Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Wow. Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where
Speaker 2: I Robert Evans, was just bearing my soul to my guest,
Speaker 2: the cartoonist Randy Millholland, about the fact that I missed
Speaker 2: drawing cartoons. I just brought up the great Aesop rock
Speaker 2: song Rings, which is about like realizing that drawing is
Speaker 2: the thing you used to do and being kind of
Speaker 2: quietly devastated by that grifter.
Speaker 3: At first, I was like, no, no, yes, I'm a cartoonist,
Speaker 3: so you know, it's the thing.
Speaker 2: Like I alwaysknew I wanted to write, and I had
Speaker 2: initially wanted to do that as like a cartoonist because
Speaker 2: I was kind of like coming into my adolescence the
Speaker 2: same age that like Hank was when he's watching these
Speaker 2: yearly Disney Disney cartoons. I was reading like first generation webcomics, right,
Speaker 2: like Sluggy freelance and shit like that. That, like there's
Speaker 2: people who were able to like make a living cartooning
Speaker 2: on the Internet. And I was always like, well, that
Speaker 2: seems like the way to do it. What a what
Speaker 2: a lush, lavish life these web comic artists. Oh, one
Speaker 2: day that'll be me.
Speaker 3: I did have someone's like sending an angry email, like
Speaker 3: I know that you, you know, are so comfortable in
Speaker 3: your mansion. I was living in an hour of cartoons.
Speaker 3: I was living in a one room apartment at the time.
Speaker 3: Like I I guess, uh cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's this there's this Nazi cartoon and it's problematic
Speaker 2: and it's I'll give you one guess as to like
Speaker 2: who the they is, But like the text underneath this
Speaker 2: very problematic art is like, if you want to know
Speaker 2: who rules you, look at who you're not allowed to criticize.
Speaker 2: And I want to replace the racial caricatures with just
Speaker 2: like a guy drawing a cartoon, like the secret masters
Speaker 2: of the world Web comic artists.
Speaker 3: They rule us all unhappiness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the petty arcade guys, the sweet guy. Though I
Speaker 2: will say I have not met any of them. I
Speaker 2: did see Will Wheaton once at Penny Arcade Expo, and
Speaker 2: I nearly took my vengeance on him for what he
Speaker 2: did to that poor space captain in that fourth season
Speaker 2: episode of Star Trek The Next Generation Unforgivable, Unforgivable Will.
Speaker 3: First time I ever met Will Wheaton, I told him
Speaker 3: because he never in the same age I was like,
Speaker 3: you know, when we were kids, I was always so
Speaker 3: jealous of you because you were on the Starship Enterprise.
Speaker 3: And he's like, look, however cool you think it was.
Speaker 3: It was way cooler and you watch I was like,
Speaker 3: damn it, dude.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, he got to know Riker, He got to
Speaker 2: watch that man reinvent sitting down on chairs.
Speaker 3: Never been done the same since, really hasn't. That was
Speaker 3: the h I think that's really what taught usuals.
Speaker 2: That was the Manhattan Project for sitting down. Uh so
Speaker 2: we're back in the story of Hank Katch him. When
Speaker 2: we last left off, his wife Alice had left him.
Speaker 2: He blames this on her temperamental irish nature, which he
Speaker 2: also blames her alcoholism on. And this is not fair,
Speaker 2: but she is an alcoholic right now. I don't think
Speaker 2: she's an alcoholic, she's irish. I think she's an alcoholic
Speaker 2: because it was the fifties and who wasn't right, like
Speaker 2: a health nut ended every day with a full pint
Speaker 2: glass of straight bourbon. That was the way people lived.
Speaker 3: Like Martini's in barbiturate field bun diet hills were a
Speaker 3: way of life.
Speaker 2: You have called where this is going? Because she is
Speaker 2: unfortunately naming barbituates and alcohol, which listeners don't do. This
Speaker 2: has been a long digression from the fact that Hank
Speaker 2: Ketchum is going to blame every problem that his wife
Speaker 2: has on the fact that she's Irish. Now, look, she
Speaker 2: is an alcoholic. I am sure that was a contributing
Speaker 2: factor to why their marriage didn't work. But I also
Speaker 2: suspect a contributing factor to her alcoholism was the fact
Speaker 2: that her husband did not want her or their child
Speaker 2: around and preferred spending time with a fake family that
Speaker 2: he had drawn to spending time with his actual family.
Speaker 2: I can see how that might make a problem worse. Right,
Speaker 2: I'm not inside this marriage. It couldn't helped, right, not really.
Speaker 2: Now there are some other possible clues as to what's
Speaker 2: wrong in this marriage from some of Hank's early cartoons.
Speaker 2: From that Seattle Times article quote, Dennis persistently tries to
Speaker 2: drive a wedge between Henry and Alice by exposing their flirtations.
Speaker 2: He narks out Dad on the beach to a furious Alice. Boy,
Speaker 2: did we meet a pretty girl? Her name was Sally Holt.
Speaker 2: I forget her phone number. Likewise, he deals poor Henry
Speaker 2: another blow to his masculinity in front of Henry's male friend.
Speaker 2: If you're so handy, how come mom had the man
Speaker 2: next door come fix the leg on the card table?
Speaker 3: God damn.
Speaker 2: We get a couple things from this here. For one thing,
Speaker 2: he is kind of hinting at this like constant suspicion
Speaker 2: of infidelity that may have been a factor in their relationship.
Speaker 2: But also, to make this more devastating, again, Dennis is
Speaker 2: a kid and aware of the cartoon that's coming out.
Speaker 2: His parents break up and his dad starts drawing cartoons
Speaker 2: about he and his wife fighting. Where the cause of
Speaker 2: the fighting is Dennis. Now, that could fuck with your
Speaker 2: head a little as a kid, right, that's the cardoon
Speaker 2: fuck that that could do some When we talk about
Speaker 2: the ethics of like basic stuff on your life, you
Speaker 2: know that's generally okay, But maybe if you're a parent,
Speaker 2: don't blame the cartoon version of your son for the
Speaker 2: problems of your marriage. That might hurt them.
Speaker 3: Actually, that could Everyone gets the newspaper. Yes, every kid
Speaker 3: reads the comics. Yeah, and there's no ways kids his
Speaker 3: friends didn't know his dad drew this comic.
Speaker 2: No, No, this is like, honestly, there's really not much
Speaker 2: like like mister Beast is probably like in terms of
Speaker 2: like his level of popularity, the closest we have to
Speaker 2: somebody like Hank Ketchum in terms of the actual penetration
Speaker 2: of a single piece of children's media in the time, right,
Speaker 2: like it's so popular, and yeah, this would be like
Speaker 2: a pretty fucked up thing to deal with as a kid,
Speaker 2: in addition to like dealing with the fact that your
Speaker 2: parents are splitting up and things are about to get
Speaker 2: a lot worse because Alice leaving brings an immediate threat
Speaker 2: to Hank Ketchum's life, which is that since they're split
Speaker 2: up now, he's gonna wind up with partial custody at
Speaker 2: least of his son, And partial custody means you might
Speaker 2: have to spend time parenting that kid, and that is
Speaker 2: not a thing Hank wants to do.
Speaker 3: Right, No, no, No, father in the fifties is into
Speaker 3: that idea.
Speaker 2: Absolutely not so as soon as the two split up
Speaker 2: like that same year, Hank sends twelve year old Dennis
Speaker 2: to live at a private boarding school. And here's how
Speaker 2: Hank describes the reasoning behind this decision. He suffered severe
Speaker 2: learning disabilities that were not being properly addressed by the family.
Speaker 2: His mother too caught up in luncheon's teas and bouts
Speaker 2: with demon rum, couldn't focus seriously on much of anything.
Speaker 2: His well intentioned father was buried in creative work and
Speaker 2: wasn't spending time with his small family. And like, it's
Speaker 2: kind of like you try to give yourself a little Like, well,
Speaker 2: I also didn't do enough, but like, yeah, his mom
Speaker 2: is all going out to lunch all the time, and
Speaker 2: his dad is well intentioned, but he's like two busy
Speaker 2: joint cartoons to raise his child, and it's most messed
Speaker 2: up here. I have never seen any real supposition as
Speaker 2: to what Dennis's learning disabilities may have been. He's not
Speaker 2: diagnosed with anything as far as I can tell, given
Speaker 2: state of things in that period of time, I think
Speaker 2: there's a very good chance he didn't have a learning disability.
Speaker 2: He was like acting out and having trouble in school
Speaker 2: because his home life was really difficult, and when things
Speaker 2: got tough, his dad sends him away. Right, Like that
Speaker 2: makes more sense to me than any kind of disability
Speaker 2: you might have had.
Speaker 3: He was an upset child. He was a child, and yeah,
Speaker 3: divorce was so taboo in the fifties and there's no way. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like other kids didn't know. I'm sure his life was
Speaker 3: kind of hellish.
Speaker 2: He's dealing with that, right, like the fact that this
Speaker 2: is a taboo thing. It's so unprecedented seeming to him.
Speaker 2: And also again, his mom is an alcoholic, and that's
Speaker 2: also a thing to across to bear as a child, right.
