to invest in this weird new upstart company because
Speaker 1: they're looking at the money that's coming in. But Bank
Speaker 1: of America doesn't have enough faith in Animation that like
Speaker 1: if they miss getting Dumbo out on time, right, the
Speaker 1: bank could foreclose theoretically, right, that's at least I don't
Speaker 1: know how realistic that was as an actual possibility, But
Speaker 1: that's what Ferguson is warning everybody. That's what Walt is
Speaker 1: obsessed over, right, if they miss this release date. It's
Speaker 1: one of those things where like I don't find I
Speaker 1: don't have any sympathy for Disney for that because like
Speaker 1: his workers on the outside who are striking, are in
Speaker 1: the same position with their actual houses, not with it,
Speaker 1: like the fucking offices that he decided to build, and
Speaker 1: it was like a ten million dollar campus. It was
Speaker 1: a lot of money, which is like what snow White made.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, if I'm not mistaken, I could be wrong
Speaker 2: in this. At the same time, I don't think they
Speaker 2: really got most of the European money from snow White
Speaker 2: because when World War two broke out, Yeah, not to
Speaker 2: Jermy's like we're not sending you anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they get hurt, I mean and just in general,
Speaker 1: like they get hurt because like there's not a European
Speaker 1: market for a while, effectively for cartoonist.
Speaker 2: Well, honestly, Walt Disney was not a good businessman, like
Speaker 2: Disney's company was always kind of hurting. Yeah, it's not
Speaker 2: what it was. It's not. It wasn't then what it
Speaker 2: is now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it it like it was not not even
Speaker 1: all that similar. And like, I think these workers have
Speaker 1: a good point of like, well, why are we spending
Speaker 1: all this money on a new campus instead of taking
Speaker 1: care of our people? Like, obviously, I think the workers
Speaker 1: have a point. Walt himself is like kind of dumbfounded
Speaker 1: when the strike begins. He had been the one to
Speaker 1: fire Babbitt, but he never expected his animators would betray him.
Speaker 1: The company had up to this point been run more
Speaker 1: like an extended family or friend group than a traditional employer, right,
Speaker 1: because it's the scrappy startup. And this is what really
Speaker 1: starts the process of changing Disney, because as soon as
Speaker 1: Walt is challenged by the union, he starts to get
Speaker 1: deranged and he increasingly begins blaming the whole thing on communism.
Speaker 1: He would later after the employees win their strike, he's
Speaker 1: going to inform on a bunch of them to the
Speaker 1: House on American Activities community for being Communists. But this
Speaker 1: is an act of callo vengeance because again Disney loses
Speaker 1: the fight as the Washington post summarizes the picketers marched
Speaker 1: on bad publicity for Disney's company mounted, as did pressure
Speaker 1: from its creditors. In late July, the government stepped in
Speaker 1: and in federal arbitration, the studio agreed to various demands,
Speaker 1: including paid increases, back pays, sick leave, and Babbitt's returned.
Speaker 1: The cash strapped Disney studio shut down for two weeks
Speaker 1: in late August during a battle with the newly recognized
Speaker 1: guild about fresh layoffs. Walt Disney escaped the ordeal, embarking
Speaker 1: on a government sponsored South American tour. Three months later,
Speaker 1: the attack on Pearl har Arbor drew the company into
Speaker 1: World War Two.
