The Dean Young & Stan Drake Interview...
Reprinted from `CARTOONIST PROfiles' magazine,
Number 72, December 1986
Interview & Article by Jud Hurd, Editor, CARTOONIST
PROfiles Magazine
Jud Hurd: For the past couple of years STAN DRAKE, who has been drawing
the JULIET JONES comic strip for 33 years, has taken on the additional heavy responsibility
of drawing the top-rated 'Blondie' strip which is syndicated to more than 2000 newspapers.
'Blondie', of course, was created in 1930 by CHIC YOUNG, the father of DEAN YOUNG
who has been writing the strip very successfully since his dad's death in 1973. Since
Stan Drake's studio and CARTOONIST PROfiles are both in Westport, Connecticut, your
editor sat down with Stan recently to talk about 'Blondie ' at some length.
Since Dean Young happened to be in Vermont at the time, it was necessary for us to
talk with him by phone about Stan's new chores and about how the strip continues
to be contemporary. First, our conversation with Dean Young and then the long sessions
with Stan Drake.
Speaking with Dean Young...
Hurd: During the conversation I've just had about 'Blondie' with Stan Drake
here in Westport, he spoke enthusiastically about the pleasure of working with you
on the feature!
Young: I feel the same way about him, you know. We've got a really good relationship
going--we're good teammates. I'm delighted to have someone of world-class ability,
in the person of Stan, drawing 'Blondie'. The graphics are looking great--certainly
in the style we want them! We pretty much try to stay contemporary--we keep Blondie
in updated clothes, and the furniture, the cars, and all the props in the comic strip
are pretty much contemporary so they can relate to the world and our society. The
long-running traditional gags that have to do with Dagwood's personality and his
character, such as eating and sleeping and all of the things he's notorious for,
are going to be used from time to time because they're part of his nature. they lend
themselves so well to the gags and the choices that we want to set up for the Bumsteads.
Hurd: Cartoonists are generally impressed that the strip seems fresh after
56 years!
Young: Because it's 56 years old, you have to avoid becoming an anachronism
and I work at that. In order to do that, I have to think in contemporary terms of
my own life, the way things are going for me and I try to relate these to the comic
strip. I like to deal mainly with domestic situations, and I primarily stick with
eating, sleeping, raising children and making money--these are my four mainstays.
I'll go through these categories and try to have all my set-ups and situations come
from these four primary concerns.
These days I often do ideas that will appeal to more feminist-type women.
I don't want Blondie just to be stuck at home with gags involving her to be limited
to that setting alone. I want Blondie to be a complete woman and I want readers to
respect her not only for her ability to maintain a home, but also for her own mind
and her own person. It readers admire a character's personality, and the way he or
she is, they have affection and love for the character--which I feel is very important.
Your characters have to be respected and loved to that degree because that's what
this comic strip business is all about. When readers like a set of characters and
then see them running around in all sorts of funny antics, that provides an added
dimension.
Hurd: In view of the changing lifestyles today, does Dagwood do things differently
than he would have in the past?
Young: Yes--a lot of the changes in the way he acts nowadays have to do with
his relationships to women. I'm careful to see that he doesn't do things that might
make a segment of women readers unhappy or upset. What I want to do is just to entertain
the largest audience I can get to with wholesome and clean humor. I don't want to
make any group or persons unhappy with the way the Blondie characters behave. I want
to make friends--not enemies. this was my dad's formula and the advice he passed
on to me in this connection has worked very well.
Hurd: Stan mentioned the 'Qwip' system which you and he use. Would you say
something about that?
Young: We use this on every set of strips. I send him the scripts and then
when he gets his 'pencils' done he'll put them in the 'Qwip' machine in Westport
and I can see them instantaneously on my machine in Florida. Then ii there are any
things we want to talk about, we can get together on the telephone. But, by and large,
there are not too many things we need to discuss on these occasions. I've got a 'Qwip'
machine up here in Vermont and one in Florida, so Stan and I can send graphics all
up and down the east coast ox the United States. The telephone people hook a 'Qwip'
into your phone system. You make a phone call, put the phone down and the 'Qwip'
computer transmits 'Blondie' as Stan has drawn it.
Hurd: Does one buy such a machine? Are they expensive?
Young: I think they cost about $2800 and I believe are made by Exxon.
Hurd: Are some of the situations that Dagwood gets into the same as those
you've experienced yourself?