Speaker 3: He is the victim in the situation.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and Dennis is We have the actual Dinnis's recollections
Speaker 2: of this period of his childhood, and he would later
Speaker 2: tell People Magazine, I didn't know what was going on,
Speaker 2: except that I felt Dad wanted me out of the way,
Speaker 2: which is like a devastating way to feed.
Speaker 3: No child, no child feel that way.
Speaker 2: Especially if you are your dad's meal ticket. He's getting
Speaker 2: rich off of a pretend version of you, and he
Speaker 2: won't even raise you like that's real, real bad. So
Speaker 2: this childhood nightmare is exacerbated by the fact that Dennis
Speaker 2: the Menace the cartoon is hugely popular among kids of
Speaker 2: his age group, and whenever they found out that he
Speaker 2: was the original Dennist, he became the source of unwanted attention.
Speaker 2: Years later, Hank would cop to some of this and
Speaker 2: the effect that it had on his son, telling the
Speaker 2: Washington Post, these things happened, which they don't. They never
Speaker 2: happened to another kid, Hank. No one else has ever
Speaker 2: gone through what your son did.
Speaker 3: Look like at Phill Keene and his kids, who he
Speaker 3: based the Family Circus off of. Yeah, Glenn and Gil
Speaker 3: Keen became cartoonists, like he was very proud of them.
Speaker 3: They apparently had a really good life. So there's an
Speaker 3: option here.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, you can base things on your life. Maybe
Speaker 2: not this way. No, Yeah, And even honestly, if he'd
Speaker 2: done everything the same with the comic but just kept
Speaker 2: his son and raised him, it probably would have been fine.
Speaker 2: But that's not what he's gonna do. Hank would add.
Speaker 2: This was even worse because his name was used. He
Speaker 2: was brought an unwillingly and unknowingly, and it confused him.
Speaker 2: And like, yeah, Hank, but I think what confused him
Speaker 2: more was you just not being there because you're his dad.
Speaker 2: So Alice, again, this is I hinted at this earlier.
Speaker 2: This is the fifties. She is an alcoholic, and like
Speaker 2: every person who drinks too much in the fifties, she's
Speaker 2: also taking too many barbituates. Right, this is a great
Speaker 2: way to get really fucked up, and it's a great
Speaker 2: way to die suddenly, which unfortunately she does a few
Speaker 2: months after he starts boarding school. The same year his
Speaker 2: parents break up, the same year he sent away to
Speaker 2: boarding school, his mom dies driving past Mount Shasta from
Speaker 2: an interaction of alcohol and barbituates. This is unfathomably devastating
Speaker 2: for any child. Right, in the best case scenario, your
Speaker 2: mom dying suddenly is like the worst moment of your
Speaker 2: childhood obviously, right, you know, like that's the it's horrible
Speaker 2: let alone, like the fact that he is dealing with
Speaker 2: this and the breakup of his parents, and the fact
Speaker 2: that he has been sent to live alone at like
Speaker 2: a boarding school, right, and that his dad blames it
Speaker 2: on the fact that he has a bad brain.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that's what a learning disability is, but
Speaker 2: that's very much how people talk about this.
Speaker 3: I'm sure that in private, that was not how his
Speaker 3: father termed it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the fifties, not in the fifties. He's not being
Speaker 2: woke about this, right, And Hank is he's not an
Speaker 2: expert on tact and child rearing. So when again there's
Speaker 2: no internet, right, there's phone service and stuff, but like,
Speaker 2: as a kid, you're not connected to the world. Dennis
Speaker 2: is locked away at this school, his mom dies, and
Speaker 2: his dad decides not to tell him what he doesn't
Speaker 2: let him know, and Hank in his autobiography is like,
Speaker 2: I just couldn't bring myself to break the news over
Speaker 2: the phone, right, which like, well, you're rich there, go
Speaker 2: tell I get that, Like, yeah, maybe you want to
Speaker 2: tell him in person, go be with your boy. But
Speaker 2: he doesn't want to do that either, So instead of
Speaker 2: like going to see his son and telling him or
Speaker 2: calling him and telling him, he waits until the boy's
Speaker 2: mother is buried and then lets him know. And by
Speaker 2: the way, your mom's dad, sorry, bro, if like this,
Speaker 2: that's such a devastating, traumatizing way to handle that, Like
Speaker 2: not only are you alone, not only is your mom
Speaker 2: dad and we're split up, but like I'm not even
Speaker 2: gonna tell you until she's buried, And my god, that
Speaker 2: is so cruel. That's that is that's very abusive. Yeah, man,
Speaker 2: that's like we just talked about Steve Jobs being a
Speaker 2: bad dad. I don't think he would have done this,
Speaker 2: like he would have let the kid know that mom
Speaker 2: was dead. That's a ship, Dad, that Jesus and like
Speaker 2: this this the fact that he's not able to go
Speaker 2: to the funeral. Dennis would later say, fox him up right.
Speaker 2: Quote Mom had always been there when I needed her.
Speaker 2: I would have dealt with losing her a lot better
Speaker 2: had I been able to attend her funeral. Obviously, even
Speaker 2: in the fifties, most parents don't need that explained to them.
Speaker 2: Of course, the kids should be at the funeral. They
Speaker 2: should have the option at least.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, Like, I can't even imagine. How like
Speaker 3: when you're that age, like twelve, like well a normal
Speaker 3: twelve or thirteen year old, life is hard. Your body
Speaker 3: is changing, nothing makes sense. Kids are mean as shit.
Speaker 3: You don't see your parents, but your parents are divorced
Speaker 3: when that's unusual. You're sent across the country to a
Speaker 3: born school. You know your mom's an alcoholic. You're probably
Speaker 3: doing worse and it's not going great. And then one day, oh,
Speaker 3: by the way, your mom is in the ground. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you didn't get to say goodbye.
Speaker 2: Look, KD, I got good news and bad news. Bad
Speaker 2: news mom's dead. Good news. You don't gotta go shopping
Speaker 2: for a suit funeral's already done. I took care of
Speaker 2: that for you, buddy. Have a good time being abandoned.
Speaker 3: No more awkward holidays.
Speaker 2: Yeah you live in the school now. Yeah you're your
Speaker 2: mom sober God only marginally worse than what he actually did.
Speaker 2: So for his part, Hank is savvy enough in his
Speaker 2: autobiography to know that describing this story the way it
Speaker 2: actually happened would sound bad, so he explains her death
Speaker 2: in his autobiography in this rather baffling passage, the little
Speaker 2: girl from Malden that's his wife tried valiantly to cope.
Speaker 2: She was a splendid wife and a loving mother, but
Speaker 2: the world was spinning too quickly for her. She had
Speaker 2: nothing to hold her steady except the relief she found
Speaker 2: in barbituates and alcohol. My patients and knowledge of the
Speaker 2: disease were woefully lacking, and tragically, she succumbed shortly after
Speaker 2: her fortieth birthday.
Speaker 3: Cool that poetry doesn't really help. No.
Speaker 2: First off, he's nice in this paragraph to her she
Speaker 2: was a great wife and mother, but like it comes
Speaker 2: one paragraph after, he says she wasn't there for her
Speaker 2: her son because of the demon rum and all of
Speaker 2: those luncheons, So I don't really believe that he felt
Speaker 2: this way about her. And then the instant like the
Speaker 2: next thing that happens in this book, after he says
Speaker 2: that she dies tragically, is not him talking about the
Speaker 2: conversations he has with his son, you know, his attempts
Speaker 2: to cope with grief himself, his attempts to help his
Speaker 2: son deal with this. It is a sub chapter called
Speaker 2: blind Rebound Again, and this is literally about a rebound
Speaker 2: relationship he has. He goes from my wife died and
Speaker 2: not to Here's what happened to my son, Here's how
Speaker 2: I talked to him anything. He doesn't say anything about
Speaker 2: his kid at all, about the kid they share. That
Speaker 2: is the inspiration for the comic. That is why he
Speaker 2: has an autobiography. He goes to talking about a lady
Speaker 2: he wanted to fuck. This story starts at Disneyland where
Speaker 2: he's like, he's at Disneyland and he sees a young
Speaker 2: man who's alone and it makes him sad and it
Speaker 2: reminds him that it's nice to be with somebody, right.
Speaker 2: It was a sad sight and reminded me how much
Speaker 2: I depend on being with someone. This must be a
Speaker 2: reaction to all the crummy rooming houses and lonely weekends
Speaker 2: and holidays. I spent feeling sorry for myself, no question
Speaker 2: about it. I'd make a lousy monk.
Speaker 3: I would like to dig him up. He's so bad,
Speaker 3: punch him. What the fuck?
Speaker 2: It's such an evil moon man way of talking about,
Speaker 2: like your wife dying and abandoning your son. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, I completely gave up on our responsibilities as
Speaker 2: a father. But then at Disney World I realized having
Speaker 2: sex is nice.
Speaker 3: There is no empathy in this man.
Speaker 2: It's such a vile person.