Speaker 2: He was going to South America. They're preparing to make
Speaker 2: the movie Saludas and Eagles and kind of one. It
Speaker 2: was basically to kind of get South America into the
Speaker 2: war effort.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's going to like that's how he's going
Speaker 1: to kind of like destress from this. And then thankfully,
Speaker 1: we need a bunch of propaganda for the war. And
Speaker 1: that's kind of what saves Disney is making wartime propaganda
Speaker 1: in this period. Now the strike is going to be
Speaker 1: the end of the friendly camaraderie that had been central
Speaker 1: to Disney's early image. What's interesting to me is you
Speaker 1: get very different pictures of how that looked depending on
Speaker 1: who is telling the story. Friedman says, it's the returning
Speaker 1: workers who suffered because they were treated like pariah's by
Speaker 1: people who were scared that Walt would see them being
Speaker 1: friendly with like someone who had gone on strike. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure that's true. Hank, for his part, is
Speaker 1: like basically says, those of us who scabbed got treated differently,
Speaker 1: and that was what was unfair. Also, he complains a
Speaker 1: lot about the ping pong tables being taken away in
Speaker 1: the office, which he blads on strike. Oh, I don't know, No,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Man. He's gonna have bigger concerns though,
Speaker 1: because the US enters the big Dub Dub dose not
Speaker 1: long after the strike comes to an end, and Hank
Speaker 1: is right at that sweet sweet draft in age. So
Speaker 1: he joins the Navy. He's going to serve for the
Speaker 1: duration of the war, and he kind of lucks gets
Speaker 1: really lucky here. His status as a Disney animator benefits
Speaker 1: him a lot because people find out when his superiors
Speaker 1: find out, like Oh, you can draw cartoons. We're not
Speaker 1: sending you over to get shot at by a crowd,
Speaker 1: Like you're going to stay here and you're going to
Speaker 1: try to convince Americans to buy war bonts by drawing stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They use a lot of animators in the World
Speaker 2: War two. Yeah, he saved a lot of the room
Speaker 2: going overseas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is why we need to have another war.
Speaker 1: It's the only thing that could save our animation industry
Speaker 1: for a I. Oh god, all the poor laid off
Speaker 1: Rooster Chief animators. Yeah, ah, that is a bummer.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Walt writes him a letter while he's he's working
Speaker 1: for the army, which is nice canidering. Walt probably wished
Speaker 1: we'd enter the war on a different side, but that's
Speaker 1: a story for another day. It was in nineteen forty two,
Speaker 1: after moving to d c to serve in the Navy,
Speaker 1: that Hank married Alice mahar His autobiography says nothing about
Speaker 1: how they met or her personality at all. He provides
Speaker 1: one picture that describes her as his Massachusetts mate. The
Speaker 1: two would have a boy together, Dennis Ketchum in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty six, And yes, that is the inspiration and namesake
Speaker 1: for Dennis the Menace. Now, despite the central role that
Speaker 1: Dennis would play in his later success, his own son
Speaker 1: scarcely merits more mentioned than Alice in this book. And
Speaker 1: we're going to get in all of that. But first,
Speaker 1: you know who does merit mention?
Speaker 2: I would say, the progus and services of these fine advertisers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to tell you right now, folks, forget
Speaker 1: the name and face of your parents, you know, just
Speaker 1: remember these advertisers. If you have children, delete them from
Speaker 1: your memory, and just remember the people who sponsor this show.
Speaker 2: Done and done. I don't have a father more. I
Speaker 2: only have Chumbu Casino.
Speaker 1: That's right, That's right, chump, but casino is everything. We're back.
Speaker 1: People online talk about those Chumba ads. I've actually never
Speaker 1: heard one yet.
Speaker 3: I haven't heard it either.
Speaker 2: It is every time I listen to the show, every time,
Speaker 2: at least three of them.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite things is, like we get a
Speaker 1: lot of if it's not like us reading an ad,
Speaker 1: we often don't really know what's because because they're different
Speaker 1: for like geographical areas, right, Like they're not going to
Speaker 1: want to serve the same ad to somebody in like
Speaker 1: Australia as they are to somebody in Michigan.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So a lot of times people are like, wow, it's
Speaker 1: wild these people are sponsoring you, and I'm like, I
Speaker 1: didn't know, man, Like it's it's just a random ad.
Speaker 1: We had one recently which I do feel bad about.
Speaker 1: You know. We get asked like, what's kind of stuff
Speaker 1: are you're okay with? And a while ago I filled
Speaker 1: out a thing being like, yeah, you know what I hunt,
Speaker 1: I shoot, Like there are certain kinds of like hunting
Speaker 1: and shooting products that might theoretically endorse I'd want to
Speaker 1: like know what they were. And then they we kind
Speaker 1: of started running random ads for like a local gun
Speaker 1: shop in like Kansas or something that like, oh, I
Speaker 1: don't want to be doing that. I don't know that
Speaker 1: gun shop. I don't know who those people are, like
Speaker 1: I have. We need to fix that right away.
