An Animated Gathering That Draws All Kinds

By the time President Tom Luth calls the meeting to order, it already resembles a ninth-grade health class more than a professional society.

At two or three tables, members pass around comic books and cartoon illustrations, critiquing them in hushed tones. Near the back of the room, two women watch as a man starts to draw. Is it a super-hero? Or a villain? They’ll just have to wait and see.

Elsewhere, folks doodle. Lots of doodles. Sophisticated doodles. The kind you might see in a newspaper comic strip or a TV cartoon.

Here at the Cartoon Artists Professional Society, members have elevated fiddling around with pens, paper and colors to an art form.

Topper Helmers, a 38-year-old show designer with Walt Disney Imagineering, comic-book free-lancer and CAPS member, recalls his epiphany: “I was just sitting there in a high-school civics class and a kid in front had a comic book inside his textbook.”

The title is still fresh in his mind: “Conan the Barbarian,” Issue 24.

“It was like the Red Sea parting,” Helmers says, with a warm smile. “From that point on, I knew I wanted to be a cartoonist.”

On this night, Helmers and 50 or so members and guests have gathered for the CAPS annual auction and Halloween costume party. Vice President Dave Shelton, in a self-made Alvin the singing chimpunk outfit, is one of but a few who dress the theme.

The auction, however, offers a witches’ brew of comic art. Like the original Feb. 1, 1966, “Rex Morgan, M.D.” that sells for $30. And the original Oct. 6, 1977 “Steve Canyon,” by the late and legendary Milton Caniff, which fetches $50.

But auctioneer Stephen Bentley seems a bit perplexed when some original super-hero art draws only $10. After all, a signed, poster-sized print of the famous 1970 Sam Gross gag cartoon--a legless frog wagoning from a kitchen beneath a sign that says “Try Our Frogs Legs”--has just gone for $40. How can this be, he wonders aloud, with such discerning bidders?

“Because this one isn’t funny, Steve,” someone hollers from the back of the room.

Bentley’s auctioneering steam finally evaporates when he can’t muster any bids for an “Aliens” movie poster--in Japanese.

“Wrong crowd,” quips another wag. “It would have brought $25 on the Westside.”

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Wrong crowd, indeed.

Although some CAPS members may live at prestigious addresses, many of its 80 members are in-the-trenches cartoonists who piece together a living from every aspect of the craft--from syndicated comic strips or comic books to magazine gag cartoons, animation, TV, movie or commercial storyboards, illustrations and coloring.

Coloring?

While some comic books, for example, are the result of one person’s work, others represent the combined efforts of cartooning specialists. Such a project may include writers, editors, designers or artists, pencilers, inkers, colorists and letterers/balloonists. (Lest you think the latter category is trivial, consider this: If just a few characters’ word balloons are misplaced, an entire story line--and book--can be ruined.)

And it’s that wealth of creativity that enticed a development director to show up at this meeting and tell of her studio’s plan to produce 48 new cartoons. She was looking for ideas and knew a CAPS meeting was an excellent place to find both ideas and talent; she found no shortage of takers for her business cards.

Some CAPS members don’t need the work.

Sergio Aragones, who co-founded the group in 1977, is one of Mad magazine’s most prolific artists, and his work can be found in several paperback collections and the popular comic book, “Groo the Wanderer.” (CAPS President Luth, a free-lance cartoon artist and illustrator, also colors Groo, a spoof of Conan-style heroes.)

Shelton is senior cartoon editor for National Lampoon and is involved in several other diverse enterprises at the magazine, ranging from a new line of greeting cards and toys to animation projects.

Scott Shaw does children’s comic books when he’s not drawing--as he has for the past 10 years--cartoon characters that have been his favorites since age 9: “The Flintstones.” Shaw, one of Hollywood’s most successful animators, currently art-directs commercials for Pebbles cereal. His previous cartooning credits include such TV staples as “Alvin and the Chipmunks” and “The Smurfs.”

Shaw and auctioneer Bentley agree that CAPS is a perfect group for people on the cusp of commercial success. The meetings, members say, are about equally divided into socializing, networking, and critiquing and encouragement.

Bentley does “Herb and Jamaal,” one of just a handful of nationally syndicated comic strips that feature black characters. The Fontana man labored with the strip for 1 1/2 years and credits CAPS members, through contacts and critiques, with helping him achieve “the culmination of the one thing you always wanted to do.” The syndicated strip, Bentley says, means more than money or recognition: “It represents who you are.”

Carlos Saldana is hoping for the same. After a dozen years as a mail carrier and clerk, Saldana has spent the past five years as a cartoon illustrator for the U.S. Postal Service. A 3 1/2-year CAPS member, he now nervously awaits word on his most important project--a 72-page comic book he recently sent a publisher.

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It is fitting, perhaps, that CAPS’ monthly meetings are held just a few blocks from beautiful downtown Burbank.

But forget “Laugh-In,” two Emmys, 12 movies and 1,000 national television shows. Ignore the 2,000 animated cartoon episodes for everything from “Garfield” and “Eek the Cat” to Powdered Toast Man on “Ren and Stimpy,” and “Roger Ramjet” (“ . . . he’s our man, hero of our nation.”) Overlook the more than 30 years on enough Southern California radio stations that he has covered most of the alphabet in call letters, and the 10 times he’s been honored as the top U.S. deejay. Pay no attention to his star--right next to Walt Disney--on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

What Gary Owens really wanted to be was a cartoonist.

For a while, he was. Now, some four decades later, he still enjoys their company as a 15-year CAPS member.

During high school and college, Owens drew sports-page cartoons for the Mitchell (S.D.) Daily Republic. But radio and TV paid better and Owens had a family to feed. Cartooning lost a budding talent; America gained one of its most renowned voices.

Despite a schedule that includes narrating or voice acting on nine current cartoon shows, two upcoming “Laugh-In” specials, and a weekday, 3-7 p.m. stint on KJQI (Radio Free Beverly Hills), he tries to make as many CAPS meetings as possible.

“Cartooning is my first love,” says Owens, who still draws jokes, sometimes over coffee with Jonathan Winters. “Life itself is sort of a cartoon. You can take a cartoon, scope it and see how many ways you can use it. You can easily switch a cartoon to a radio or TV joke. . . . ‘Laugh-In’ was one big cartoon.”

At the October meeting, Owens enjoys chatting with old friends.

“Perhaps I’m living vicariously through them,” he says, somewhat wistfully. “This is like sitting in the major leagues of cartoons.”