Speaker 3: This is Scott Adams level of like I don't see
Speaker 3: beyond my own day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, at least you know, I don't know if
Speaker 2: this is true. But well, no, Scott, I'm not going
Speaker 2: to say at least with Scott Adams, I will say
Speaker 2: nothing for you.
Speaker 3: Scott good good.
Speaker 2: So look, I want to be clear here. I don't
Speaker 2: think he had a responsibility to stay in that marriage.
Speaker 2: I don't think anybody has.
Speaker 3: A responsibility unhappy.
Speaker 2: Marriage, whether or not they have a kid. But I
Speaker 2: do think that if the mother of your child dies,
Speaker 2: your job at that point, even if you're split up,
Speaker 2: is to focus more on that kid, right, because they've
Speaker 2: lost their mother and that's what parents should do. Your
Speaker 2: job is not to abandon them. So you can go
Speaker 2: get laid at disney World like that is the acceptable
Speaker 2: thing to do.
Speaker 3: Going to Disneyland to get some strange Yeah.
Speaker 2: Kind of weird, bizarre, bizarre, Robert, I really.
Speaker 1: Am going to revisit my take on titling for this thing.
Speaker 1: You can do the history's greatest monster.
Speaker 2: The history's greatest monster. For the tennis the menace guy,
Speaker 2: you can do that.
Speaker 1: I'm okay with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know who else? Sophie is history's greatest monster?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Is it capitalism?
Speaker 2: Our sponsors? Yeah, because they made you listen to this. Ah, everybody,
Speaker 2: we're back and we're just having a great time.
Speaker 3: Those are as in services, I feel contented.
Speaker 2: Dennis is enduring one of the most traumatic childhood experiences
Speaker 2: I can conceive of, and while he's doing this alone
Speaker 2: at a boarding school, his dad agrees to go on
Speaker 2: a blind date with a stewardess named joe Anne Stevens
Speaker 2: now Kank is clear that all he knows when he
Speaker 2: books this date is that she's a stewardess, and he
Speaker 2: informs us that people in his day called stewardess's stew's.
Speaker 2: I've actually read a lot about air travel in this
Speaker 2: period of time. I've never heard this before. I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna say he's wrong, but that's a stupid thing to
Speaker 2: call a stewardess.
Speaker 3: That sounds like something he called them, and he wants
Speaker 3: to it to sound like, yeah.
Speaker 2: Says stew's, stew's. What a weird thing to call a stewardess.
Speaker 2: You see those stews on the flight? Hey, STU, bring
Speaker 2: me some STU? What a weird What a weird time
Speaker 2: that was?
Speaker 3: I hate everything about that.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna try that next time I'm on a plane,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call the stewardess or stewardess STU, yat me
Speaker 2: some drinks.
Speaker 1: I feel like they should immediately go on to strike
Speaker 1: the first time STU is announced.
Speaker 2: Yeah that that's a strike worthy thing, and they can
Speaker 2: shut down the whole country. We saw it happen under Trump, right, yep.
Speaker 2: Stewardesses have a lot of power for stewart. I don't
Speaker 2: know what the there's probably another turn flight attendant, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: what are you gonna call them? You can't call them
Speaker 2: stews now, Flindant's that's a terrible thing to call them
Speaker 2: better than Stew's.
Speaker 1: Arguable, I agree it's better than Stew's.
Speaker 2: So this lady, Joanne Stevens works when he meets her,
Speaker 2: she's a stewardess on the specially chartered jet the Nixon
Speaker 2: administration is using the campaign. I know, I know, but
Speaker 2: I mean I will say for joe Anne that you
Speaker 2: must have hazard pay for that, the degree of harassment
Speaker 2: you have to encounter as a fifty stewardess on the
Speaker 2: Nixon plane.
Speaker 3: There is no part of her that wasn't.
Speaker 2: Pinched, indescribable. And Hank, by the way, very much a
Speaker 2: Nixon fan. He describes Yeah, He describes himself as being
Speaker 2: intoxicated by joe Anne's free spirit lifestyle and deciding that
Speaker 2: her influence convinced him it was time for him to travel,
Speaker 2: and this, eventually, through a somewhat cecuitous route, leads to
Speaker 2: him embarking on a new life overseas. He and Joanne
Speaker 2: get married, and he moves to Switzerland. To his credit,
Speaker 2: he does not leave Dennis behind. To his end, not credit,
Speaker 2: he does something a little worse. Here's how a People
Speaker 2: magazine article in nineteen ninety three describes what happened next.
Speaker 2: Dennis was sent to a local boarding school, where, already
Speaker 2: a slow student, he had even more difficulty learning foreign languages.
Speaker 2: His stepmother was unsympathetic. Joanne was unused to children, says Hank.
Speaker 2: She and Dennis didn't get along. What's unsaid here is
Speaker 2: that not only does Hank take joe anne being unused
Speaker 2: to children as an excuse to send his son back
Speaker 2: to the US, he does so pulls him out of
Speaker 2: whatever life he has in the States at a boarding school,
Speaker 2: puts him in this Swiss boarding school, makes fun of
Speaker 2: him basically for not being smart enough to pick up
Speaker 2: German overnight, and then when his new fling is like
Speaker 2: I don't really like kids, he sends his son back
Speaker 2: to an American boarding school alone on his birthday.
Speaker 3: What the fuck?
Speaker 2: This is like a psychological experiment for like how badly
Speaker 2: can you fuck up a child?
Speaker 3: This is mommy dearest level shit, It's really bad.
Speaker 2: Like I was like, can you hang most of an
Speaker 2: episode on like how bad apparent one guy was to
Speaker 2: one kid? And I guess you can because he is
Speaker 2: such a bad dad.
Speaker 3: Did he have a checklist of like well, no, let's
Speaker 3: just go fuck it all up. Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, is this guy like philipz Embardo secretly like carrying
Speaker 2: out some fucked up experiment for unclear reasons. Dennis eventually
Speaker 2: graduated from boarding school in nineteen sixty six, two years
Speaker 2: behind his original class. Hank and Joe Anne devoid a
Speaker 2: few years after this, and Hank remarried a woman named
Speaker 2: or remarried to a woman named Rolanda.
Speaker 3: Uh oh, so he basically sent his kid away for
Speaker 3: a marriage that even last.
Speaker 2: Yes, that doesn't last. The marriage with Rolanda does better.
Speaker 2: He has two children with her, and he does parent them.
Speaker 2: I'll give him this. He is much better with these kids,
Speaker 2: from everything we know, than he was with his first two,
Speaker 2: which doesn't really make up for not or with his
Speaker 2: first son, which doesn't really make up for it. I
Speaker 2: found a two bar, Robert, Yeah, not a high bar.
Speaker 2: I found an old two thousand and one article in
Speaker 2: the Pittsburgh Post Gazette by Sharon Randall, who talked to
Speaker 2: Hank before his death, and he expressed some regret here
Speaker 2: quote pausing a moment to rearrange some pencils on his desk,
Speaker 2: he added, sometimes young fathers scrambling to make a living,
Speaker 2: to climb the ladder. Leave it to the mother to
Speaker 2: do all the parental things. But you get back what
Speaker 2: you put into a child. It's like a piano. If
Speaker 2: you don't give it much attention, you won't get much
Speaker 2: out of it. And I actually you could frame that
Speaker 2: as growth, but I actually think that's bad because like
Speaker 2: you don't you shouldn't take care of your child because
Speaker 2: you get something from it. It's because that life you're
Speaker 2: responsible for. You helped create it, so you should take
Speaker 2: care of it as well as you can.
Speaker 3: I have a child, yeah six. I take her to
Speaker 3: all of her speech therapy appointments, I do her doctor
Speaker 3: appointments I do. I have no guarantee she will take
Speaker 3: care of every one day, and if not her fucking job,
Speaker 3: she may she may turn eight things like you know what,
Speaker 3: I'm out by old man. That's her right. I'll be heartbroken,
Speaker 3: I will be shattered, but it's her right. I didn't
Speaker 3: have a kid for an investment. I had a kid
Speaker 3: because I wanted to have a kid and I was
Speaker 3: able to. I have a partner who wanted to have
Speaker 3: a child as well.
Speaker 2: I am a strong believer in that children have no
Speaker 2: inherent responsibility to their parents. You did not ask to
Speaker 2: be brought into the world. You are not in debt
Speaker 2: to them. Parents have an inherent response. If you're going
Speaker 2: to create life, you have a responsibility to it, right,
Speaker 2: And he just ad gates it in the case of
Speaker 2: one of his kids. And then he's like, I was
Speaker 2: too interested in my career, which was based on my
Speaker 2: son to raise my son. He's like a piano, which
Speaker 2: is also fucked up because like he actually got a
Speaker 2: lot more out of his son, his first son, than
Speaker 2: he did the kids he actually raised because his first
Speaker 2: son is his meal ticket. But whatever I mean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, literally, the destroyed childhood of his first child r
Speaker 3: paid for the childhoods of all the other kids afterwards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so it works out well for them, right.
