Bobby London

Last updated
Bobby London
BornRobert London
(1950-06-29) June 29, 1950 (age 72)
New York City, U.S.
Area(s) Cartoonist, Artist
Notable works
 Dirty Duck
Merton of the Movement
Air Pirates collective
Popeye comic strip
Spouse(s) Shary Flenniken (div.; m. c. 1972–1976) [1]

Robert London (born June 29, 1950) is an American underground comix and mainstream comics artist. His style evokes the work of early American cartoonists like George Herriman and Elzie Crisler Segar.

Contents

Biography

As a child, London was "pen pals" with comedian Stan Laurel, who provided critiques on London's youthful cartoons. [2] His first professional cartooning was for the left-wing National Guardian in the late 1960s. He created his underground newspaper comic strip Merton, in New York in 1969. He also drew cartoons for Rat Subterranean News before moving to the West Coast. [2]

The nucleus of the Air Pirates collective began to form in c. 1970 when London met Ted Richards at the office of the Berkeley Tribe , an underground newspaper where both were staff cartoonists. (London later drew a highly fictionalized account of their experiences at the Tribe in his story "Why Bobby Seale is Not Black" in Merton of the Movement [Last Gasp's "Cocoanut Comix" imprint, Oct. 1972]). In 1970, London and Richards attended the Sky River Rock Festival at Washougal, Washington, and met Shary Flenniken and Dan O'Neill at the media booth, [3] where Flenniken was producing a daily Sky River newsletter on a mimeograph machine. Before the festival was over the four of them produced a four-page tabloid comic, Sky River Funnies, mostly drawn by London.

In early 1971, O'Neill invited Flenniken and Richards, along with London and Gary Hallgren, a Seattle cartoonist they had met at the festival, to San Francisco to form the Air Pirates collective. [4] The Air Pirates lived together in a warehouse on Harrison Street in San Francisco, [2] where London and Flenniken began a relationship that turned into a short-lived marriage. [1]

London developed the raunchy Dirty Duck strip in 1971. Dirty Duck had been originally published by the Los Angeles Free Press and subsequently in books like Air Pirates Funnies and The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers . His non-duck work also appeared in underground titles such as Merton of the Movement, Left Field Funnies, Douglas Comics, Facts O' Life Funnies and El Perfecto Comics. In 1972, London moved Dirty Duck to the original National Lampoon where it was a regular monthly feature until 1976; it continued to run in Playboy for over 25 years.

In 1978, London won the Jury Yellow Kid Award  [ de ] for Best Artist-Writer, presented at Lucca Comics & Games. He contributed illustrations to The New York Times Op-Ed page from 1976 to 1981, and wrote and drew the Popeye syndicated daily comic strip for King Features from 1986 to 1992, at which point he was fired for doing an allegory about abortion. [5]

In the summer of 2000, London unveiled a family-oriented comic feature for Nickelodeon Magazine entitled Cody. He wrote and storyboarded episodes of Dexter's Laboratory [6] and The Powerpuff Girls for Cartoon Network in 2003 and 2004, [7] and contributed character designs for King Neptune and Mindy of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie . [8] In 2018, London contributed to the design of Mike Quinn's character Agnes Packard for the Mighty Magiswords second season episode, "Pachydermus Packard and the Camp of Fantasy". [9] [10]

London returned to comic books for the first time in 30 years with contributions to the Grammy-nominated box set from Rhino Records, Weird Tales of The Ramones , in 2005. [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Crumb</span> American illustrator and cartoonist (b. 1943)

Robert Dennis Crumb is an American cartoonist and musician who often signs his work R. Crumb. His work displays a nostalgia for American folk culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and satire of contemporary American culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Underground comix</span> Comics genre

Underground comix are small press or self-published comic books that are often socially relevant or satirical in nature. They differ from mainstream comics in depicting content forbidden to mainstream publications by the Comics Code Authority, including explicit drug use, sexuality, and violence. They were most popular in the United States in the late 1960s and 1970s, and in the United Kingdom in the 1970s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dan O'Neill</span> American cartoonist

Dan O'Neill is an American underground cartoonist, creator of the syndicated comic strip Odd Bodkins and founder of the underground comics collective the Air Pirates.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">E. C. Segar</span> American cartoonist, 1894-1938

Elzie Crisler Segar, known by the pen name E. C. Segar, was an American cartoonist best known as the creator of Popeye, a pop culture character who first appeared in 1929 in Segar's comic strip Thimble Theatre.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Last Gasp (publisher)</span> American publishing company

Last Gasp is a San Francisco-based book publisher with a lowbrow art and counterculture focus. Owned and operated by Ron Turner, for most of its existence Last Gasp was a publisher, distributor, and wholesaler of underground comix and books of all types.

