Who are your major cartooning influences?

[Lee Nordling]

It occurs to me that we don't write much about those who influenced us, when, and why.

Don Martin & Big Daddy Roth were my earliest influences in grade school; I used to draw my versions of Roth cartoons on T-shirts and sell them out of my garage. I saw him decades later at a science-fiction convention; he had the wildest roadster I've ever seen, and, if my memory isn't playing tricks on me, he wore an orange suit.

Next up: Sparky Schulz, and his four-panel pacing is still ingrained so deep in me I don't ever think it will come out.

In high school, Dan O'Neill and Jules Feiffer both taught me that comic strips could do more than entertain; I was a cartoonist on my high school paper, and both influenced what I produced.

Many followed, including Gahan Wilson (I still have his King-Kong-reaching-for-a-helicopter original), Carl Barks (whom I met and got to chat with about us both writing Donald Duck), Will Eisner and EC Segar.

Later, Trudeau, Breathed, and Watterson tinted (or tainted) my vision; each showed me work that I admire to this day.

--Lee

[Dan Thompson]

my influences:

Bil Keane is one of the most over looked cartoonists EVER. I look at his reprint books from the 60's when he was in his prime and they were just so enjoyable, and his style is just plain fun. Big influence on me art wise.

Milton Caniff is a big influence on me...I always wanted to draw comic books until I saw a Steve Canyon magazine by Kitchen sink press and overnight I abandoned comic books for comic strips.

Realizing I'd never get a chance to get an adventure strip syndicated (right? who knew?)

Watterson and Schulz... I recently went back and read C&H and the strips were even better than I remembered.
Hank Ketham of course.
Now:
Doug Wildey is quite impressive...I think more people think Toth when they look at the old Hanna Barbera cartoons which had a big influence on me, but Wildey and his Jonny Quest designs, and backgrounds were just amazing, his comic strip work, and his western Graphic novels "RIO" are just amazing.


Roy Crane.
Chester Gould is a big influence on me now. Once I started to read about how he developed his Dick Tracy stories, and his use of solid black, and how his work was much more cartoony that other serial strips. It's just about the best comic of it's time.

Last but not least Jim Borgman, and Jerry Scott. Their Sunday work, and their story plots...How can you not be influenced by them? they hit their mark 99.9 percent of the time.

Dan

[Rod McKie]

At the risk of sounding like a nerd, I often spent hours in the library in Gerge IV Bridge Edinburgh, in the fine art section, where they kept the books of New Yorker and Charles Adams cartoons. They were for reference only. I studied them for hours at a time.

[Charles Brubaker]

Believe it or not, some of my influences are Japanese cartoonists. What can I say? I grew up in Japan. For all we know, "Dragon Ball" was the first cartoon that I've ever seen in my life (the show was still being aired in Japan when I was born).

I admire Fujio Akatsuka. He's a pioneer of "gag manga" (a term we use for manga that focus on comedy and slapstick) and I've enjoyed reading his comics.

As for the American side of the pond, we have the usual suspects like Schulz, Watterson, Larson and Breathed. I was (and still am) a huge fan of "FoxTrot" by Bill Amend. I remember trying to copy his drawing style and failing. Despite his rather minimal style, the "FoxTrot" style is actually very hard to draw.

[Josh McDonald]

When I was a kid my uncle gave me his collection of Schulz's Peanuts books, going back to the very beginning of the strip. Studying those books formed the foundation of my (mostly self-taught) cartooning education.

But as long as I can remember I've been in the habit of reading through all the comics I could get my hands on. Mostly that meant whatever was in the local paper, and I'd typically skip the really boring ones: Mark Trail, Mary Worth, Prince Valiant, and (until high school or so) Doonesbury. So I picked up a few other influences along the way.

Gary Larson came along just in time to influence my middle-school years; Breathed and Watterson in high school; after that I discovered past greats like Daumier, Kelly, Herriman, and Eisner.