Speaker 2: So for Hank's part, the worse he was to his son,
Speaker 2: the better his cartoon Boy tended to do. In nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty nine, it inspired a live action adaptation, which is like,
Speaker 2: He's one of the first cartoon might have been the first.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it was the first, but it
Speaker 2: was certainly one of the first cartoons to get like
Speaker 2: a live action adaptation.
Speaker 3: There were a few others before that. I'm I'm sure
Speaker 3: Joe Paluka had one. Yeah, there were a few, but yeah,
Speaker 3: it was probably the most successful. But if you read
Speaker 3: the comic and then like see like it's it's a sitcom,
Speaker 3: it's nothing really like.
Speaker 2: No, and it's like there's people will talk about like
Speaker 2: the show being bad for its its child actor. I'm
Speaker 2: not going to bring that down as like a thing
Speaker 2: on Hank's against Hank.
Speaker 3: Because no, that's not his fault.
Speaker 2: That's most child actors have, at least up until very
Speaker 2: recently had. It's just a you probably shouldn't make a
Speaker 2: kid suddenly world famous.
Speaker 3: And I would say the physical and mental abuse that
Speaker 3: Jay North isn't I think he suffered was the fault
Speaker 3: of all the adults around him. Because it was his
Speaker 3: and an uncle or his managers, and they were the
Speaker 3: ones abusing him. It was obviously then uncle's fault, but
Speaker 3: also the adults who saw this and did fucking nothing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but you can't really blame Ketch them. He wasn't involved
Speaker 3: beyond he not paid. No.
Speaker 2: And it's one of those things every time I read
Speaker 2: about shit like this, I'm not a particular Harry Potter guy,
Speaker 2: but when it comes to the movies. Everything I've read about,
Speaker 2: like how both the parents of those kids and their
Speaker 2: co hosts were like, these kids, we have to really
Speaker 2: be on the ball to protect them, because this is
Speaker 2: going to be a disaster for all of them if
Speaker 2: we're not really careful. And it seems like they mostly
Speaker 2: have ended up pretty well. I know Daniel Radcliffe had
Speaker 2: is like his tough years, most of us do, but
Speaker 2: like he's doing great. I think the rest of them
Speaker 2: seem to be doing well. Like you got to be
Speaker 2: weird owl, Yeah, you got to be weird out. What
Speaker 2: more can you ask for in a life? So good
Speaker 2: on all of the adults involved in that situation, but
Speaker 2: not this one.
Speaker 3: There was no Ja Lloyd situation.
Speaker 2: There was Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh god, that's another bleak
Speaker 2: one man.
Speaker 3: Man. The world really hates kids.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sure does. Now. During this period after he
Speaker 2: moved to Geneva, Hank decided to stop reading the news.
Speaker 2: He's a millionaire by this point, and he decides there's
Speaker 2: nothing but bad stuff on the news, so he doesn't
Speaker 2: read it anymore. And because he's living in a foreign country,
Speaker 2: he feels like he needs to stay up to date
Speaker 2: on American culture. And he does this by subscribing to
Speaker 2: the Seers Catalog, which he claims gave him an accurate
Speaker 2: look at the esthetic of American life. This apparently worked. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know, Okay, I think what what works? I
Speaker 2: don't think he keeps up to date with American life.
Speaker 2: But what works about Dennis the Menace is that it's
Speaker 2: kind of permanently stuck in an idolized version of the
Speaker 2: fifties that never existed, right, Which is fine for a cartoon.
Speaker 2: It's fine if it's not based on your real life
Speaker 2: and the family you abandoned.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: For people that don't know what Sears is, can you
Speaker 1: explain that before?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, anymore?
Speaker 2: Kids know how? Like Target and Walmart? They're these big
Speaker 2: stores people used to go to before Amazon to buy stuff.
Speaker 2: Well back even before then, people would buy stuff they
Speaker 2: Sears had some big stores, but mostly they had a
Speaker 2: catalog and it would go to your house where you
Speaker 2: lived on the prairie with your family until you all
Speaker 2: died of diphtheria, and you would order stuff once a
Speaker 2: year from the Sears catalog to get the things you needed,
Speaker 2: and they sold everything you could get, house kits they sold.
Speaker 2: We have multiple guns that are antiques that were originally
Speaker 2: sold to people mailed to their door through catalogs. I
Speaker 2: don't have any automatic weapons, but they would ship you
Speaker 2: machine guns.
Speaker 3: Back then, they had their own, They had their own
Speaker 3: knockoff atari in the Yeah, did we had a bunch
Speaker 3: of cartridges that worked in their tarty six hundred.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: From them.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's it's a wild tale. So that's how
Speaker 2: he stays in touch. And it's one of those things.
Speaker 2: Dennis the Menace is successful in large part because it
Speaker 2: stays trapped in the past, and this was very much
Speaker 2: due to Hank's personality. He told The Washington Post, turmoil
Speaker 2: is something I don't need other than what I generate myself,
Speaker 2: which is shows more self knowledge than the rest of
Speaker 2: the statements he makes.
Speaker 3: Damn man.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately for Hank, but fortunately for the rest of the world.
Speaker 2: During kind of the period where Dennis the Menace is
Speaker 2: hitting its stride, the civil rights movement is also picking
Speaker 2: up steam. Right this kind of the mid sixties is
Speaker 2: when when a lot of that stuff really starts to
Speaker 2: to boil over and Hank, living this wealthy Geneva expat life,
Speaker 2: is like scared and kind of angry at all of
Speaker 2: this stuff he's seeing, which is like confusing and threatening
Speaker 2: to him, and he retreats inside of himself more and
Speaker 2: more as the civil rights movement goes on. He expressed
Speaker 2: to The Washington Post later a sentiment that he kind
Speaker 2: of in Dennis the Menace, he replaced the real, tumultuous
Speaker 2: America of the day with his own cartoon version. And
Speaker 2: I think it's also true that he replaced his own
Speaker 2: tumultuous and failed first family with this fake version. Right,
Speaker 2: both of these are things that he's doing with this cartoon.
Speaker 2: He's very much using it as a tool to escape reality.
Speaker 2: He is a lifelong Republican voter, so perhaps this is
Speaker 2: not surprising, but.
Speaker 3: That's not excuse because you have people wing al cap
Speaker 3: who are lifelong Republicans. And he used his power to
Speaker 3: do a comic call the Martin Looking Junior in the
Speaker 3: Montgomery story, Oh, to promote Martin Luking Junior, because and
Speaker 3: al Capp is a piece of shit, but like he's
Speaker 3: still one thing about him. He was for integration.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a kind of guy you had back then.
Speaker 2: Like there's there's a number of those from entertainment where
Speaker 2: it's like well, this man was a monster everywhere else
Speaker 2: in his life, but he was firmly on the side
Speaker 2: of integration.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Capp was a big admirer of King. And you know,
Speaker 3: then you have like Charles Schultz.
Speaker 2: We're talking about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm gonna hide.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh yeah, oh god, this that's what's coming up here, buddy.
Speaker 3: Oh no, so uh.
Speaker 2: I do want to continue first with a quote from
Speaker 2: that Washington Post article. It is a world where ketch
Speaker 2: Him is in control. These are people I want to
Speaker 2: live with, he says of the characters and the musical
Speaker 2: so familiar from the cartoon Dennis, his parents Alice and
Speaker 2: Henry Mitchell, and their next door neighbors, George and Martha Wilson.
Speaker 2: If they aren't what I like, I erased them. The
Speaker 2: headlines can be murderous and bloody, but in my world,
Speaker 2: the birds are singing, and that is such a telling line.
Speaker 2: If they aren't what I like, I erased them, because
Speaker 2: that is what you did to your own son, mm hmm,
Speaker 2: like when he didn't turn out the way you wanted
Speaker 2: as a small child.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now you won't be surprised to hear from that that
Speaker 2: the world he creates does not include black people for
Speaker 2: quite some time. Right, Yeah, Hank's cartoon is not unlike
Speaker 2: most popular culture made by white people in that time, right,
Speaker 2: and that it ignored the existence of black Americans to
Speaker 2: a large degree. And like, I think one of the
Speaker 2: first times I was aware of this is a kid.
Speaker 2: Every Christmas my family would watch the Bing Crosby Danny
Speaker 2: k movie White Christmas. Stuff about that movie. The only
Speaker 2: black people you see are working as like white staff
Speaker 2: on a train, right, and they don't say anything. That's
Speaker 2: the only time you see any black people in that movie.
Speaker 2: That was just I mean, that was It's not good,
Speaker 2: but that was like not Hank is not unique, right,
Speaker 2: And in this in his criteria.
Speaker 3: There was a problem in general with black representation and
Speaker 3: comic sup It's like, if you wanted to see black representation,
Speaker 3: either it was blackfrees characters, yeah, or you had to
Speaker 3: go to black newspaper papers where you have comic strips,
Speaker 3: which that the world of black comic strips are amazing
Speaker 3: and none of people know about them.
Speaker 2: Is there any reading you might recommend on that you
Speaker 2: could pull up.
Speaker 3: My spouse has actually been going through archives and collecting
Speaker 3: old strips. If you want to send you a file
Speaker 3: of some of the ones we have found, because we've
Speaker 3: found some really cool ones.
