Meet the Mighty 'Mutts'
by Nicole Plett
October 18, 2000
From the self-important way Earl barks at the FedEx man, you would think he was famous. His New Jersey house-mate, the rising comic strip star Patrick McDonnell, sounds like a much more humble fellow. And although this is supposed to be Patrick's phone interview, the little dog chimes in with a high-pitched bark-bark-bark. "Sorry, you're going to hear a lot of barking," says the soft-spoken artist apologetically. "You've hit mail time at the McDonnell house."
Although McDonnell's well-loved strip 'Mutts' is a relative newcomer to the comic pages -- it has only been around since 1994 -- he has already won the National Cartoonists Society's highest honor, the Reuben Award. Industry awards and accolades have their place, of course, but for real proof of 'Mutts' success, look elsewhere -- on desks, bulletin boards, and refrigerators around the nation, in Europe, and Japan.
McDonnell will meet area readers and sign copies of "Our Mutts," his fifth comic collection (Andrews McMeel Publishing, October 2000, $9.95), at Barnes & Noble in North Brunswick, on Saturday, October 21, at 2 p.m. Recognized for work to help raise awareness of the plight of homeless pets, McDonnell has invited Petfinder.com to share the event. The New Jersey-based business that runs a national Internet directory of homeless pets will be on hand, with a laptop computer, to help match needy shelter pets with good homes.
For those who have yet to become acquainted with McDonnell's 'Mutts,' Earl the dog lives with (and adores) the dark haired, mustachioed Ozzie (who looks a bit like McDonnell's press picture). Earl's friend and neighbor, Mooch the cat, who speaks with a comical lisp, lives with (and tolerates) Millie and Frank (also known as "what's-his-name"). Unlike most comic strip animal characters, McDonnell's 'Mutts' get their charm from acting more like pets than people. Neither Earl nor Mooch aspire to be human -- with lives that revolve around eating and sleeping, they know full well how sweet it is.
'Mutts' also features two outsize outdoor pets, Sourpuss, a big tomcat, and Guard Dog, a big bull terrier condemned to life on a chain. Among the occasional visitors is Shtinky, the little orphaned tiger-striped cat, who has single-handedly tried to save endangered tigers. Once or twice a year McDonnell writes a series of "Shelter Stories" to encourage readers to take in a homeless pets.
The original Earl who has never come to terms with the mail man is a 12-year-old Jack Russell terrier. A more recent addition to the McDonnell household, Meemow the cat, was rescued from a parking garage as a feral kitten. "We had Earl for nine years before we brought a cat into the house. It's been three years now and he still hasn't got used to it," says McDonnell.
But he doesn't want to overstate the problem. Of course cats and dogs can live together happily, he insists. "It's just that Earl gets unbearably jealousy if I show Meemow any affection whatsoever." Meemow maintains his silence throughout the interview.
McDonnell's strip is just six years old, but he fixed on his vocation at the tender age of four. "When I was four years old, I knew I wanted to be a cartoonist," he says. "I grew up in the early '60s and I was totally immersed and in love with 'Peanuts' -- it was love at first sight. We also had Walt Kelly and Jules Feiffer books in the house. I can remember poring over them and not be able to read the words. Cartoons probably helped me to learn to read too."
This pattern is not so rare. "At the cartoonist society's annual meeting two years ago, 10 of us did an online chat and we were asked, When did you know you wanted to be a cartoonist? Every single one of us replied four or five years old," says McDonnell. His hero Charles Schulz is in this category too.
"If I had had any idea how hard it was when I was four years old, I would have changed my dream," McDonnell adds (but you can tell he's joking). "One of the first questions I asked Charles Schulz when I finally got to meet him was, 'Does it get any easier?' He answered right away: No."
"Charles Schulz was always disappointed that comic strips in America were considered below burlesque," says McDonnell. "But it's like jazz, American doesn't embrace its own art forms that well. For me I'm fascinated by the medium. I like the newspaper strip, the haiku of four little panels. You have to get down to its essence real quick."
Schulz's Snoopy is a dog we have come to know as smart and literate, prone to fantasies about his life as a World War I flying ace. And there are no cats to be found in 'Peanuts.' McDonnell's Earl, on the other hand, is all dog. He's not exactly dumb, but once Mooch arrived on the scene, Earl's doggy intelligence can seem, shall we say, limited. In one strip, Earl is a little outraged that Mooch shows no remorse after breaking a vase. Mooch invites Earl to demonstrate some doggy cringing; it's so effective, Earl gets the blame.
McDonnell thrives on comics, both contemporary and historic. He names as his strongest influences Schulz's 'Peanuts', E.C. Segar of 'Popeye', (and Olive Oyle and Brutus) and George Herriman, author of the 'Krazy Kat' strip that ran from 1911 until Herriman's death in 1944. McDonnell and his wife co-authored the book, "Krazy Kat: The Art of George Herriman," published by Abrams in 1986, and still in print.
