Black And White And Read All Over
A reader skims the comics in her hometown newspaper. Between "Peanuts" and the harmless antics of Garfield the cat, a deceptively childlike cartoon so arouses her ire that she fires off a letter to the author.
"I find it increasingly disturbing to discover that such repulsive behavior is being thrown at us from every medium. ... But a COMIC STRIP?!?!?!?," the offended reader writes. "I had grown up with the impression that comic strips were supposed to be lighthearted, funny and pleasurable to read."
The strip in question was "For Better or for Worse," Lynn Johnston's long-running look at family relationships. When Johnston devoted her syndicated cartoon in 1993 to a gay character's coming out of the closet, she received box loads of hostile correspondence, the likes of which forms the backbone of an exhibit at San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum.
"Hate Mail: Comic Strip Controversies" is an attempt by the 16-year-old museum to illustrate the often anachronistic relationship Americans have with the funnies. The show features reader responses and inflammatory debated cartoons by seven artists, ranging from Doonesbury's Garry Trudeau, who is in his 33rd year as a comic strip rebel, to such young muckrakers as Frank Cho, creator of the racy "Liberty Meadows," and Aaron McGruder, the satiric mind behind "The Boondocks."
"Despite decades of evidence to the contrary, there is still very much this idea in some people's minds that the comics are a place of solace where you get away from crime and violence, that the comics are only wholesome family fare," said museum director Rod Gilchrist.
The 28-year-old McGruder's experience with "The Boondocks" following the events of Sept. 11, 2001, was the stimulus for the show. A strip in which he compared President Reagan to a terrorist who had aided Osama bin Laden drew a heated reaction from the grieving public, which in turn provoked a sarcastically patriotic series from an obviously unrepentant McGruder.
In a scene reminiscent of the post-Watergate period when Trudeau caught heat for using "Doonesbury" to declare Attorney General John Mitchell "Guilty, guilty, guilty," many newspaper editors either temporarily suspended "The Boondocks" or relocated it to their opinion pages as they fielded phone calls from readers threatening to cancel their subscriptions. Trudeau, incidentally, won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning the same year as the Mitchell flap, an honor that annoyed political cartoonists who did not consider Trudeau a member of their tribe.
Museum Curator Jenny Dietzen says that while most people have grown accustomed to Trudeau's humor, readers often feel betrayed when cartoonists whom they originally viewed as benign "take risks."
When Wiley Miller took on Christian fundamentalists in "Non Sequitur" or Scott Adams had Dilbert make a few jokes about cannibalism, they, too, heard from readers.
Dietzen says the public's image of cartoons as a purely G-rated medium recalls a time that never was. Early versions of "Brenda Starr" showed a reporter as buxom as Cho's latter-day heroine, Brandy, while "Dick Tracy" fans were treated to a steady diet of violence. Harold Gray used "Little Orphan Annie" as a platform for blasting Roosevelt's New Deal politics, and "Pogo" openly lampooned communist-baiting Sen. Joe McCarthy.
"It's a misconception that a lot of people have because a lot of comics are very appropriate for kids," she said. "But the really successful ones like `Peanuts' were written on two levels, for adults and for kids."
Many cartoonists resent it when newspaper editors bow to pressure from aggrieved readers. A combination of burnout, fatherhood and five years of selective editing prompted "Liberty Meadows" cartoonist Cho to give up on newspapers and pursue the comic book market.
"For every 100 positive letters I got I received one negative one," said Cho, 31, who was often told to tone down the overt sexuality of his strip. "The negative letters I got were from your general crackpots who are way too sensitive for their own good, but of course feature editors ignore the 100 positive ones and listen to this one negative one."
At its peak of popularity, "Liberty Meadows" appeared in 100 newspapers. By the time Cho canceled the strip, it was down to about 30. He figures that about 350 strips, one-fourth of his output over the years, were changed - Cho prefers the term "censored" - to make them more family friendly.
"Newspapers are basically 50 years behind the whole entertainment curve," says Cho. "They really need to be more open-minded about comic strips, because at the rate they're going they're only going to cater to senior citizens."
As the United States prepares for war with Iraq, few readers have expressed displeasure with the barbed skepticism that has appeared in "Doonesbury" and "The Boondocks," according to Lee Salem, editor of Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes both strips. While that could change depending on the course of the conflict, it may also reflect a growing acceptance that the funnies "need a good mix of humor," Salem said.
At the same time, Salem doesn't anticipate a day when all cartoonists use comic strips to display their biting wits.
"Most cartoonists aren't out there trying to break down barriers. They want to reach readers," said Salem. "There are a few who like to push the boundaries and that process has certainly enlivened the comics pages. But if every comic strip did that they would be pretty boring."
"Hate Mail" runs through June 8 and will not travel.
By Lisa Leff