Speaker 2: I mean, that'd be a great thing to be able
Speaker 2: to like host and just let people go through.
Speaker 3: If it's post that is the goal, I think a
Speaker 3: lot of it. Well, it's it's but even then, like
Speaker 3: I have an article that was published in seventy three
Speaker 3: when Beatle Bailey brought in a black character and how
Speaker 3: there were newspapers in seventy three dropping it. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: mart Walker's response was, it's unrealistic to have a comic
Speaker 3: about the army and not have a black character at present.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's like it's nineteen sixty five is when
Speaker 2: a major publisher produces the first dedicated comic book with
Speaker 2: a black hero, Right, is that Lobo? Yeah, it's Lobo
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty five, and that's just two years after the
Speaker 2: first black man wins an Academy Award for a leading role.
Speaker 2: And it's it's Sydney Poidier.
Speaker 3: Obviously that it was also Del Commons do del Commas,
Speaker 3: as I recall, they were kind of in their Hail
Speaker 3: Marry years and they were just desperately trying. Yeah, there
Speaker 3: had been a comic in the forties. I can't remember
Speaker 3: the name that all Negro Comics, which was created in
Speaker 3: forty seven, and it was created by back black creators.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is this is a period where I mean,
Speaker 2: like that kind of stuff I think I would love
Speaker 2: to know more about. Like it's it's it's such an
Speaker 2: uphill battle, right to try and to try and make
Speaker 2: sure that, like the the popular culture that most people
Speaker 2: see as reflecting America includes black people, right, Like that
Speaker 2: that's that's such a struggle during this period of time.
Speaker 2: I think a lot about like you watch those old
Speaker 2: Star Trek episodes and like a Hurrah often doesn't have
Speaker 2: a whole lot to do. They clearly like didn't always
Speaker 2: know what should we have this character doing. But just
Speaker 2: like having you know, Whoopie Goldberg talks about this, just
Speaker 2: the fact that there was a black woman on television
Speaker 2: that wasn't anybody's maide, that was like doing a real job,
Speaker 2: that was an officer like everybody else, was a huge
Speaker 2: fucking deal. And you know that extends to the world
Speaker 2: of cartoons. And I think one of the first, maybe
Speaker 2: the first really major white cartoonists to start including a
Speaker 2: black character in his cartoon was Charles Schultz, as you
Speaker 2: kind of hinted at a bit ago, nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 2: is when he introduces Franklin. And I want to talk
Speaker 2: about Schultz for a little bit, not because what he
Speaker 2: does is like heroic. It's not. It's beyond the minimum,
Speaker 2: but it's not like a wild act of radicalism or whatever.
Speaker 2: We're going to be covering how Hank handles the same situation,
Speaker 2: and I want to start with how a basically decent man.
Speaker 2: And I think Chuck Schultz was a basically decent man.
Speaker 3: I've never heard a bad word about him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never heard a bad word about him. Handles
Speaker 2: integrating a black character into his cartoon and why he
Speaker 2: does it. Here's what he says about the decision to
Speaker 2: add Franklin to the comic strip later. I could have
Speaker 2: put him in long before that, but for other reasons
Speaker 2: I didn't. I didn't want to intrude upon the work
Speaker 2: of others. I think he's talking about some of those
Speaker 2: black cartoonists you mentioned earlier here, so I held off
Speaker 2: on that. But finally I put Franklin in. And there
Speaker 2: was one strip where Charlie Brown and Franklin had been
Speaker 2: playing on the beach, and Franklin said, well, it's been
Speaker 2: nice being with you. Come on over to my house
Speaker 2: sometime again. They didn't like that. Another editor protested once
Speaker 2: when Franklin was sitting in the same row of school
Speaker 2: desks with Pepper and Patty and said, we have enough
Speaker 2: trouble here in the South without you showing the kids
Speaker 2: together in school. But I never paid attention to those things.
Speaker 2: And I remember telling Larry Rutman, president of United Features
Speaker 2: Syndicate at the time, about Franklin. He wanted me to
Speaker 2: change it, and we talked about it for a long
Speaker 2: time on the phone, and I finally sighed and said, well, Larry,
Speaker 2: let's put it this way. Either you print it just
Speaker 2: the way I draw it, or I quit. How's that.
Speaker 2: So that's the way things ended. But I've never done
Speaker 2: much with Franklin because I don't do race things. I'm
Speaker 2: not an expert on race. I don't know what it's
Speaker 2: like to grow up as a little black boy. And
Speaker 2: I think that gives you a really good idea of
Speaker 2: like how a well meaning person would handle this. First off,
Speaker 2: he does go beyond the minimum here when he's like, look, man,
Speaker 2: who's your next pick for Charles Schultz, if I won't
Speaker 2: make this comic for you peanuts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he was at the height of his popularity, absolutely,
Speaker 3: and like it was, it would have been a big
Speaker 3: deal and that's meaningful. Yeah, it would for him to
Speaker 3: walk away from that, that's a walk away from a
Speaker 3: lot of money.
Speaker 2: He's arguably not maybe not the only cartoonist, but certainly
Speaker 2: one of the only cartoonists who could have forced something
Speaker 2: like this into a major cartoon, who could have forced
Speaker 2: them to show like integrated schools and stuff in his
Speaker 2: cartoon because he had that much cloud. And it's good
Speaker 2: that he used it that way.
Speaker 3: There were other people who could have. But like from
Speaker 3: the article from seventy three, I remember like Ernie Bushmuller,
Speaker 3: who did an Nancy was like, no, I don't want
Speaker 3: to no, I don't want to touch political stuff that
Speaker 3: he Yeah, one of my predecessors, Bud Sagingdorf, worked in Popeye.
Speaker 3: I kind of get his viewpoint. He's like, the way
Speaker 3: I draw everyone, when you put a brown skin tone
Speaker 3: on them, it looks like a racist character. Is like,
Speaker 3: I don't want to make this worse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that's not unfair necessarily.
Speaker 3: Like he was understanding like, if I do this, it
Speaker 3: looks Yeah, the history of comics and how black people
Speaker 3: have been treated in.
Speaker 2: Comics, I shouldn't be the guy to do this, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's fair. And I think that what Schultz did again,
Speaker 2: I think it's I don't want to go like overboard
Speaker 2: praising him because he's not putting his life on the
Speaker 2: line here. But I think what he is doing, what
Speaker 2: he would say he's doing, is he's looking at people
Speaker 2: putting their lives on the line and saying, well, like,
Speaker 2: I am in a position where I can force this
Speaker 2: through and I should, right. I don't really know how
Speaker 2: to write this character. But maybe that's not what matters
Speaker 2: right now. What matters is just showing that Charlie Brown's America,
Speaker 2: which is one of the most popular depictions of fictional America,
Speaker 2: includes black people, Right, And that's a good thing to do, Right,
Speaker 2: That's a that's a praiseworthy some amount of praise at least.
Speaker 2: That's it's worthing.
Speaker 3: Not that he'd never really talked about there during his lifetime.
Speaker 3: It's only in the last few years that's come out. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and they're actually doing a short I think where I
Speaker 3: may come out a cartoon special. Yeah, about Franklin. That's
Speaker 3: a retelling of that first storyline.
Speaker 2: And I think it's also perfectly fair for Schultz to
Speaker 2: be like, look, man, I'm not the guy to start
Speaker 2: making points about like race in America or like try
Speaker 2: to depict the life of a young black boy in
Speaker 2: the sixties. No, he's not right when it comes to Pena,
Speaker 2: I shouldn't be doing that. I just want to make
Speaker 2: people to know that he's here. And I think that
Speaker 2: is respectable, and I think it's worth covering this respectable
Speaker 2: attempt to add, like to integrate the world of comics.
Speaker 2: You could say with what Hank Ketcham does. About two
Speaker 2: years after Schultz Debut's Franklin in nineteen seventy, Hank Ketcham
Speaker 2: adds his first black character to Dennis the Menace and Randy,
Speaker 2: have you seen this comic?
Speaker 3: I did not know there was a black character.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, his name is Jackson, and I'm just gonna
Speaker 2: have so if you show it to you and you can.
Speaker 3: Just hold on, he's I can get my what the fuck?
Speaker 3: What the fuck that is? He's a sambo character.
Speaker 2: I don't think that is white lips. That is the
Speaker 2: best way to describe him. I don't know how to
Speaker 2: actually like describe how he draws this character.
Speaker 3: I will with one character with white lips. He is
Speaker 3: a cart He's a nineteen forties character.
Speaker 2: Oh, I have seen and the caption we'll get to that.
Speaker 2: I want to know, like I thought when I saw this,
Speaker 2: because I used to do a lot of stalking Nazis online,
Speaker 2: I have seen neo Nazi comics from the nineties that
Speaker 2: depicted black people almost identically to the way that he
Speaker 2: does in this Like it is bad people, some.