Shary Flenniken is an American editor-writer-illustrator and underground cartoonist. After joining the burgeoning underground comics movement in the early 1970s, she became a prominent contributor to National Lampoon and was one of the editors of the magazine for two years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jay Lynch</span> American cartoonist

Jay Patrick Lynch was an American cartoonist who played a key role in the underground comix movement with his Bijou Funnies and other titles. He is best known for his comic strip Nard n' Pat and the running gag Um tut sut. His work is sometimes signed Jayzey Lynch. Lynch was the main writer for Bazooka Joe comics from 1967 to 1990; he contributed to Mad, and in the 2000s expanded into the children's book field.

Jay Kinney is an American author, editor, and former underground cartoonist. Kinney has been noted for "adding new dimensions to the political comic" in the underground comix press of the 1970s and '80s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gary Hallgren</span> American illustrator and underground cartoonist

Gary Hallgren is an American illustrator and underground cartoonist. Illustrations by Hallgren have been "commissioned by publications such as The New York Times, Men's Health, The Wall Street Journal, Mad, and Entertainment Weekly, among others."

Dirty Duck is a fictional character created by underground comix artist Bobby London. The style of the strip is an homage to George Herriman's Krazy Kat.

The Air Pirates were a group of cartoonists who created two issues of an underground comic called Air Pirates Funnies in 1971, leading to a famous lawsuit by Walt Disney Productions. Founded by Dan O'Neill, the group also included Bobby London, Shary Flenniken, Gary Hallgren, and Ted Richards.

Lawrence Welz better known as Larry Welz, is an American cartoonist, who created Cherry Poptart. He was an early contributor to the underground comix movement in the San Francisco area during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Don Donahue</span> Publisher associated with the underground comix movement

Donald Richard Donahue was a comic book publisher, operating under the name Apex Novelties, one of the instigators of the underground comix movement in the 1960s.

Although, traditionally, female comics creators have long been a minority in the industry, they have made a notable impact since the very beginning, and more and more female artists are getting recognition along with the maturing of the medium. Women creators have worked in every genre, from superheroes to romance, westerns to war, crime to horror.

Ted Richards is an American web designer and cartoonist, best known for his underground comix.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Company & Sons</span> Underground comix publisher

Company & Sons was an early underground comix publisher based in San Francisco, ran by John Bagley. The company operated from 1970 to 1973, publishing a total of 15 titles, all but one of them consisting of a single issue.

<i>San Francisco Comic Book</i> Underground comix anthology series

San Francisco Comic Book was an underground comix anthology published between 1970 and 1983. Conceived of and edited by Gary Arlington, the anthology highlighted the work of many of San Francisco's top underground talents, including Bill Griffith, Robert Crumb, Kim Deitch, Justin Green, Rory Hayes, Willy Murphy, Jim Osborne, Trina Robbins, and Spain Rodriguez.

William "Willy" Murphy was an American underground cartoonist and editor. Murphy's humor focused on hippies and the counterculture. His signature character was Arnold Peck the Human Wreck, "a mid-30s beanpole with wry observations about his own life and the community around him." Murphy's solo title was called Flamed-Out Funnies; in addition, he contributed to such seminal underground anthologies as Arcade, Bijou Funnies, and San Francisco Comic Book, as well as the National Lampoon.

Keith Green was an American publisher, distributor, and art dealer. Starting out in the late 1960s as an underground comix distributor, in the early 1970s, he published comics, and by the mid-1970s he had become a New York City art dealer. He was the younger brother of cartoonist Justin Green.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Snoid</span> Underground comix character created by Robert Crumb

The Snoid, occasionally referred to as Mr. Snoid, is an American underground comix character created by Robert Crumb in the mid-1960s. A diminutive sex fiend and irritating presence, the Snoid often appears with other Crumb characters, particularly Angelfood McSpade, Mr. Natural, and Crumb's own self-caricature.

References

  1. 1 2 Boyd, Robert. "The Shary Flenniken Interview," The Comics Journal #146 (November 1991): "We were up here from 1973 ’til ’76. We broke up and Bobby went back to New York."
  2. 1 2 3 Donahue, Don and Susan Goodrick, editors. The Apex Treasury of Underground Comics (Links Books/Quick Fox, 1974), p. 153.
  3. ↑ RINGGENBERG, S.C. "Bobby London and the Air Pirates Follies," Archived 2011-07-16 at the Wayback Machine Comix Art & Graffix Gallery (May 12, 1998).
  4. ↑ Patrick Rosenkranz (2002). Rebel Visions: the Underground Comix Revolution, 1963-1975. Fantagraphics Books. ISBN   978-1-56097-464-2.
  5. ↑ Ringenberg, Steve "Interview with Bobby London," Comic Art & Graffix Gallery website (July 30, 1992). Accessed Sept. 19, 2016.
  6. 1 2 Bobby London at LinkedIn.
  7. ↑ London entry, IMDB.com. Accessed Sept. 19, 2016.
  8. ↑ "Mondo Popeye," Cartoon Brew.[ permanent dead link ]
  9. ↑ "Mighty Magiswords | Free Magiswords Videos | Cartoon Network". Archived from the original on 2018-08-27.
  10. ↑ https://www.facebook.com/Ratfink/posts/10217976087739330?comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22O%22%7D [ user-generated source ]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.