Speaker 2: It could be a good gun shopper, it could be
Speaker 2: real bad, it.
Speaker 1: Could be a very bad gunshop. Certainly don't want to
Speaker 1: sponsor that shit at random, So we we should have
Speaker 1: fixed that. And a lot of the like really.
Speaker 3: Really bad ones that have already been like removed come
Speaker 3: in on like secret categories and oh yeah, and then
Speaker 3: it's like you you're coming in as usiness. No.
Speaker 1: So back to Dennis the Menaces. As we get to
Speaker 1: this story, it is nineteen forty six Dennis and his
Speaker 1: new wife Alice. Hank and his new wife Alice had
Speaker 1: their son, Dennis Jesus real mess here I am. And
Speaker 1: despite the central role that Dennis playing, his success his
Speaker 1: own son scarcely merits more of a mention than like
Speaker 1: the mother of his child. And Hank's autobiography, Hank does
Speaker 1: provide a loving description of how he came up with
Speaker 1: the idea for the comic. And this happens once he's
Speaker 1: out of the Navy. He moves back west and he
Speaker 1: establishes a home in Carmel Woods near Monterey that cost
Speaker 1: him again this like Bay area house he buys costs
Speaker 1: twelve thousand dollars. Damn it, that's like a twelve million
Speaker 1: dollar home today.
Speaker 2: At least.
Speaker 1: He picks up a handful of gigs drawing cartoons for
Speaker 1: newspapers and magazines like the Saturday Evening Post, and he
Speaker 1: starts putting together ideas for a comic strip. In most
Speaker 1: news articles about the manual, here what comes next described
Speaker 1: as like he's working one day and his little kid
Speaker 1: is His wife Alice tries to put Dennis down, and
Speaker 1: Dennis doesn't want to go to bed, and he like
Speaker 1: tears up his room, and when his mom walks in
Speaker 1: and sees the mess, Dennis Maid, she cries out to Hank,
Speaker 1: your son is a menace, and that inspires Dennis the
Speaker 1: Menace as a title and both the premise also of
Speaker 1: this cartoon. That's kind of accurate, but it leaves out
Speaker 1: the ugliness of Hank's own description of this moment, which
Speaker 1: I'm in a quote from now. At four years of age,
Speaker 1: Dennis Lloyd Ketchaim was a thirty six pound handful, too
Speaker 1: young for school, too big for his playpen, and too
Speaker 1: small to hit, not old enough for jail, and one
Speaker 1: hundred percent anti establishment. One October afternoon in nineteen fifty,
Speaker 1: I was at home in my tiny studio finishing a
Speaker 1: drawing for the Saturday Evening Post when I was startled
Speaker 1: by a sudden outburst of mother noises coming from the
Speaker 1: bedroom area of our new home and car mother noises.
Speaker 1: There's in these two paragraphs, there's so many moments that
Speaker 1: like I need to stop and be like, wait a second,
Speaker 1: what is a mother noise does? How is that different
Speaker 1: from a father noise? And why are you so sad
Speaker 1: your child is too small to When are they big
Speaker 1: enough to hit hank? When are they big enough for jail?
Speaker 1: What are your opinions on these things?
Speaker 2: Jesus right?
Speaker 1: The little darling was supposed to be taking a nap. Instead,
Speaker 1: he had spent the better part of one hour quietly
Speaker 1: dismantling his room, bed, mattress springs, dresser drapes, and curtain rods,
Speaker 1: when the accidental load he carried in his underpants was
Speaker 1: added to his collection of plastic toys, cookie crumbs, and
Speaker 1: left over peanut butter sandwhich it formed an unusual mix
Speaker 1: enough to drive an Irish mother to the brink. Now
Speaker 1: he was my son. Her rich expletives, most of them
Speaker 1: coined in Boston, were spliced with suggestions of abandonment and
Speaker 1: threats of bodily harm. After informing me that I could
Speaker 1: jolly well clean up his room, her parting shot was,
Speaker 1: your son is a menace, Dennis a menace?
Speaker 2: I mused.
Speaker 1: Now, I don't know if I believe that that's exactly
Speaker 1: how it happened, But interesting things from those two paragraphs
Speaker 1: that he really make what she to know she's Irish,
Speaker 1: and when you know she's Irish.