Speaker 3: Of the movie bad So. My spouse and I one
Speaker 3: of our hobbies as we go through newspaper archives. I
Speaker 3: love looking for lost comic strips that note but that
Speaker 3: means I also see a lot of really weird racist
Speaker 3: shit from the nineteen ten and nineteen This could have
Speaker 3: been printed in nineteen twenty one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's wild how bad it is for nineteen seventy.
Speaker 3: That is, he has giant white lips. You can't see
Speaker 3: his nose. He is ink black. He is as black
Speaker 3: as the father's hair.
Speaker 2: And like he doesn't have like the Popeye guy. I
Speaker 2: get that argument. Like my all of my characters are caricatures.
Speaker 2: I don't really know how to draw a black person
Speaker 2: and not have it look like a.
Speaker 3: Problem different from everything else he ever draws.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, he draws normal looking people as a general rule.
Speaker 3: Now here's my question, though, I need to know this. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Ketchum did have ghost artists and ghost writers.
Speaker 2: No, this was him.
Speaker 3: Oh, this was Hims.
Speaker 2: It was not Wiseman that I don't think has even
Speaker 2: started yet. This is him.
Speaker 3: No, how Wise been working in the fifties, but he
Speaker 3: was mostly working on the comic book I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I like and the comic book he talks
Speaker 2: about that that winds up coming on and coming off
Speaker 2: because it gets too expensive. But like, yeah, this is
Speaker 2: because he writes about this.
Speaker 3: Like he takes he takes credit for this.
Speaker 2: He takes credit for this.
Speaker 3: Yes, oh shit, I wouldn't.
Speaker 2: And there is so that the cartoon we're talking about,
Speaker 2: we were so bold over by how racist it is.
Speaker 2: Like it is. You've got Dennis the MENACE's dad mowing
Speaker 2: the lawn and he's looking over and there's Dennis, and
Speaker 2: there's Jackson, and Dennis said.
Speaker 3: The father looks terrified.
Speaker 2: The father looks scared to see this little boy. Dennis says,
Speaker 2: I'm having some race trouble with Jackson, he runs faster
Speaker 2: than I do. What is that saying?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 2: Like, what is that even saying? Like I know what
Speaker 2: he's saying is like Dennis doesn't see race, right, Like
Speaker 2: that is the actual point of the comments, which.
Speaker 3: Is also it's funny. It's a holy, I don't understand thing.
Speaker 2: And again, like there's something quietly political about that first
Speaker 2: like Franklin strip where because he's just making the point that,
Speaker 2: like Franklin is welcome in Charlie Brown's home, right, And
Speaker 2: actually in that time that is kind of a political statement.
Speaker 3: It's like the same part of mister Rogers episode where
Speaker 3: yes he shares a foot wash with a black man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or when he like shares a hug or something
Speaker 2: with like that guy who was suffering from HIV to
Speaker 2: be like, look, you don't have to treat these people
Speaker 2: with Is that a subtle politic, Yes, a subtle, meaningful,
Speaker 2: earnest politics as opposed to whatever the fuck this is.
Speaker 2: And a lot of people get angry at this cartoon.
Speaker 2: Hank even alleges that there are violent attacks as a
Speaker 2: result of this cartoon. This is from his autobiography, a
Speaker 2: harmless little play on words and I felt a soft,
Speaker 2: amusing beginning. Not so. The rumbles started in Detroit, then
Speaker 2: moved south to Saint Louis, where rocks and bottles were
Speaker 2: thrown through the windows of the Post Dispatch newspaper. Boys
Speaker 2: were being chased and hassled in Little Rock, and in
Speaker 2: Miami some herald editors were being threatened. The cancer quickly
Speaker 2: spread to others large cities.
Speaker 3: Am I wrong? No? Is the children who are?
Speaker 2: It's the people? And like, did you ever describe racism
Speaker 2: as a cancer or just people getting angry that you
Speaker 2: drew a slur in your cartoon, Hank, I.
Speaker 3: Would say, if he has a you know what, I
Speaker 3: drew this, and I did not think about the fact
Speaker 3: I was thinking that with the mind of a man
Speaker 3: born the twenties. Yeah, like I should have stepped back.
Speaker 3: I should have He needed someone in that room to
Speaker 3: say that's not okay.
Speaker 2: It does say a lot about the state of the
Speaker 2: industry that this comic presumably passes through a bunch of
Speaker 2: people's hands before it goes up it.
Speaker 3: Dude, I did a comic not long ago that was
Speaker 3: it was a throwaway Popeye strip and the joke was
Speaker 3: when I was a child, I was convinced the song
Speaker 3: Caughton Eye Joe was about a zombie. So I just
Speaker 3: trip about that and when my editor is like, heyesse,
Speaker 3: you know there might be some racist history to that song.
Speaker 3: And so there was a meeting about the strip, and
Speaker 3: I mean, there's an article it's questionable. And my whole
Speaker 3: thing was like, okay, we'll just pull it, Like just
Speaker 3: pull it, like even if it's not true, someone out
Speaker 3: there might think it. I don't want to hurt someone's feelings.
Speaker 3: But like, multiple editors got together with me. We had
Speaker 3: a big discussion on it. Yeah, and that looked nothing
Speaker 3: like this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure the extent of this conversation was, like
Speaker 2: he sends this cartoon, an editor on his fourth high
Speaker 2: ball of at lunch was like.
Speaker 3: Great work.
Speaker 2: You're gonna fix the race problem in this country. And
Speaker 2: then back to drinking eyeballs, like if that had.
Speaker 3: Run in fifty five, I'm like, oh, yeah, of course
Speaker 3: it fucking ran.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but seventies wild stuff.
Speaker 3: Oh my fucking god.
Speaker 2: So he describes being mad as hell at the reaction
Speaker 2: that this gets and shamed he ought to be. Snopes
Speaker 2: notes that at the time, a number of newspapers ran
Speaker 2: apologies to their readers for this cartoon, and they provide
Speaker 2: an example from the Cleveland Press. Yesterday's Dennis the Menace
Speaker 2: cartoon offended a number of Press readers. The press apologizes
Speaker 2: for the affront caused by the cartoonist. It assures subscribers
Speaker 2: that such a thing will not happen again.
Speaker 3: Oh I'm sure he was not happy about that. No,
Speaker 3: he was not.
Speaker 2: And normally I would say, why don't throw the cartoonist
Speaker 2: under the bus? In this case, yeah, throw the cartoonist
Speaker 2: under the bus.
Speaker 3: Hobble him so he can't get out of the way yet,
Speaker 3: so just let it go.
Speaker 2: So catch him for reasons that are known only to God,
Speaker 2: would make one more comic feature Ring Jackson. I will
Speaker 2: say this Jackson is drawn less racist ly than before.
Speaker 2: Not well, not good, but not the same.
Speaker 3: I'm dreadnossd.
Speaker 2: It's still not good. It's still maybe a little definitely
Speaker 2: a little bit of a problem, but uh better, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: yeah better.
Speaker 3: I would actually think that's a totally different character, to
Speaker 3: be honest.
Speaker 2: Yes, it is drawn wildly differently.
Speaker 3: So for the people who obviously can't see this, the
Speaker 3: character is drawn less of as a giant ink blot child,
Speaker 3: he still seems to have white lips, which is not good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but also the like a third of his head
Speaker 2: is white. I think just because of like where the
Speaker 2: light's supposed.
Speaker 3: To be the shine. But at this point in time
Speaker 3: that black characters are shown with like a crosshatching, Franklin
Speaker 3: was drawn the same way a lot of Like it's
Speaker 3: just kind of how it was done. Yeah. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: don't agree with it, but it's truth. Yeah. But yeah again,
Speaker 3: like the white lips, like that's a weird tell tale
Speaker 3: like that all you had to do was give like
Speaker 3: the textured hair.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: I mean, look at a comic Curtis, which is a
Speaker 3: granted drawn by a black creator, Like you can give
Speaker 3: features that denote African American heritage without going to fucking stereotypes. Yeah,
Speaker 3: arms are still jet black.
Speaker 2: I think another thing you could do, and maybe other
Speaker 2: cartoonists could have done too, is like, well, I don't
Speaker 2: know how to draw this cartoon or make a point.
Speaker 2: I'll just have a black cartoonist take over my strip
Speaker 2: for a day, you know, yeah, like like put out something.
Speaker 2: You don't have to do this, Hank, Like you could
Speaker 2: use your clout here some other way.
Speaker 3: Or actually hire a consultant, a black what go to
Speaker 3: someone and say, like give them money because they shouldn't
Speaker 3: have to do it for free.
Speaker 2: Particularly after your first cartoon causes a riot, like oh,
Speaker 2: you're not the one to handle this anymore. And the
Speaker 2: cartoon itself is yeah, his mom's got two cookies and
Speaker 2: she's like looking at the two boys.
Speaker 3: And again she's nervous.
Speaker 2: She's nervous. Dennis has his hand out towards Jackson. He's
Speaker 2: like me and Jackson are exactly the same age, only
Speaker 2: he's different. He's left handed. And again it's the same
Speaker 2: punchline where like all of you, you know, silly Americans
Speaker 2: and the civil rights movement care so much about race,
Speaker 2: Dennis the menace, the boy I invented while ignoring my
Speaker 2: own son, doesn't even see race, you know, like.