Young: I guess you could say that I'm his alter ego. I think I'm pretty much
Dagwoodian! I think and do things like he does but I hope I pull them oft with a
little more finesse, and am not as often the victim of circumstances as he is. I
hope I don't get inexplicably caught in the web of Bumsteadian plans that have gone
astray as he does.
Hurd: I imagine that you feel a lot of the success of the strip has been due
to the fast that your dad, Chic Young, and you, have pretty much thought of yourselves
as everyday family characters.
Young: I think that says it pretty well.
Speaking with Stan Drake...
Hurd: How difficult was it, Stan, for you to shift from the beautiful illustrative
style you displayed in 'Juliet Jones' for so many years, to the 'Blondie' style we're
going to talk about today?
Drake: Strangely enough, I really am a cartoonist - I had to work hard at
drawing straight, illustrative type stuff. I started out with Johnstone & Cushing
(the advertising cartoon firm) right after the war and my bent was really towards
the semi-funny stuff. So I had to learn how to do 'Juliet Jones' because they wanted
an illustrative strip. I had to work hard at becoming an illustrator. Being funny
with my pencil actually is the real me!
Hurd: I've forgotten whether you had any formal art training.
Drake: Yes--l had a couple of seasons at The Art Students League before World
War 11. Life drawing was the main part of what I got there although I did work with
John McNulty and learned a little bit about arrangements, perspectives, etc. When
I got into advertising, an art director told me, "If you want to make out in
this business, you must learn how to draw pretty girls and handsome men." So
I recall that I bought copies of 'Vogue', 'Harpers Bazaar' and 'Mademoiselle', and
when I got home, I'd place some vellum over the heads of the pretty girls in the
magazines, and I must have traced seven or eight hundred heads in this way. Every
night I'd practice drawing pretty girls and handsome guys and finally I got to the
point where I knew what made a face pretty and what the proportions were. Soon I
was drawing them without having to trace them.
Hurd: What about that great pen-and-ink technique you demonstrated in 'Juliet
Jones'?
Drake: This was an advertising style that I developed. You couldn't sell brushwork
to advertising agencies as you could to the comic books. The old comic books were
all brushwork and this style made your work look dated and it had a comic book look.
The advertising agencies wanted a modern style. So I practiced with a pen and came
up with a sort of avant-garde, trendy look in my work. So when I took 'Juliet' up
to King Features, the strip was done in the style I'd been using in advertising.
Hurd: I'd digress for a moment, had most of your advertising work been with
Johnstone & Cushing?
Drake: Yes--and then when I left them, Harold Kitelson and I formed the Drake-Kitelson
Studio where we specialized in line art. In those days hundreds and thousands of
black-and-white spots were used in advertising--and today you hardly see any of them
there because of the various clip-art services which supply spots on every conceivable
subject .
Hurd: And now let's get into our topic for today--about all of what was involved
when you got the job of drawing 'Blondie'.
Drake: First of all, I had to copy, I had to make my drawings look
like the ones done by Jim Raymond who, in my opinion, was a genius. In a situation
like this, you're forging another man's handwriting. Jim would do folds a certain
way, he would have characters walk in a specific way, and his little expressions
are all gems. It was really tough to follow this exacting prescription--it took me
a year to become comfortable with the strip. In the beginning, of course, I had to
get the strip out using a combination of a light box, enlarger and a copy machine.
This was fine if I just had Dagwood standing there but suppose he and Blondie were
climbing up a mountain and Dagwood was hanging from a tree. Let's assume that Jim
Raymond had never drawn him in that position, so, as in hundreds and hundreds of
other instances, I had to make up his action. And it was necessary to have him hanging
the way Jim would have had him hanging. And the expressions would have to be apropos
of the situation--and not just a dead likeness of Dagwood. And I really had to get
these characters in my fingers--and it took a year. . Maybe more.
Hurd: Do you have a big file of past proofs of the strip?
Drake: When Dean Young decided to go with me as the artist, he had King Features
got together ten years of proof sheets--the years from 1969 through 1979. And in
the beginning, of course, these were of inestimable value because, although I had
loved 'Blondie', I had never considered ever having to turn it out myself. I can
probably do a drawing as well as anyone right from scratch--one drawing--but suddenly
I was faced with a deadline every week. There was a Sunday page consisting of 12
panels, with sometimes as many as 58 or 60 people in that one Sunday page, and with
no closeups--every character shown head to toe! Each panel 3 5/8 inches wide with
the heads of Blondie and Dagwood about half an inch high, and within this tiny area,
I had to get expressions and make them look like they were done by Jim Raymond. I
was convinced after a month or so that this had to be the toughest strip to do.
