She would go next door and congratulate him in a moment.
But Patrick’s strip was nothing compared to the other debut that day.
It was called Calvin and Hobbes. And it was a beauty. She felt her jaw lock and grit.
You’re going to be okay, Wendy, take a deep breath, she said. Calm down. She tried to look away. She pushed everything off the bed, food, pen, and papers, and put her head under the pillows and pictured herself at five sitting on the hide-a-bed and her mother pointing to the host of General Electric Theater on television and saying, Look, there’s your dad.
She walked across the lane to No Manors with her heart dragging behind her. Congratulations, Patrick, she said and lit a joint. There we were around the longtable attempting to celebrate for Patrick’s sake the debut of Loch & Quay. But we had also read Calvin and Hobbes and so we drank to Patrick and talked about Bill Watterson. What else was there for us to do?
Calvin was on a whole other level of goodness. Who could deny the inking’s perfect? Augh, sublime. Study those backgrounds. Everything is in motion, even the legs of tables. The linework was dramatic, calligraphic, full of heartfelt, speedy movements, hurried and yet totally confident, unerring, comfortable in itself and totally individual. A multitude of expressions in the dots of their eyes. Perfectly funny noses and memorable hair, effortless elbows, flawless hands. As soon as you saw Calvin, you wanted to draw like that. The dialogue was hysterical and smart, eloquent, artful—they all had distinct personalities, their jokes had nuance. No corny puns. No rimshots needed. The humour was punchy, anti-authoritarian, but relatable, the subjects drawn from life, and funnier than pretty much everyone else on the page, including Strays, even Peanuts. Everything that counted in cartooning was done perfectly here. Wendy was discouraged from day one by the superb layout, expert flow and pacing, and the meaningful storylines. It only got worse as the weeks went along and Calvin and Hobbes got better and better. When the Sunday strips arrived, that was the worst feeling. Wendy chipped a mental tooth every weekend. In a funk for days after reading yet another weekend Calvin. Strays was not up to snuff now, she was sure of it—Calvin was so good, too good, she felt cowed. There were days when it sounded as if the inferiority complex Calvin gave her might abruptly cause her to quit. Out of total dejection. Give up. Retire. Move back to Canada.
I’m doomed, she said. She smoked another joint. In a year, Calvin and Hobbes toys are going to line the shelves of department stores. Every kid is going to want. I can see it now, there’s two different Hobbes toys, one of the living imaginary Hobbes and one of the toy Hobbes. There’s Calvin and all the Calvin accessories. This is a future of just Calvin and Hobbes toys—no more Buck, no Murphy, no Francis. This is the apocalypse. All my characters combined can’t compete against this timeless kid. I’m going to go broke. I never should have donated all that money to charity this year. What was I thinking?
Calvin was on her editor’s radar, too. Newspaper editors routinely sent copies of the best and worst letters from readers to the syndicate editors. Correspondence regarding Strays went to Gabrielle Scavalda, and she was greedily grateful for any tidbits that might help her bargain with upper brass or her artist.
Gabby would call to tell Wendy her elderly fans couldn’t read her lettering. She’d call on behalf of those readers who found Wendy’s sense of humour too bleak or unsavoury, who thought her drawings were illegible, unprofessional, bland. You make parents feel guilty, she told Wendy, kids beg to adopt lost pets. After Death Valley, Gabby began to take a more serious look at the complaints and dismiss the cutest of children’s panegyrics. Calvin and Hobbes exacerbated the insecurity and vertigo of Strays’ success. Success seemed temporary, fleeting, undeserved if compared to Calvin. More often Gabby found valid points in the disgruntled, defending total strangers before her own artist. She used to call them breakfast table critics and morning morality monkeys. Adults who write letters to the editor to complain about something in the funny pages should not be taken seriously, Gabby used to say. Now she called Wendy out on her clumsy mistakes and opaque, satirical jokes. Draw more Ping-Pong gags, Gabby would suggest. People love the Ping-Pong.