Speaker 3: He feels like a concervative, Like, well, my character gets it.
Speaker 3: What's wrong with you, liberals?
Speaker 2: I'm much woker than you, but for living in Geneva
Speaker 2: and ignoring the Civil rights movement. As the years go on,
Speaker 2: Hank is going to increasingly defiantly avoid any interaction with
Speaker 2: the real world or any hint that life for a
Speaker 2: regular Americans was no longer the bland fifties daydream he
Speaker 2: depicted in Dennis the Menace and had actually himself failed
Speaker 2: to live in the nineteen fifties. And we are going
Speaker 2: to talk about what happens to the real dnnis after
Speaker 2: he gets out of school. But first, what's going to
Speaker 2: happen to you is you're going to listen to these ads.
Speaker 2: We're back, so we're talking about the real Dennis the
Speaker 2: Menace again. Now he gets out of school in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty six. He never benefited from the protection his father's
Speaker 2: wealth might have allowed him, and he joins the Marine
Speaker 2: Corps in nineteen sixty six. Shit yes, and he goes
Speaker 2: straight to Vietnam. He is stationed in Vietnam and he sees,
Speaker 2: from what I can tell, pretty heavy combat.
Speaker 3: So unlike his father who was drafted, he sees action.
Speaker 2: Yes, he has a bad tour. People Magazine quotes him
Speaker 2: as saying, my grandmother and aunt sent me letters, but
Speaker 2: never Dad. When People Magazine went to Hank and were like,
Speaker 2: did you not send your son letters when he was
Speaker 2: in Vietnam, they note quote Hank insists he did write
Speaker 2: to his son. I know who. I believe it's based
Speaker 2: on the rest of this story. I know who I believe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's if I'm not mistaken. He was also in
Speaker 3: the seventies doing like a military comical half Hitch, wasn't he? Oh?
Speaker 1: Was he?
Speaker 3: Yeah? He kitcham did a strip? Oh no way, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm double checking it. He did it like during That
Speaker 3: was his World War II comic Half Hitch. But he
Speaker 3: brought it back from seventy to seventy five.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, for just at the tail end of Vietnam.
Speaker 2: Huh a couple of years after. Weird, that's peculiar, but
Speaker 2: not interested in his own son, who was technically serving
Speaker 2: in a branch of the Navy. Sorry Marines. That's the truth.
Speaker 2: So Dennis the Minis sees some shit in Vietnam and
Speaker 2: he comes home with severe PTSD. The real Dennis the
Speaker 2: Menace is a traumatized nom veteran. He has trouble functioning
Speaker 2: in society. He is unable to really hold down a
Speaker 2: job for a considerable period of time. He moves through
Speaker 2: a lot of like low paid gigs. He's a prison
Speaker 2: guard for a while, he's a ranch hand, and by
Speaker 2: night he's living in Ohio and is generally described in
Speaker 2: articles at the time as being estranged from his father.
Speaker 2: When some people would reach out, he would make comments
Speaker 2: to the effect that like, yeah, being having a popular
Speaker 2: comic named after me and based on me by my
Speaker 2: dad who abandoned me, really messed with me. And again
Speaker 2: Hank's response to this is these things happen. They don't.
Speaker 3: No, they really don't. Yeah, really shouldn't now.
Speaker 2: For reasons that probably aren't surprising, the real Dennis the
Speaker 2: Menace has a tumultuous personal life. He has several divorces
Speaker 2: for reasons I don't know. He is legally barred for
Speaker 2: a time from seeing his teenage daughter Jennifer. Probably not
Speaker 2: a great story there, that People article concludes. Every now
Speaker 2: and then, as he did a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 2: Dennis phones his father. I see your movie is out,
Speaker 2: said Dennis. And this is when the movie with the
Speaker 2: guy from U fuck Edrithews bears Walter Matthous.
Speaker 3: From Lloyd to the villain in the movie.
Speaker 2: You're right, we'll talk about we'll talk about Walter Matthew
Speaker 2: in a second that No, No, I love Walter math out.
Speaker 2: I see your movie is out, said Dennis. I hope
Speaker 2: you see it. Hank replied, Dennis said he hoped to.
Speaker 2: He then announced that he and Janet, who's his wife
Speaker 2: at the time, are quitting their jobs and resettling in
Speaker 2: the Southwest, and asked his father to help finance their move.
Speaker 2: That's the way many of our conversations go, says Hank sadly.
Speaker 2: And like when you're reading every article you can find
Speaker 2: about a guy, which I did for Hank, a funny
Speaker 2: thing happens, which is that you pick up some patterns
Speaker 2: in multiple interviews. He will tell people in this period
Speaker 2: of time, my son only calls me to ask for money.
Speaker 2: There's one exception to this, and it's a two thousand
Speaker 2: and one article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette by Sharon Randall,
Speaker 2: and in it, Hank speaks very differently about this part
Speaker 2: of their relationship. Quote when I asked about Dennis, he said,
Speaker 2: he checks in about twice a year, and if he
Speaker 2: needs something, I try to help him. That's a really
Speaker 2: different response from he only calls me when he wants money, right.
Speaker 3: Which makes you think he caught some flack.
Speaker 2: Did he catch some flack? Is it just because the
Speaker 2: interviewer is a woman? Is he like into her? Does
Speaker 2: he want to impress her Like I couldn't tell you
Speaker 2: why he phrases it this way, but it really stuck
Speaker 2: out to me, where every other time he's like he
Speaker 2: just wants money, and this time he's like, I try
Speaker 2: to help him when I.
Speaker 3: Can, you know, try to be again. Yeah, and let's
Speaker 3: suspect again.
Speaker 2: In addition to like the I don't think that like
Speaker 2: kids have a responsibility to your parents. If you have
Speaker 2: money as a parent, I don't think you have a
Speaker 2: responsibility to make your kids rich. I think it's actually
Speaker 2: terrible for them if you do. But if you base
Speaker 2: a cartoon on your son and kind of destroy his
Speaker 2: childhood partly as a result of that, you probably do
Speaker 2: owe him some of your millions. You should probably give
Speaker 2: him some of your riches.
Speaker 3: If I made a comic based off my daughter and
Speaker 3: it became like I would feel like I'd have to
Speaker 3: put at least some of the money aside for her.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think most people would.
Speaker 3: Because she had no abilit she's sick.
Speaker 2: She can't no to that, and it's gonna affect her
Speaker 2: life less now. But like back then, especially like cartoons
Speaker 2: being as central as they were to like child culture. Yeah, now,
Speaker 2: in that article, that People article by Michael Lipton. There's
Speaker 2: a very devastating line where this comes from part of
Speaker 2: the interview with Dennis. Quote. Dad can be like a stranger,
Speaker 2: counters Dennis, who has never met his two half siblings.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I think that if he died tomorrow, I wouldn't
Speaker 2: feel anything. That's that's what we call in the narrative business,
Speaker 2: a setup. So as soon as he's able to justify it, Hank,
Speaker 2: as you've noted, takes a back seat in the production
Speaker 2: of his own cartoon. He brings some ghostwriters and artists
Speaker 2: to draw it. And I don't think there's anything wrong
Speaker 2: with that. Shit.
Speaker 3: No, that's happens.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Behind the Bastards is still a one man shop in
Speaker 2: terms of the writing of episodes. But you know, if
Speaker 2: I ever got the chance to retire wealthy and have
Speaker 2: some some zoomer pretend to be me and use an
Speaker 2: AI voice, maybe I've done that already. Maybe you don't know,
Speaker 2: You'll never know if it's still me. I mean, you know, Randy, and.
Speaker 3: You know so Bay guys like I could see you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can see me. So I don't know. I'm
Speaker 2: not gonna I'm not gonna shit talk him on that,
Speaker 2: especially since it's not an AI. Actual artists are getting
Speaker 2: their stars, are building careers drawing the Dennist the Menace cartoon.
Speaker 3: It is a very common thing throughout this entire industry.
Speaker 3: So what's being wrong with that? The only cartoonist I
Speaker 3: know of who was very big who refused, lets someone
Speaker 3: draws comic with Charles.
Speaker 2: Schultz, Yeah, yeah, Schultz, and obviously in Waterson.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Waterson, yeah, obviously yeah yeah. And Larson, Harry Larson
Speaker 3: pretty sure, oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah yeah yeah. And also like those are guys,
Speaker 2: like I think Larson just brought it back. If I'm
Speaker 2: not mistaken, he's.
Speaker 3: Book I believe he's doing them yea. And Waterson also
Speaker 3: came from a different field. Waterson came from political comics, yes,
Speaker 3: and like you can tell for his line work, that's
Speaker 3: what he started out as. And I think when you
Speaker 3: have political comics like Berkeley Breathe or Gryto, like that's
Speaker 3: just not a field that normally has cost artists.
Speaker 1: Got it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was a huge Bloom County fan as a
Speaker 2: kid too. Didn't understand a lot of the comments about
Speaker 2: like fucking the Symbionese Liberation Army and ship the news dropping,
Speaker 2: but love that opus.