"One of the things I admired about 'Krazy Kat' was how George Herriman used to change his title panel," he says. "I always admired the variety he brought to them. So I did one, then another, and it was sort of like potato chips -- now I'm stuck with it."
McDonnell's inspired title panels evoke any number of pop culture icons from pet mug shots to pizza boxes. Some strips employ lots of words, but some of his best are purely pictorial. "I like when concepts are funny," he says. "Sometimes in my work, some of the funnier things happen in the middle of the panel, not at the end. I like it to be funny in different places. I think the trouble with many comics today is that they're nothing more than a set up for a punch line."
Born in 1956, McDonnell grew up in Edison with two brothers and a sister, and continues to live in New Jersey. His parents, now retired, met at Cooper Union, New York's prestigious free art school. His mother became a teacher of fashion design and an assistant superintendent of schools, and his father became a beer salesman. A beer salesman? "A family comes along and sometimes its hard to make a living at an artist," he says, adding, "you could say they're enjoying my art success more than anybody."
McDonnell's wife Karen O'Connell works at a computer job ("I don't do computers," he notes) and teaches yoga. "Many moons ago" they used to be in punk band together, the Steel Tips. "I still fool around on the drums," he says, "And she sings around the house."
As a child, McDonnell's household contained plenty of drawing materials and more. "Most important was the encouragement," he says, "encouragement for my drawings and encouragement to keep drawing. We had art on refrigerator and plenty other places, too." Today he has a brother in the music business and one in video. Their sister is married and raising a family.
McDonnell majored in illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, graduating in 1978, but concentrated on fine arts classes which he found more interesting. "When I was at School of Visual Arts I took one cartooning class with Will Eisner. But as a kid I was always doodling and drawing cartoons, in college I was egotistical enough to think they didn't have anything to teach me."
When he graduated from SVA, he took his portfolio to two cartoon syndicates. "I showed things in my portfolio, but I had such a bad reaction that I thought maybe I'm not going to be doing comics." Instead he landed a weekly job with Russell Baker that provided "a weekly paycheck and great exposure." He kept at it, adding a complement of magazine jobs, until Baker retired 10 years later.
"The whole time I was doing magazine illustrations, it was like a comic strip in my head," says McDonnell. "I was using the same characters in a lot of my illustrations, and sometimes I even used word balloons." Ten years after his first try, McDonnell took his portfolio around again and was hired by the King Syndicate.
"As soon as I tried the strip, I felt I was home," says McDonnell. Next came the slightly terrifying process of learning on the job. "This is my sixth year and I feel like I'm just starting to know what I'm doing."
"The original concept was to have the dog go out and have little adventures. Then I decided to have him meet a cat, since that's what dogs do. But when Mooch came into the strip's life he never left. Just like a cat. Mooch is definitely the star" -- and, we add editorially, he knows it.
McDonnell's line of work, and its relentless deadlines, is constantly challenging, but not everyone appreciates all that goes into the popular art form. "Most people think you sketch those little doodles in five minutes," he notes, " -- and they wonder, What's your other job?"
"What's hard is to look at a white piece of paper and get an idea. The pressure of the deadline and trying to do your best every day is hard. I've awakened at 3 a.m. with some of my best punch lines," he says.
"I have a bad habit of doing a Sunday page, of loving the concept of it, but not knowing how it ends. And that's a dangerous thing to do, because you may have put in a day's work of nothing". "These are the times," he says, when putting his subconscious to work on the problem can pay off.
"When you do it every day, it's hit or miss. Some days I'm in the writing mood; other days, it's like pulling teeth. The longer stories take longer to write. You're trying to write a little novel. I really enjoy doing those."
McDonnell's Sunday funnies, collected in the book "Mutts Sundays" and published last year, have made him especially popular with art lovers. He has created visual puns and fond tributes to artists from Matisse and "La Danse" to H.R. Rey of "Curious George". Look closely and you may find an Andy Warhol Brillo Box, a pair of Raphael angels, or a Mondrian abstraction.
Whether or not Americans respect comics in general, comics artist Charles Schulz became a national hero at the end of his career.
"He deserved it," says McDonnell. "He is true piece of Americana, right there with Mark Twain and Aaron Copland. He did touch people's lives. And what was really sweet about it was that he lived to see it. The outpouring of affection came when he announced his retirement, and he got to enjoy it. And not just in America. It's amazing how he touched the world. I must have got calls for 10 interviews after his death, most of them from other countries."
And Schultz did it all without a cat. Take a glance at the funny papers these days and you'll find cats in abundance, from Garfield and Pickles, to Robotman's hairless cat, and Catbert, Dilbert's evil H.R. director. Such species imbalance leads inevitably to a nagging, overarching question: Are cats funnier than dogs?
"I do cats and I do dogs, and I have to contend with both factions, so I can't answer that," says McDonnell with mock caution. "It's a delicate line I'm on. My reply has to be, 'No comment'."
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