Speaker 2: Because there's some strong opinions on Irish people.
Speaker 1: He does. Their marriage does not work out, and he
Speaker 1: blames it on her being an alcoholic. And she's an
Speaker 1: alcoholic because she's Irish. Is that is Hank's attitude? Right?
Speaker 2: And he basically used her in the comic, didn't he? Yes?
Speaker 1: Yes, the mother, the dad is based on him, The
Speaker 1: mother is based on her, the kid is based on
Speaker 1: their son. The whole cartoon is based on the family.
Speaker 1: That he will be very shortly now abandoning fuck it
Speaker 1: now for reasons that will become very clear. Hankaty vested
Speaker 1: interest in making his wife look bad, but even his
Speaker 1: description provides some hints that he was not a present
Speaker 1: or engaged father, because he states that, rather than actually
Speaker 1: cleaning up the room like his wife had asked him to,
Speaker 1: or parenting their son cleaning up their kid, right, he
Speaker 1: instead ignores his family to draw the first Dennis the
Speaker 1: Menace cartoons. This does work out financially, the concept sells
Speaker 1: out within weeks to the post syndicate. Dennis the Menace
Speaker 1: launched in March nineteen fifty one on sixteen newspapers as
Speaker 1: a weird aside, and you mentioned this a little earlier.
Speaker 1: His cartoon debuts at like the exact same time as
Speaker 1: a British cartoon named Dennis the Menace with a similar plot.
Speaker 1: They're both about like kind of misbehaving kids. Both creators agree,
Speaker 1: neither plage the other. This does. This is just a
Speaker 1: weird coincidence. I think the same day, wasn't that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like the same day. But both of them, neither
Speaker 1: of them tries to claim this is plagiarism. They're all like, nah, man,
Speaker 1: this is just a weird thing that happened.
Speaker 2: It's amazing, honestly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I guess the universe needed there to be to Dennis
Speaker 1: the Menace comics in the same way it needed us
Speaker 1: to have World War One, Like it was just it
Speaker 1: was going to make sure that happened.
Speaker 2: I'm imagining Dennis the Mena is assassinating.
Speaker 1: That No, no, no, the Archduke of a Yeah no,
Speaker 1: I I you know what. That's the cartoon that we
Speaker 1: need from these episodes is Dennis the Menace with a
Speaker 1: sandwich in his hand, pumping a bunch of bullets into
Speaker 1: Franz Ferdinand, mister, mister Wilson, just Dennis stop starting. He's
Speaker 1: so angry he's gonna have to go in act the
Speaker 1: Schleefen Plan. Now, I do imagine mister Wilson in this
Speaker 1: as like the military commander of Germany. So the cartoon
Speaker 1: is a wild success. It takes off very quickly, and
Speaker 1: it expands in short order into one of the most
Speaker 1: successful comics in history. This much people know. What has
Speaker 1: been lost in the intervening years is a sense of
Speaker 1: how nasty the original cartoon would be. I don't even
Speaker 1: mean this as a criticism. It's just surprising because like
Speaker 1: today's Dennis the Menace, I would not call controversial, no, right,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty tame humor for like all ages. Right,
Speaker 1: nothing against that, but it's not something You would be
Speaker 1: surprised if someone said there's a really offensive Dennis the
Speaker 1: Menace cartoon this week, right, you would think, like something
Speaker 1: must have gone wrong. They must have switched up their
Speaker 1: captions with the far side, Like what happened that one time.
Speaker 1: That's an actual moment from cartoon history. Folks. Look it up.
Speaker 1: There's like a cartoon where Dennis is talking about like
Speaker 1: taking people's skin off of their skulls and preserving them
Speaker 1: because it got swapped with a far side caption.
Speaker 2: Oh god, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, A couple of times too.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, there's a few times that happened with the
Speaker 1: far side. I found a few of these early Dennis
Speaker 1: the Menace cartoons chronicled in an article by Seattle Times
Speaker 1: reporter Mark Raymer or Rainer in two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: and oh boy, I did not expect this quote. Walking
Speaker 1: out of an elevator with his concerned looking mom malicious side,
Speaker 1: Dennis says, did you see that? I pinched that fat
Speaker 1: dame to make her give me room and she slugged
Speaker 1: a guy in back of her Jesus fat dame. Huh wow,
Speaker 1: I will say, like, that's at least a little it's
Speaker 1: a lot more colorful than I expected from Dennis the Menace.