Speaker 3: He's so fun.
Speaker 2: I love cutter John, Yeah yeah, Bill a cat great stuff.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I got no issue with the fact that
Speaker 2: he gives up drawing his cartoon gradually. Obviously that makes
Speaker 2: sense to me. He does it in favor of spending
Speaker 2: his free time painting arts. He depictions of jazz singers
Speaker 2: and other like he tries to start a fine art career,
Speaker 2: and he would claim later in life that this is
Speaker 2: the work he wanted to be remembered by. Dennis the
Speaker 2: menace was, he admitted, just a money generator. His art
Speaker 2: was what he was really in. Like that that was
Speaker 2: the posterity, right, he says, He says in this interview
Speaker 2: with s F Gate. Now my painting, that's something else.
Speaker 2: My bid to posterity is my paintings. And here's a
Speaker 2: painting he did of Jesus.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna hate this, sir.
Speaker 2: I it's it's just weird. It's not bad, it's not bad,
Speaker 2: but it's weird.
Speaker 3: What the hell?
Speaker 2: I guess that's hair because it's like on his armpits
Speaker 2: and his chest. It looks like he's sticking into him. Yeah,
Speaker 2: a little odd, but like, like not bad. I wouldn't say.
Speaker 3: It's definitely it has influences of his It's weird he
Speaker 3: doesn't want to remember for his comic because I know
Speaker 3: a lot of artists, yeah, who love his line work,
Speaker 3: like his line work was very influenced.
Speaker 2: Certainly, I mean he's a good, good darget illustrator. I
Speaker 2: certainly I find Dennis the Menace. I can probably recall
Speaker 2: the basic animation of that cartoon with my eyes closed.
Speaker 2: And I don't think I'll remember this Jesus painting very much.
Speaker 2: Yea like bomba?
Speaker 3: Is that Obama Jesus?
Speaker 2: No, he didn't live that long, so he wouldn't have
Speaker 2: done it. And here's an untitled painting a bearded man.
Speaker 2: This is this one's weirder and untitled painting of a
Speaker 2: bearded man in a dog collar reaching for a cigarette
Speaker 2: while a dominatrix stands over him.
Speaker 3: What the hell?
Speaker 2: That's a weird painting from the fucking Dennis the Menace guy. Huh.
Speaker 2: There's no title to it, so I don't know what
Speaker 2: he was going for with this, Like I I it
Speaker 2: clearly that's a dominatrix though, right, both of those.
Speaker 3: Dominator Yeah, a pair of dominatrixes dominatrixes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the guy's got like a golden or a
Speaker 2: bronze collar. He's got like spiked collars around his hands too,
Speaker 2: and he's like on his knees grasping for a cigarette.
Speaker 2: Someone stepped on it looks like it's weird. It's weird.
Speaker 3: The women were laced up knee high boots. Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 2: This is like learning it's bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like learning one of the creators a Superman
Speaker 3: did all that weird bondage and murder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's definitely odd. It's not what I would
Speaker 2: have called for him. It certainly doesn't remind me of
Speaker 2: his cartoons. But it's like it's it's competently drawn.
Speaker 3: It it's actually like the composition's nice. I like the
Speaker 3: facial structure, like I like the line work.
Speaker 2: I saw it online. I think this was going for
Speaker 2: like two hundred bucks, so like it's affordable. If you
Speaker 2: want to hank catch him original, you can. You can
Speaker 2: probably make that happen for yourself.
Speaker 3: I mean, stuff might not be I mean, I'm sure his.
Speaker 2: Cartoons are price yer, but I don't think there's a
Speaker 2: lot of interest in his weird Dominatrix art. So one
Speaker 2: of the most interesting articles I ran into on the
Speaker 2: Man's Personality was published by the La Times in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty six, and it's got some really good paragraphs. Having
Speaker 2: been approached by his fellow cartoonists to join them in
Speaker 2: the crusade against hunger and Africa catch them, declined, I
Speaker 2: think we have other priorities right here. I prefer to
Speaker 2: do everything I can for my neighbors, then the peninsula,
Speaker 2: then the state, then the country. My priorities are not overseas, no,
Speaker 2: of course, not for God's sake. Like yeah, yeah, a
Speaker 2: very standard thing, but worth bringing up just in terms
Speaker 2: of like the kind of guy he was. There's a
Speaker 2: revealing moment in this article where the journalist is like
Speaker 2: looking at his drawing desk in his office and sees
Speaker 2: a picture of a little boy on the desk, and
Speaker 2: he's like, oh, is that a picture of your son?
Speaker 2: Dennis the original Dennis the Menace? And Hanks's answer is, now,
Speaker 2: he's forty, now doing his own thing. We don't communicate
Speaker 2: that much. So who's the five year old in the picture?
Speaker 3: That's me?
Speaker 2: Now? Does he look like a menace? Nice chunky little fella?
Speaker 2: Future Republican fella future grumpy old man. God, what a
Speaker 2: weird What a weird thing to say we like of
Speaker 2: yourself for the cartoon that you draw about your kid
Speaker 2: who you abandoned. A little weird. Yeah, so, I don't know.
Speaker 2: You can have whatever opinion on his fine art you want,
Speaker 2: but time has shown pretty clearly that he is not
Speaker 2: going to be remembered for that. He will be remembered
Speaker 2: for both Dennis the Menace and being a bad dad.
Speaker 2: Hank himself died in two thousand and one, and his
Speaker 2: first son, the original Dennist the Menace, did not attend
Speaker 2: his funeral.
Speaker 3: Nor would he Like do we know what he's doing now?
Speaker 3: Is he okay?
Speaker 2: I haven't heard much. I haven't heard anything about him
Speaker 2: in the last few years. I mean, he would be
Speaker 2: pretty old at this point. If he's still around, I
Speaker 2: wish him the best. Uh maybe depending on what happened
Speaker 2: with his teenage daughter. I guess I don't know fully,
Speaker 2: but yeah, the dad didn't help with that, I'll tell
Speaker 2: you that much.
Speaker 3: I mean, like, you're abandoned by your family, like your
Speaker 3: mom was probably not really present, your dad ditches you.
Speaker 3: Then you go to fucking Vietnam. M Well, first of noo,
Speaker 3: then you're gonna send your your mom dies, you don't
Speaker 3: find out, your dad remarries, moves you across the world,
Speaker 3: gets mad you're not learning a new language. When you're
Speaker 3: having trouble learning, his new wife says and on one
Speaker 3: and you get sent away that marriage doesn't even fucking
Speaker 3: work out. Then you go in the Marines, serve in
Speaker 3: a war that's fucking horrible. Come back to all that hate,
Speaker 3: because let's be honest, I'm sure he was not treated
Speaker 3: real well when he got back, and the government kind
Speaker 3: of forgot about you, just like your dad did. There's
Speaker 3: just so much pain and sadness there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's uh.
Speaker 1: And all people do is associate you with a cartoon
Speaker 1: version of yourself that h from a dad who didn't
Speaker 1: know you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you know, your dad built an
Speaker 3: entire world off you. There's there's been so as movies,
Speaker 3: there were cartoon shows. I mean when I was a kid,
Speaker 3: Dennis Lamas was like a Dairy Queen mascot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he's a d Q kid. And it's yeah
Speaker 2: to think that, like from the perspective of Dennis the
Speaker 2: real boy, the only moment where his dad paid attention
Speaker 2: to him. Was that moment his mom yelled at him
Speaker 2: that inspired the comic, and that was all his dad
Speaker 2: needed from him and his entire life.
Speaker 3: That is as a that's bleak.
Speaker 1: I wonder if the author of Gone Girl got inspired
Speaker 1: by this story when she wrote, Uh, look you know,
Speaker 1: do you know? Do you know that what I'm talking about?
Speaker 1: Anyone isn't that?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the the main the main female characters entire
Speaker 1: life was her. Her mom wrote books called the Amazing
Speaker 1: Amy and it was inspired by her. Remember that. And
Speaker 1: I just wonder if the author I think the author's
Speaker 1: name is gil Flynn. I just wonder if the maybe
Speaker 1: there's a lot of parallels there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. Well, everybody that's behind the bastards, Randy,
Speaker 2: where can people find you? Online?
Speaker 3: Probably crying in a corner for a while after that
Speaker 3: goddamn story. Yeah, I guess I shouldn't be complaining. I
Speaker 3: don't get brought on for the dying baby episodes, so
Speaker 3: that's that's nice.
Speaker 2: Just the traumatized child episodes.
Speaker 3: An awful cartoon, which is a lot. I can't wait
Speaker 3: to come back for l Cap or the guy who
Speaker 3: did Annie. He was a piece of shit too something
Speaker 3: Positive dot net. That is the comic Gun drawings in
Speaker 3: two thousand and one. I also draw the Sunday Popeye
Speaker 3: strips as well as the Thursday all of them Popeye comics.
Speaker 3: I also do a comic called mouse Trap, which you
Speaker 3: can find out mouse Trap Comic top Blog.
Speaker 2: Well check all that out, folks, and uh go to Hell.
Speaker 3: I Love you.
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