Hurd: I know that your feelings about the status of 'Blondie' in the comic
strip world gave you the determination to lick these tough problems you've spoken
about.
Drake: Yes--l guess one has to say, in all fairness, that 'Peanuts' and 'Blondie'
have shared the Number 1 spot in newspapers all across the country. As far as King
can tell, both 'Blondie' and 'Peanuts' appear in over 2000 newspapers. Just think,
Jud, 56 years ago this strip was created, and here it is--still Number 1. It's an
incredible thing!
I can't say enough about Dean Young and about his ability to stay with the strip
and keep it fresh after all these years--he does a remarkable job!
Hurd: Juggling two strips--Juliet Jones' which you've been doing for the past
33 years and now 'Blondie' is a herculean task.
Drake: I'm working 10 to 12 hours a day--sometimes 15--seven days a week,
Christmas, New Year's, holidays! One of the big problems in getting help is that
if you get a guy who's good, he's busy. And if you're getting someone who's learning,
you might as well do it yourself during the time you might be teaching this person.
Hurd: What help do you have on 'Blondie'?
Drake: Dean has a long-time friend down in Florida, Dennis LeBrun, who letters
'Blondie'. And when I send him the strips with the characters drawn in, he inks in
the backgrounds--the outside of the house, the living room, scenes like that--and
he saves me a lot of work in that way. But the figures, the layouts, the conception
and the action--all of these are up to me and I ink these myself of course. Dennis
does a great job and he's a fantastic assistant .
Hurd: Does Dean Young have any criticisms about the way you're drawing the
strip?
Drake: Well, in the beginning, Dean's phone bill must have been $4000 a month,
calling Connecticut and saying, "The button is too big, the button is too small,
do this, do that." But I want to go on record as saying that every time he called,
he was right! I just hadn't seen it. He knows the strip so well that he just took
it for granted that I would too. But he found that I was a beginner really, as tar
as 'Blondie' was concerned. I really lucked out with Dean Young's personality because
he might have been the toughest guy to work with and I would have had to put up with
it. But it turns out that he's got to be one of the best guys that you'd ever want
to meet--kind, patient, generous. It's been fortunate that I've been able to adapt
and now go back to the action and the little fun stuff that I love and forget all
the folds and all the shading I had to learn in the illustrative game over the years.
What ltm doing in 'Blondie' is what I always wanted to do.
When we started, Dean took a gamble and I took a gamble because l didn't know if
I could really do the strip the way it should be done. It's so tough that it was
a real Challenge to me. I said to myself, "I'm going to do this--I'm going to
learn how to do it right," but it sure was tougher than l expected. And the
fact that Dean seems to be pleased with what I'm doing means the world to me because
I've tried so hard for that guy. I knew the limb he was out on with me and I wasn't
going to let him down. I'm still finding my stuff looking better than what l see
on my proof sheets of six months ago. I'm not saying that I've got it yet.
Hurd: I've heard Comments that Blondie seems a bit sexier than she used to
in the old days.
Drake: Yes--we've had Conversations about that. Dean himself reminded me that
in the beginning she was a Flapper--very tall and slender--a pretty, sort of chorus
girl type. this was why Dagwood Bumstead's father disinherited him--because he was
marrying a flapper. After that she became a housewife. I agreed with Dean that Blondie
should be a housewife, yes--but why not a gorgeous, well built sexy housewife. What's
wrong with that! We don't want her to get dowdy-looking and dumpy, she's got to have
charm, and Dagwood has to love her and she's got to love Dagwood so much that it's
funny. Part of the humor is that this beautiful girl loves this guy who looks sometimes
like Mickey Mouse with those big eyes. You know I sent Dean two drawings, about eight
inches high, portraits of Blondie and Dagwood, just the heads, as if I was a portrait
painter. I painted them with all the shadows, and all the nuances, of a real portrait.
I first did Dagwood and then Blondie came out as this gorgeous blonde. I made her
hair, with the little curls, into real hair with every twist and turn making it look
like silken hair. Her eyes were gorgeous in the portrait and she is a real woman.
Blondie in the strip is a caricature of a real person but Dagwood is a cartoon because
when I finished his portrait, he looks like an alien from the planet Zerk.
He's got these huge eyes, so what you have is a real woman married to a cartoon because
there's no way, with that hair and those eyes, that you can make him look like a
real person. Dean says, "I like her in slacks." It used to be that she
always had a dress on and he has tried to update this and that. The strip nowadays
doesn't have the look of the 30s - she has more than that one dress she always used
to wear. Now she has a different dress every day--and she's got the latest clothes.