Speaker 2: A lot of those early cart comics they got a
Speaker 2: lot more, even some early Family Circus or.
Speaker 1: Blue Yeah, yeah, you could. You could definitely work Bluer
Speaker 1: back then. Quote. A swan with its neck tighten and
Speaker 1: not warns its mate stay away from that kid with
Speaker 1: the black pants armed a slingshot on a park bench,
Speaker 1: Dennis asks his mom, Hey, do you know how to
Speaker 1: cook a pigeon? A teacher tells Dennis's mom, your Dennis
Speaker 1: is a happy child. He hits Sammy with a sand
Speaker 1: shovel and I thought he'd die laughing. There's another cartoon
Speaker 1: where Dennis constructs a crude sap filling a sock with
Speaker 1: sand to beat people with. Again, this is kind of based.
Speaker 2: This is actually great. I'm not gonna lie, he's pretty good.
Speaker 1: It does get creepier, especially when you think of the
Speaker 1: real world dimensions here, because here's the description of another cartoon.
Speaker 1: Holding his embarrassed mom's hand, Dennis stops a friend on
Speaker 1: the sidewalk, Billy, this is my mother. Some looker, eh.
Speaker 1: He walks in in another cartoon on his mother while
Speaker 1: she bathes, and she covers her nude body in horrified modesty.
Speaker 1: He tells another friend, this is my mom, Tommy, isn't
Speaker 1: she pretty? There are a bunch of comics like this
Speaker 1: of Dennis walking in on his mom when she's like
Speaker 1: indecent and talking about how hot she is to his
Speaker 1: friend's weird joke to make about your wife and kid, hanky,
Speaker 1: weird joke to make about your wife and kid.
Speaker 2: That is uncomfortable as like a cartoonist and a parent.
Speaker 1: I just don't think I could do that. Look, any
Speaker 1: kid would be glad to be portrayed as making a
Speaker 1: crude sap to beat people within the street. No kid
Speaker 1: wants to be in a cartoon calling their mom hot.
Speaker 1: That's not okay, Hank, you shouldn't do that to the
Speaker 1: cartoon founded in the image of your son. A little
Speaker 1: odd yeah, like I know she was your wife, but
Speaker 1: not his. That's a therapy session, he will say later.
Speaker 1: I think Dennis was more based on me than my son.
Speaker 1: But still, man, a little little fucked up buddy. So
Speaker 1: that's good. As soon as he starts making a fortune
Speaker 1: off of this cartoon, you know, this cartoon that is
Speaker 1: inspired by his son and his wife, he grows to
Speaker 1: resent them. In one interview, he described how he empathized
Speaker 1: with the put upon father in his cartoon. He comes
Speaker 1: I'm tired, full of other thoughts, and it's hard to
Speaker 1: come back and relax enough to enjoy your family, he says.
Speaker 1: The young Ketchum saw children, in particular his son Dennis,
Speaker 1: as part of the problem. They always seem to be
Speaker 1: in the way of what you wanted to do. He remembers, I.
Speaker 2: Just wondered, this is when his ghost artists and ghost
Speaker 2: writers start taking over.
Speaker 1: Right, this is right at the start. They haven't done
Speaker 1: this yet. Yeah, this is fifty nine, so.
Speaker 2: Wisra's not drawing and I can't know the name of
Speaker 2: the art the writer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, not quite yet. This is like, this
Speaker 1: is I think him being like sad in retrospect, because
Speaker 1: at the time I think he was just happy to
Speaker 1: ignore his family to make a bunch of money, and
Speaker 1: as a result, his marriage deteriorates quickly for reasons that
Speaker 1: should be obvious. In the winter of nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: Alice leaves him, and he simply writes, it was a bummer.
Speaker 1: We had been on a collision course and nobody cared.
