Weatherbird Celebrates 100 Years of Sass

He’s a cheeky little fellow with goofy eyes and a decidedly saucy way of summing up the world. He sticks his nose into everything. He’s fond of very bad puns.

And folks here are just gaga over him.

The Weatherbird, a cartoon figure with a penchant for sass, celebrated his 100th birthday this week, making him the longest-running daily cartoon in American journalism.

He’s anchored the front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch since Feb. 11, 1901. At first, the bird was just a humorous illustration of local weather conditions. But he soon evolved into a comic icon spouting flippant comments on the day’s headlines.

When the Titanic sank, the Weatherbird got right to the point: “Now, to fix the blame.” When Truman beat Dewey, the bird wasn’t surprised: “He said he’d give him hell.” When Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment, the bird counseled: “Lib and Let Lib.” His take on the fall of the Berlin Wall? “Bloc Buster.” On this week’s spacecraft landing on an asteroid? “Rock-et Science,” of course.

Chuckling yet? Or groaning?

Maybe you have to be here.

Perhaps it’s the quirky Midwest humor. Or perhaps it’s just tradition. But the Weatherbird seems to have a genuine claim on St. Louisans’ affections.

Some readers clip out every single Weatherbird cartoon, day after year after decade, amassing them by the thousands. Some collect Weatherbird paraphernalia, from pewter statues to playing cards to dolls to 90-year-old advertisements for Weatherbird brand kids’ shoes. One local couple even--and with pride--gave their son Weatherbird as a middle name. (That caused some consternation during the baptism when the priest floundered for a Latin rendition.)

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Perhaps the ultimate tale of Weatherbird devotion comes from Jim Riti, a 30-year-old milk deliveryman. Not only has he tattooed Weatherbird images on his chest and arm, but he voluntarily spent several of St. Louis’ broiling, step-outside-and-you-need-a-bath summers dressed in a stifling Weatherbird costume to regale kids at the baseball stadium. Why? What can he say? He loves the little chirper.

“He’s the wittiest,” Riti explains. “He’s the best.”

Riti pauses, looks around. He’s at the St. Louis City Museum, wandering an exhibit that honors the Weatherbird in his centennial year. “There’s nothing else like him out there,” he concludes.

He’s got that right.

Time was, the Weatherbird had a few buddies in the business. Other cartoon characters who took on local issues with a bit of attitude and who served as their newspapers’ mascots. There was, for instance, “Silly Philly,” a kid in an old-fashioned hat who came to symbolize the now-defunct Philadelphia Bulletin. And there was cartoonist Billy Ireland’s mocking self-portrait in the Columbus Dispatch (he caricatured himself as a janitor with a big shamrock on his belly, then used that alter ego to unload his comments in a weekly, full-page comic).

“Before it became so much cheaper to use photos, newspapers had a bullpen of folks who drew pictures,” explained Lucy Caswell, curator of the Cartoon Research Library at Ohio State University. Over the last few decades, though, photos have taken over and front pages have sobered up, budgets have been tightened and tastes have changed, and cartoons by local artists about local issues have come to seem a frivolity. “I think we’ve lost sight of the added value a local cartoon can bring to a paper,” Caswell says.

Not in St. Louis, it seems.

The Post-Dispatch is so proud of the Weatherbird that it published an eight-page special section on Sunday as a birthday tribute. The paper’s editors view the cartoon as a great hook to draw in young readers, who quickly learn they have to at least scan the front page in order to get the joke of the day. The bird is, as well, a tradition that binds older readers to the paper.

“It’s the first thing I read when I wake up in the morning,” said Rosalie Effinger, 79, who mails each and every cartoon to her sister in Las Vegas. “It just makes my day.”

Post-Dispatch Night Editor Steve Kelley says he understands the appeal. “The front page is so deadly serious most of the time, it’s good to know there’s going to be at least one thing on it that’s not going to make you spit out your Cheerios.”

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Over the century, six artists have drawn the Weatherbird. (By coincidence, three have had the last name Martin, including the current one, Dan Martin, though they weren’t related.) They’ve given their feathered friend plenty of quirks. He turned into a triumphantly crowing Cardinal when St. Louis won the World Series, and he was pregnant for a day when news broke that Princess Diana was expecting. One beautiful summer morning, the bird was missing from his accustomed corner altogether. In his place was this note: “Nothing doing today. I have gone fishing.”

The Weatherbird has fallen silent--appearing with bowed head but no words--on several somber occasions, such as the slaying of Martin Luther King Jr. or the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He also disappeared for three weeks in 1945 (losing a chance to comment on the end of World War II) when a strike shut down the Post-Dispatch. Otherwise, he’s kept a faithful--and noisy--perch on the front page even as circulation has declined, editors have changed and the paper has been redesigned.

Martin, who has been the Weatherbird artist since 1986, draws the cartoon just as his predecessor did 100 years ago: He dips his pen in black India ink and hunches over his drafting table. Within minutes, he has the familiar figure sketched.

Martin, 43, does make some concessions to modernity. He colors the bird on a computer, for instance. And he no longer holds his drawings over a flame to speed up the drying time. His solution to a looming deadline is to drape the art over the back of his Macintosh and let the computer’s heat dry the ink.

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As his predecessors have done since about 1910, Martin leaves it to copy editors to write most of the Weatherbird’s comments. They come up with the puns in a nightly “birding” frenzy, bouncing ideas around the newsroom to see which gets the biggest--or most pained--laughs. Among the proposals for the asteroid landing story: Slings and Eros. Hunka Hunka Burning Rock. Spaced Out. And: Spacecraft Kisses As-teroid. (“The unused ones are the best,” grumbles one birding veteran.)

To keep the Weatherbird squawking when he’s sick or on vacation, Martin has drawn dozens of “reserve birds” in various poses, with grumpy, elated, sad or puzzled expressions. One or another is bound to fit the news of the day, he figures. If not, a colleague on the art staff tries his hand at the cartoon.

The Weatherbird, after all, must go on.

“It’s the one thing in the newspaper that warrants unconditional love from readers,” Martin said. “We intend to keep it going for another 100 years.”