Come on, Wendy. Do it for the grampas. Slick up your look for the glaucomic who need magnifying glasses just to laugh at your comic. And by the way, around the office they’re asking me what’s the deal with your Christmas special? Is it happening?
It’s coming. It’s almost ready. Patience.
So you’re really making it—this thing’s been in the works for how long, four years?
Three. Okay, yes, four.
Coming up five. And how am I supposed to pitch how great it is if I haven’t seen the thing? I need to see it. People are teasing me. If you’re saying close to done I’ll fly to San Francisco tonight to watch it if I must. You know me.
Come, then. You love San Francisco this time of year. Halfnaked tourists and bundled-up locals.
Why can’t I have a copy?
I’m a protective mother, she said.
Did you see the New York DA’s office indicted that guy who crashed our trip to Death Valley, whatshisname, Kravis? For insider trading? That’s pretty far out, hey?
Yeah. Frank hates that goon. Hopes he goes to white-collar prison. What a trip. Two missing, and one criminal. Yeesh.
Cursed. Let’s hope we remain unscathed.
Strays isn’t going anywhere. I can push for a legacy strip from here. That’s my dream. How many papers am I in now? It’s got to be two thousand.
You’re closing in on nineteen hundred.
Closing in on nineteen hundred papers for like a year. What’s the stall?
I’m as ambitious as you are. But there’s only so many papers in existence, Wendy. It’s not uncommon for American comics to plateau . Tiger was once in nineteen hundred papers.
Once? Plateau? Did you say plateau? I don’t live on a plateau. I live on a steep hill that’s impossible to reach the top of. Stoneman Street, that’s my style. You have to climb to get to me. You know what Biz Aziz calls this kind of talk? Floccinaucinihilipilification!
Wakaflockawhat? What’s got into you, did you win a Nobel Prize and not tell me? Where’s the aw, shucks, gee willikers young girl I first signed on back when the only paper who wanted your cartoon was the San Jose Spectator? Look, I told you this, if you want me to sell your strip to more papers, Wendy, you got to polish up your subject matter and characters.
It’s too late to clean up my strip. This is its look, this is the sensibility.
Not true. Not at all. It’s never too late. Look at Garfield. Look at old Doonesbury. Which do you prefer, old Doonesbury or today’s polish?
The unpolished.
Come on.
You used to cheer for my self-taught punkish style back when you pitched me to the syndicate.
That was years ago. You were green. I didn’t want to push you.
Now you want my Christmas cartoon to be a cheap commercial puffball and my strip to be one of those clockwork machines that plops out dependable cuckoo jokes—so it makes your job easier. I don’t want my newspaper receipts to plateau, and you can’t blame me if you and your travelling polygamists can’t sell a winner. My job is to draw the comic. Merchandise sales outpace my newspapers. How do you explain that?
Listen—
Alls I’m saying is, if we don’t do something double fast, Gabby, Calvin and Hobbes is going to stomp us out of a gig.
The comics are shrinking, not growing. In the thirties, you might have six comics on a funnies page. Six. Now it’s ten strips minimum and some papers subscribe to seventeen.
That doesn’t sound like shrinking. The comics are smaller but there’s more of them. I’m not with the argument a smaller panel is a bad thing.
Okay, good, because a smaller panel means it has to be easy to read. Get a sandwich board and a slogan, said Wendy. All I hear are doomsday excuses for why you can’t break two thousand papers.
The option’s there to fire Scavalda,
said Frank that evening before bed with the television on to the top ten list of Manila Convençion positions on Late Night with David Letterman.
Number eight, The flying wow-wa-wow-wa.
Number seven, … The Philip K. Dick …?
Divestment as an option had never occurred to Wendy before. The thought gave her shivers. Could she fire the editor who launched her career, without whom she would be nowhere? The opposite thought used to frighten her, that Gabby would ditch her and get a cartoonist more qualified to draw her strip. She revelled in the horror of imagining Gabby telling those travelling salesmen who ploughed the highways of America selling Shepherd Media strips to take Strays out of their jackets and focus on Loch & Quay.
