The Hot Rod Influence on Cartooning - Originally published on 1UP - March 11, 2009

Since its earliest days the hot rod was changing and influencing the cartoon world. There was a lot to say about the culture, the cars and the participants. Two of the funniest and heartwarming animated shorts released in 1952, more than 50 years before the Pixar movie Cars, was the Tex Avery-directed One Cab's Family and the Clyde Geronimi-directed Susie the Little Blue Coupe.

The Tex Avery animated short was closer to the heart of hot rod culture so I'll focus on that film for now. On top of the comedic value there was a very earnest message abut coming to terms with the next generation. This generation scared parents with their obsession for speed. They were afraid that their kid's natural tendencies to experiment and push their limits would cause somebody to get killed on the road. Of course the harder parents fought against something the more the next generation embraced it. Rather than continue demonizing the culture the best parents could hope for was that they had done enough to raise their kid right and earn a bit of trust along the way.

Tex Avery understood that hot rod culture would not lead to the decline of western civilization. He and many other cartoonists used it as a way to share a story that cut across the generations. Like the longest-lived cartoonists he did so to entertain as much as to educate the masses. In the print world there was one cartoonists whose span of work extended even longer than Avery or Ed Roth. His name was Pete Millar and in the car comic world he set the standard.

Pete Millar and Carl Kholer began an automobile humor magazine in '59. Their book was called (what else?) CARtoons, it was very much a MAD magazine for the hot rod culture. It stayed relevant to the American driving scene, changes in trends and culture for 40 years until the final issue in 1991.

Millar was a prolific contributor to CARtoons, as both an artist and writer. He was an amazing storyteller that was capable of writing fictional adventures as well as sharp commentaries on the politics that were quickly brewing behind drag racing. Sadly Millar left CARtoons a few years into production to start up a rival car humor magazine called Drag cartoons. CARtoons succeeded despite some questionable changes in management. The Petersen Publishing empire had become a bit too corporate for some contributors. What was once a place to celebrate the culture and spirit of hot rodding had become a very strict business environment. Creative ideas had to be filtered through management for a while.

Thankfully those in charge loosened the grip on CARtoons and began trusting the senior writers and artists to run things again. Many fans saw this as a renaissance for the magazine. Over the next few decades some amazing talent was published in the pages of the magazine. It was a chance to get some starving artists a steady gig and give them some exposure in the competitive world of cartooning.

I will always hold Pete Millar in high regards for staying true to the artform. He enjoyed more creative freedom on his magazine but had a hard time competing against Petersen. The Drag cartoons magazine would find problems with printing and distributing and would come out infrequently due to a lean budget. The magazine also suffered by narrowing down the genre. Fans of cars in general could always find something worth reading in CARtoons, but only hardcore fans of drag racing would be able to understand the satire that was Drag cartoons magazine. The quality of the content was never in question.

Millar was credited in Hot Rod magazine's History of Cars in Cartoons for starting the revolution. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of the dealings within the industry and personalities that shone in public. No bit of drag racing drama escaped his eye as he covered the culture for over 40 years. He remained passionate about illustrating all his life and put together the most comprehensive list of car comics and magazines ever. A CD database of his work was published just before his passing in 2003 and is a must get for comic fans searching for rare issues. All of his work is available via his website Laffyerasphault. The site is maintained by the Millar family and is worth visiting for those that are interested in the art of cars.

I will also say that while it lasted CARtoons magazine was one of the best written and illustrated magazines that I had ever had the pleasure of reading. The writers and artists that contributed to the magazine were at many stages in their development. Some were amateurs at best, appearing in only one or two issues. The regular faces were very dedicated to their craft. Writer / artist / editors Tom Marnick and Dennis Ellefson stayed with the magazine for decades. You could always could on them to find something new or funny to work on. Sometimes it was a short story and other times it was a series of longer arcs.

The artists that passed through CARtoons are almost all forgotten by history. They are artists who were, and many remain, loyal to their craft. It was hard to make an all automotive humor magazine published quarterly that remained fresh and new. Magazines like MAD are welcome to cover any topic as long as they make it funny, the people on CARtoons had to somehow tie their work into the automotive world. Sometimes the panels were based all on comedy, other times they were social commentaries, short stories, fantasies or even science fiction tales.