Speaker 2: Jesus.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about what happens to his wife,
Speaker 1: and more importantly, what he does to his son in
Speaker 1: the wake of the very sad thing that's going to
Speaker 1: happen to her, And we're getting into, you know, the real,
Speaker 1: the very worst bastardury of the Han Catchum story. But first,
Speaker 1: that's the episode we're done for right now, So that no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no, I caused this to be a two parter
Speaker 1: because I wrote twenty pages on the Dennis the Menace
Speaker 1: guy says that no one, no one will ever be
Speaker 1: able to explain. This was not my initial intention. I
Speaker 1: did not oh my chanese, well, you know, obviously not
Speaker 1: like compared to you, I'm not knowledgeable or nerdy about animation,
Speaker 1: but like I really love cartoons.
Speaker 2: I'm only wanting to be just a rage to happen.
Speaker 2: That's why.
Speaker 1: Just there's so much to talk, like the Disney animator
Speaker 1: strike and ship, the story of animation, like I just couldn't.
Speaker 1: I couldn't help myself.
Speaker 2: You could do a whole episode on on Disney the forties,
Speaker 2: especially the strike.
Speaker 1: I think we will at some point, but first, let's
Speaker 1: do an episode on your pluggables.
Speaker 2: Oh uh oh, Well, my name is a Randy mill Holland,
Speaker 2: and I do an online comic called Something Positive. I've
Speaker 2: been doing it since the year two thousand and one.
Speaker 2: Let's see what else do I do?
Speaker 1: I do a few things now, Randy. Two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: the War on Terror started and it hasn't really ended.
Speaker 1: Is it possible that your cartoon caused the War on terror?
Speaker 2: Technically my comics started after the war on Terror began. Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: I have a few months grace period. Thankfully I can
Speaker 2: tell you where I was when all that started.
Speaker 1: I guess it will remain a mystery why the war
Speaker 1: on terror started that at.
Speaker 2: Least until you do about the behind the Bastards episode
Speaker 2: on me.
Speaker 1: Next year holland the fourteenth hijacker. I forget how many
Speaker 1: hijackers they were.
Speaker 2: Folks, I did live in Boston, you know, well, I
Speaker 2: live not far from that from logan that to happen,
Speaker 2: So I do something pause that something positive dot net.
Speaker 2: I also draw the Sunday pop Ey strips Kingdom dot
Speaker 2: com slash Popeye. I also do a Tuesday Thursday comic
Speaker 2: with a woman sorry being named uh, Emmy Burke. That's
Speaker 2: all of them. Popeye Tuesdays are focused on all of uh,
Speaker 2: That's what Emmy draws. I do the Thursday strips that
Speaker 2: focus on Popeye and his family. And I started a
Speaker 2: couple of months ago a comic called mouse Trapped. It
Speaker 2: is my sequel to the comic or the cartoon in
Speaker 2: the sting about Willie. But I bring in other public
Speaker 2: domain comic characters from like Universal and Walter Lance.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, So it's.
Speaker 2: Basically a lot my excuse to pull out really old,
Speaker 2: forgotten cartoon characters. I forget how they would fit together.
Speaker 1: Well that sounds fucking dope, thank you. Yeah, I uh
Speaker 1: don't have a cartoon, but I do have a podcast
Speaker 1: and you're listening to it. So would novels. I have
Speaker 1: written a novel. It's called After the Revolution, and you
Speaker 1: can find it on the internet at atrbook dot com
Speaker 1: or any place that lets you buy books.
Speaker 2: You know, would you have one of the stacked things
Speaker 2: that raters have a subst.
Speaker 1: And I don't really do that anymore. Oh okay, sorry,
Speaker 1: I mean I want to get some sort of regular
Speaker 1: writing thing up again. But substack. There's this whole thing
Speaker 1: over Nazis, and like, I'm mixed because where aren't there
Speaker 1: Nazis on social media? Why would we get bent out
Speaker 1: of shape about one or the other. But also, like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't want to go to bat
Speaker 1: for substack over whatever all of this. So I'm just
Speaker 1: not doing anything right now aside from these podcasts.
Speaker 2: Fair enough. Yeah, well, don't forget cool Zone media and
Speaker 2: the app.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, don't forget that, but forget everything else you've
Speaker 1: ever heard in your life. Remember only us.
Speaker 3: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Speaker 3: zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.