[Mike Cope]

My comic strip influences are almost too many to narrow down because there's different aspects about each that I appreciate and continue to learn from, but my bookshelf's top row probably speaks more honestly ... Schulz, Watterson, Wiley, Patrick McDonnell, and Lynn Johnston.

Over the past few years, I've been collecting the Krazy & Ignatz series from Fantagraphics ... Primarily because some of my own heroes are known to have cited Herriman as one of their major influences. Another book I flip through on occassion is 'Stuff & Nonsense' by A.B. Frost ... Again, I was pointed in this direction by Walt Kelly's audio interview from The Comics Journal.

Animation-wise, it's always been Disney's Nine Old Men, and more recently, Glen Keane.

But now that I have a one-year-old running around, I'm encountering books that I haven't seen in ages. My two major influences here are the pen lines of Dr. Seuss and Ernest H. Sherpard.

[Brian Fies]

Way too many to list. Many I don't even remember.

Near the top of my list would be Walt Kelly and Schulz. I remember being a child and young teen scrutinizing the technique of Stan Drake, Milt Caniff, Bud Blake ("Tiger"--great line work), Gus Arriola (beautiful, graceful, underrated work), Hal Foster and many others, trying to figure out how they did that. In comic books, it'd've been John Buscema, Kirby, Curt Swan, Barry Smith. All the MAD guys. The illustrations of Pyle and Wyeth. As I got older and set out to learn about cartoon art, I was influenced by greats before my time like Winsor McCay, Herriman, Cliff Sterrett, Roy Crane, Alex Raymond. Without meaning to sound too pretentious about it, I also studied fine art and took what I could from Leonardo daVinci, Rembrandt, Dali, etc.--I had a poster of Michelangelo's Delphic Sybil that I copied over and over. I'm not claiming any of it stuck.

I distinguish between people who influenced me and people whose work I admire. I admire the art of people like Watterson and Patrick McDonnell, but their influence on me was slight to none. I may be deluding myself, but don't feel anyone has really influenced my approach to cartooning since I was in my twenties. Of course I often see something that makes me think, "That's an interesting idea/technique I could use," but in terms of shaping the way I think about the art, I believe most of that foundation was laid before I was out of my teens.

[Lee Nordling]

Darn, I forgot McCay, who was a huge influence on me (for sequential storytelling).

I have one of his editorial cartoons hanging on my office wall; he was an amazing artist.

--Lee

[Brian Fies]

No kidding. The big Maresca book is propped up beside my desk (I've got nowhere else to put it) and there's a cel from Gertie the Dinosaur hanging in my hallway. It was the first thing I bought with my "cartooning money" from Mom's Cancer (I didn't feel that I deserved to have it until I'd earned enough as a cartoonist to afford it). I often stop as I'm walking past and just stare at it in awe.

[Lee Nordling]

I only have the first Sunday Press Little Nemo, missed getting the second, and I had to create a loop to keep that one shut and not bend open.

It's on a shelf with my other over-sized books, none more over-sized than that one, though.

Did you get that VERY odd Little Sammy Sneeze book he published? Wonderful, because it was filled with that as well as so many other odd strips (not all by McCay). Half pages, so it's literally half the vertical dimension. No spine; just the sewn pages facing out, making it a very odd package.

--Lee

[Brian Fies]

I didn't see it; sounds cool.

[guy]

It sounds repetitive, but Schulz, Watterson, and Breathed were my main influences in comic strip art. Gaiman is still a huge influence in writing. I love Dave McKean's work in comic books as well as a dozen others that did work in Sandman.
Guy~

[Leann Webb]

Charles Schultz was the first to inspire me when I was a kid. Snoopy is still my favorite character (other than Snevel of course)

Also Johnny Hart, Jim Davis, Bill Waterson and Gary Larson. If only I can cause a tiny fraction of the belly laughs that Gary Larson has given me I would call myself successful. :-)