Keeping things moving was a task that required nonstop work and nonstop imagination. Writer / artists like Don Lomax would crank out surreal tales, in the fashion of the old Crypt Keeper comics, then he would turn around and adapt an opera like George Bizet's Carmen into a tale about a man obsessed with a car. Other artists like Randy Richards, John Larter and Jim Lawson honed their trademark cartooning style on the pages of the magazine.

The other contributors all put their signature style on the magazine as well. They helped shape my appreciation of cartooning and taught me the subtleties of character art as much as car art. Tomorrow I will mention some notable names and their contribution to CARtoons. I hope to see you back.

Did you ever read Cartoons magazine? Do you have a favorite car-based cartoon? Let me know in the comments section please. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

The Car Tangent, part 11...

A lifetime ago I wrote about the influential artist and hot rod pioneer "Big Daddy" Ed Roth. In case you were not familiar with the man he was the one that created Rat Fink and a plethora of bug-eyed, sharp toothed, drooling monsters riding on top of various hot rods. He would airbrush these grotesque figures on tee shirts and sell them at car shows. Teenagers bought them up and car clubs commissioned him to create mascots and paint jackets for them. All of this helped pay for his creative outlets. Roth was one of the first designers to create mock-up car bodies by hand and sculpt them out of fiberglass. The hot rod scene was still growing in Southern California when Roth took it into radical new directions. He demonstrated to fans that they did not always have to start with a rusted-out car and then strip it down before bolting on a powerful engine. They could create their own bodies and make them as wild as his cartoons were if they wanted to.

Roth ran with a circle of artists that shared a similar aesthetic. They were also capable of drawing monsters but more important, were able to caricature every car they came across. Ed "Newt" Newton and Dave "Big" Deal were in a class all their own. The artists became synonymous with cartoon cars. The small tires in the front, large tires in the back and smoke blowing out of the rear became a hot rod trademark. Few artists could do it better than Roth, Newt or Deal. These monsters and cars were released on collectable sticker packs, think of them as the forefathers of the Garbage Pail Kids phenomenon. The thing that all the artists had in common were that they knew their cars and motorcycles. When they were not building and fabricating them they were known to race them as well in So Cal and even through Baja Mexico. This was "on the job" training that few cartoonists could have claimed.

No matter how exaggerated the shapes were people could clearly make out the type of cars that were being featured. The artists were masters of observation. They knew the position of the lights, bumpers, badges and lines of hundreds of vehicles. Good cartoonists learned the techniques of making a caricature out of a person but not every cartoonist could caricature a vehicle. The godfathers of hot rod art made it look deceptively easy but I would challenge an artist reading this to try and make aesthetically pleasing caricatures out of the next car they see.

Roth, Newt and Deal managed to build a career on their art. While they did not necessarily work for the Big Three, they still shaped American car culture. They captured the zeitgeist of the hot rod movement and visualized it. As the men became more and more influential within the community they began changing the perception of hot rod culture to the rest of the US. Model manufacturers like Revell turned the hot rods of Roth and Newt as well as the illustrations of Deal into model kits. For the first time kids got a chance to see actual 3D representations of the cars and monsters that they read about in the magazines. These models, toys and stickers forever warped the minds of young car buffs. As they got older they returned the favor. In the case of Pixar the boss guy John Lasseter and his brain trust were the kids that would have grown up with Rat Fink and his friends. They knew that they had to reach out to the master while developing the art and design of the Cars film.

Every car in the film oozed personality. Each character had its own temperament which seemed genuine based on the model of car that they were. The rusty Harvester tow truck talked with a country twang, the big city Porsche in a very no-nonsense intonation and the Fiat with a heavy Italian accent. The ways that each character was made to emote was superb cartooning. The animators used bumpers, fenders and tires in place of lips, shoulders and hands. The expressions were easy to read because the shapes of the cars were broken down and explained to the artists by Deal. Dave was working on pre-production for Cars 2 when he passed away in 2008. His fingerprints remained all over both films and the various Mater's Tall Tales Car-Toons. The Pixar artists and animators were exceptional in their craft, and many of them were passionate about automobiles but the Cars universe would have not been the same without the contributions of Dave Deal. On the other side of the Pacific there was a different sort of "car toon." Japan was not without its own skilled automobile artists. However they did not have a hot rod movement in the same way that the US did. They did have their own car culture and various youth sub-cultures that managed to interpret their love of the automobile in any number of ways. One of the best incorporated caricatures of cars in their work but remained relatively unknown for decades. The next blog will look at this person and their gift to the world. If you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!