The way to kill a strip—let it shed papers at its own pace until it vanished from the public without hassle.
She thought again of how much more polished and legible Calvin and Hobbes was, how universal, how true. Handmade and love-worn, like a favourite shirt.
Wendy drank a final snort of wine and set the glass on her bedside table next to a copy of Huysmans’ Là-bas, and contemplated life as she watched Letterman count down, and Frank shave. Had she seen him without the hairpiece? Yes. She told him there was nothing wrong with his bald head the few times she’d interrupted him at the sink gluing it down. Did he sleep wearing it? Yes.
Number five, My mother is already ashamed of me .
She thought about shame and asked him, Didn’t you and Sue want children? You were married for years and years.
Towel wrapped around his waist, hairpiece on, he stood in the doorway of their marble ensuite with a razor in his hand and half a beard frosted with cream. We didn’t think about children. Problem was, Sue could not ovulate, or she got her period once a year. But no way of knowing when. Happened in her teens. She got ovarian cysts back when we first started dating. Freshman year of high school all but a few of her eggs were surgically removed.
Yikes. How sad. You guys were sad about that.
We were used to it. We were fourteen when it happened.
Sue must’ve been sad. Fourteen. Sheesh. Is it possible you mistook love for the span of time?
Maybe we weren’t …, said Frank as he went back to the mirror to resume shaving. Or sometimes love is money in the bank and sometimes love is a bond of debt. We’re in the bank. Sue and I, that was debt.
She rolled out of bed and tiptoed into the ensuite, dropped her silk kimono robe embroidered with Sam the snake chasing Francis across her back, and, naked, turned on the shower and tickled the water, testing its temp. She jumped in, then a moment after, jumped out again, bellydancing in front of him. Kissing his smooth face, she simultaneously pulled his towel off. He laughed.
You’re crazy.
We could make kiddies. Nothing stopping us.
Right now? He put the razor on the countertop and touched her wet skin. What a scary thought, being a dad on top of everything else.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? You calling me a chicken?
She hopped up on the marble countertop, and sitting there, brought him between her legs and kissed him. He let her run her fingers through his well-glued toupée. You know what I decided? she said.
What’s that?
Even if I can fire her, I’m still not going to fire Gabby for giving me the straight dope. It’s not her fault there’s Calvin and Hobbes. I’m just going to proceed as per and ignore her. Strays is my creation, I draw it.
That’s good thinking, baby, said Frank, already in a pink heat.
I control the strip’s look, not the doubters. There’s a reason I ran away from Canada’s chilly conditions.
34
STRAYS
… go at throttle up …
… go at throttle up …
No, not these words. Not yet.
Anyway we were done. The Christmas cartoon was complete. And it was Christmas of eighty-five. After a five-year struggle up all the hills, psychological, technical, creative, to say nothing of the hill under our shoes that led to No Manors—we climbed Stoneman Street enough times to put on muscle—it looked as though the bulk of the twenty-two minutes had been animated. Add it all up, there might be ninety seconds missing. Rachael phoned Wendy—who was travelling—to let her know all that remained for us to do was improve the pace in a few transitions, redraft the muzziest movements, and edit in establishing shots between a couple of the sequences in the mise en scène. Once that was done, we’d be ready to make a final cut with the soundtrack.
Wendy yelled into the phone: Rachael, I can hardly hear you. I’m on my stupid Motorola. I’m literally standing on a Christmas parade float covered in fake snow and there’s life-sized mascot versions of my characters next to me waving to the families of Bethesda lined up on the street. It’s cute. You should see me. I’m throwing candy canes at toddlers while Frank meets with senators and lobbyists. I gotta go. Just tell me this means I can pitch the cartoon to the networks to air next summer.
Yes! Rachael shouted.