Dean has even sent me catalogues of women's fashions to put on Blondie and to keep
her 'Today'. When Dean mentioned the slacks, I said, "Okay, but her legs are
pretty and we like to see them too. Today's slacks are pipe stems--they don't have
the flaired bottoms that used to look so cute--and if we put her in slacks, there's
no 'zap'. True, women don't go around the house in high heels--they wear little flats
with their slacks." So I said, "Dean, what do you want? Do you want her
to be sexy or to be real?" He said, "Let's forget 'real."' So I guess
he wants her to look real jazzy. It's now up to me--Dean is the final word on the
strip--I'll do anything he wants. I make some suggestions occasionally but he's the
final judge.
Hurd: Do you recall any other corrections that Dean made when you first tackled
the strip?
Drake: Yes--in some instances the bottom of Dagwood's neck comes down to a
'V' shape, and in other instances it's rounded. Dean sent me a little sketch with
the comment, "I prefer the rounded bottom and not the 'V-shaped' neck."
So I went back through the proofs and found that Jim Raymond drew Dagwood about six
different ways over a period of ten years. There's a whole sequence of a year or
two of the 'V-neck'. And then, all of a sudden for some reason or other, the rounded
neck appears.
Hurd: Have you reached a point now where, if you have to draw the mailman
approaching the Bumstead house, you can do him without referring to any proofs?
Drake: Yes. I've realized, after working with the strip for a while, that
every character walks the same way. They all stand the same way-they have different
clothes and their faces are different. the women stand the same way whether it be
Tootsie, or Blondie, or a girl they meet on the street. Dagwood walks the same way
as Herb Woodley walks. Kids walk the same way. Chic Young created this whole thing
and has got to go down in history as one of the geniuses of the industry. His eyes
began to bother him in about 1950 and Jim Raymond actually did most of the drawing
from 1950 on. Raymond's name didn't get on the strip, I think, until about 1972 or
1973. Raymond subtly got away from the wild slapstick look of the early days, and
both Dean and Jim calmed the strip down and tried to keep it up-to-date without being
unbelievable. For instance, a car racing from the scene wouldn't have all four wheels
off the ground with nuts and bolts flying in all directions--which is the way it
used to be done. Dean took the cuffs off Dagwood's pants and now they're just rounded
off on the bottom because no one wears cuffs anymore.
Hurd: Does Dagwood have a frequent change of costume as Blondie does these
days?
Drake: Dagwood has a V-neck sweater, a cardigan, a jacket, a black suit and
that's about it. He always wears black pants.
Hurd: I know you've said that to draw 'Blondie' you can't just be a cartoonist
with a big-foot style, because you're drawing the actions of real people.
Drake: When they sit down at the table, or on a chair, you'd be amazed at
all the little hand gestures and facial expressions. Dagwood must have 400 facial
expressions--each one indicated by just a little tilt of the eyebrow, and his mouth
is so expressive. It's just endless!
Hurd: Go go back for just a minute, Stan--when you started to develop an illustrative
style years ago, what pen were you using?
Drake: I took great pride in learning how to master it, and all of the first
20 years of 'Juliet Jones' were done with a 290. But something happened to the metal
in that pen and the ink wouldn't flow no matter what you did. I find that very difficult
to handle anymore so I use a Hunt 102 now.
Hurd: I want to pin down the date when you started to draw ' Blondie ' .
Drake: I was given the go-ahead signal on August 8, 1984. But I had been working
on it--trying to learn how to do it for a couple of months before that. 'Juliet Jones'
was released for publication on March 9, 1953.
Hurd: l understand that you're now doing the Sunday page in nine panels instead
of the traditional 12 panels which 'Blondie' has religiously adhered to.
Drake: There's an important point here: and that is the fact that we could
pick up a lot of papers (using nine panels) who cannot carry the strip in 1/4 page
size. As you know, each page of many Sunday comic sections consists of four quarter-page
comics--one above the other. And 'Blondie', of course, would fit into this arrangement
with the nine-panel format. I do want to add one more thing, Jud. You obviously feel
it's important to include what we've talked about today in your magazine. You are
indeed chronicling the whole world of cartoons and have done a magnificent job over
the years with CARTOONIST PROfiles and I'm proud to be part of it. I really enjoy
this profession--the guys in it are the nicest bunch of people that I've ever met--they're
all ingenuous, real, unaffected, terrific. I guess I've enjoyed this because l realize
that the backbiting in some other businesses is awful. But there's none of that in
our business.
-eof-
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