Our thousands upon thousands of prelim drawings, cell paintings, and the rest of the prep work of the early eighties finally paid off. Now we had all these pieces of finished animation to pull from. If we needed Buck’s head to do an owlspin in minute nineteen we could pull from the same action drawn for minute two. Rachael filed all the animation pieces, from paper sketch to trace paper to cells, in an enormous steel cabinet, in carefully labelled folders (Murphy—left arm waving; Francis—ears twitching). We had all sixteen phases in the standardized walking postures for each character, and perspective variations (running away from or towards the camera). Notes in each folder described the exact time signatures when these pieces had been used. Rachael’s system let us make swift progress on the story after three years of work to get to minute twelve, and we completed the last ten minutes in a year.
Meanwhile, various pavilion sketches kept coming back rejected by one Olympics committee after another. The Americans didn’t approve of watercolour (sloppy, too French) and vetoed so much detail (too expensive). The internationals found the composition uneven and ditto the proportions. The pavilion committee nixed Wendy’s colour schemes, and the Canadian hosts thought the subject matter—animals doing Olympic events—might offend some audiences.
A curse on the Olympics and all their insane committees! Wendy shouted one night, and threw a balled-up poster-sized sheet of paper in the air, out an open window, and wanting to toss her editor and defenestrate the whole Shepherd Media Syndicate, too, while she was at it. She got desperate and began to throw all her pavilion sketches our way to see what would happen if we inked them. This was eighty-six now, and our teeth were fairly sharpened by the hours and hours we had sunk into drawing reams of storyboards, breakdowns, character shots, notan treatments, and finals for the Christmas special—and now she wanted us to put time into helping her with the Olympic pavilion.
Challenger, go at throttle up.
Roger, go at throttle up.
…
Challenger, go at throttle up.
Roger, go at throttle up.
…
Challenger, go at throttle up.
Roger, go at throttle up.
Those words. Those words hang in our minds like wind chimes, they jingle at the slightest motion of our memories. That Tuesday in January tore the decade in half. We remember the year began with a choir of hope exploding and disintegrating over the Atlantic Ocean. America watched as the space shuttle Challenger left for outer space and all of a sudden burst into flames and became two then three trails of smoke falling slowly and inexorably back to Earth. It happened so fast the eye didn’t have time to accept the horror. There was a schoolteacher on board and classrooms all across North America were watching live broadcasts on projection screens in gymnasiums. An astronaut to identify with was up there. We tuned in, too. Who didn’t? Challenger vanished in the sky with its seven-member crew. You wanted to avert the eyes of the entire world from this sorrow plummeting out of thin blue air
.
News of the disaster consumed our lives. We stopped doing anything else and read about the Challenger in all the papers and magazines and watched television coverage devoted to the disaster, and to the history of space travel, and saddening portraits of the astronauts on board who perished.
Nancy and I are pained to the core … We’ve never lost an astronaut in flight. We’ve never had a tragedy like this, President Reagan said in his address to the nation.
One underlying purpose of every mission to space is to prepare for the safety of the next mission, said a former NASA aerospace engineer who had worked closely with Major Aloysius Murphy in Panama on safety systems and the first iterations of the shuttle cockpit. Talking in a panel about the history of disasters, the engineer said, Every astronaut knows you might not come home.
We wondered what an astronaut thinks of as the shuttle’s cabin engulfs with flames. Strapped to your seat, you think, This is what I dreamed of doing all my life and I knew it was dangerous when I signed up and my mission will never be forgotten. This was my mission. Disaster was my mission.
At the time of the Challenger disaster, Frank was in D.C. wooing senators and congressmen over shrimp cocktails, martinis, etcetera in an attempt to shore up support for the financial quango, and Wendy was in Los Angeles for meetings with network execs to pitch her Strays summer Christmas special. She went as writer-producer and took Rachael as ipso facto director of the cartoon for silent support. The potential for failure seemed very much at hand—there it was, the VHS tape we made of the cartoon.
The first meet was with Brian Lynch, Head of Children’s Programming at ABC.
If ABC buys now, the network could air it this coming July, Wendy said.
The Road Narrows As You Go Page 38