Billy’s Booger, A Memoir (Sorta), by William Joyce

This week, we look at some books that make for perfect summer reading, and we start with something special.  Any new book by author, illustrator, filmmaker and poster boy for high-spirited shenanigans William Joyce (born 1957) is a cause for celebration.  But his new book – Billy’s Booger, A Memoir (Sorta) – is sufficient for bursting out into song, headstands while doing a Tarzan yell, and unrestrained fits of the hokey-pokey.

Not that Billy’s Booger is your ordinary, wonderful book.  It’s snot.  It is something quite unique – an illustrated memoir by a master of the form.  In it, he chronicles his participation in a school-book competition, and includes his first opus, Billy’s Booger – The Memoir of a Little Green Nose Buddy.  In short, this is the portrait of the artist as a (very) young man, and provides an insight into the formative components that make up Joyce’s protean imagination.

The story does snot have many fairy tale elements, despite its very traditional beginning of Once upon a time.  Or, as Joyce starts his narrative, Once upon a time, when TV was in black and white, and there were only three channels, and when kids didn’t have playdates -- they just roamed free in the “out of doors” there lived a kid named Billy.

And we’re off for an in-depth look into the Joycean imagination.  Most books in Joyce’s oeuvre exist largely as showcases for his stunning depictions of glowing, nostalgic Americana.  Billy’s Booger, however, is different – it has the full complement of stunning illustrations (some, the finest of his career), but is more of a masterpiece of design than anything else.

Consider – Joyce includes his initial foray into book creation as a special insert into the book itself, published on different weight green construction paper (and printed in what appears to be white chalk).  In addition to that, Joyce reproduces the illustrative style of 1950s-60s hygiene texts, along with loose-leaf paper doodles, and also includes several loving homages to classic newspaper comic strips.  Nor does he miss an opportunity to display his obsessive creativity and imagination: the endpapers include schoolboy doodles of the most mischievous sort, including my favorite: Replace Hallway Floors with TRAMPOLINES – why has this not happened? 

Joyce fills the book with quotations of his many obsessions, as well as many of his early books.  In what may be my favorite illustration in the book, Joyce’s depicts his younger self creating his first magnum opus.  In the background, just perceptible, is the poster from the 1933 King Kong, one of Joyce’s seminal influences.  Nearby is a model spaceship in the mode of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers (Joyce’s sense of science fiction, like that of your correspondent, is locked in 1930s art deco futurism).  On his desk is a brontosaur that may well serve as the model for his later creation, Dinosaur Bob, and doodles on his desk bring to mind his most recent book, The Mischievians.

In other parts of the book, you will see references to his earlier works, including George Shrinks, Roli Poli Oli, and perhaps even a nod to his sometimes collaborator, Michael Chabon.  There is even a little doodle that will become the logo for his animation and imagination company, Moonbot.

And Joyce simply never lets up.  In those pages where he recreates classic comic strips, I was able to spot homages to Peanuts, L’il Abner, a gorgeous Little Nemo page, Flash Gordon (of course) and Dick Tracy.  It is in his affections and deeply-rooted loves that Joyce reminds me most, perhaps, of the late Ray Bradbury (1920-2012).  Like Bradbury, one of the great writers of the last century, Joyce wears his heart and his loves on his sleeve – which is perhaps where they belong.  It is not a fashionable way of looking at the world; and certainly the last thing anyone could ever accuse Joyce of was being “ironic.”  But it is honest, and sweet and boyish and … peppy.  I can’t read Joyce (or Bradbury, for that matter) and not feel young again, or at least young at heart.  If for no other reason, Joyce deserves a medal, perhaps with an oak leaf cluster, if they have one lying around somewhere.

More literal minded readers will wonder how much of Billy’s Booger is “true.”  Well what does it mean when one promises the truth in a memoir?  Is this the actual book Joyce created in his boyhood, reproduced here without editorializing?  Did he, in fact, have such a happy relationship with his principal?  (If so, Joyce was doubly, if not triply blessed.)  And … are these pages lit by the glow of personal nostalgia?

Well … what does it matter?  Billy’s Booger is thickly crusted with enough biographical data to have more than a kernel of truth, and this is the artist’s biography as he remembers it.  Perhaps, one day, there will be a full-fledged autobiography or third-person biography to enjoy in addition to the Booger.

In a culture that values its heroes and children’s entertainment when it’s “dark,” the wonderful world of William Joyce provides a much-needed corrective.  His world is a place of sun-kissed landscapes, mid-century American optimism, and unfettered fun.  His books are for very young children, very old people, and everyone and anyone in between.

For those reasons, and many others, the book Billy’s Booger is our pick of the week.

Master Magicians and Phantoms: An Interview with Lee Falk, Part III

We go back again to 1996, when your correspondent interviewed creator Lee Falk (1911-1999), the man behind The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician.

Would you say that there is some kind of inherent difference between comic strips and comic books?

Yes. For one thing, there was self-censorship, which we picked up years ago. The violence we eliminated pretty much ourselves. These days the adventure strip is pretty much gone, there's not much left. Flash Gordon, unfortunately, has a very slim readership, even though it's beautifully drawn by John Cullen Murphy. Of course, Alex Raymond was one of the very best in the field. Prince Valiant has a limited circulation, but still fabulously drawn. There are very few of them in newspapers still, but they never had that kind of violence in them. It was a rich field with great stuff like Smilin' Jack, and Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon.

I think that, if I can interject for a moment, that the real difference between the comic strip and comic books is that strips are more a more literary medium than comic books. Particularly in work like yours, there was a greater depth and development of characters. Strips were actually more adult than comic books are now.

I write for adults. I always have. I figured that the kids would read it, too, which they have. I was over in Scandinavia for The Phantom Fan Club. They told me that the club was the biggest youth movement in the country, bigger than the Boy Scouts! They had a 140,000 member in The Phantom Fan Club. But these are mostly children to young men and women, some kids, too. I understand that the King of Sweden was a member when he was boy.

I don't want to knock other people's work, though. There are a lot of great people working in comics now. I've always admired Stan Lee's work, and I don't think he ever got too violent.

Could you tell us about The Phantom novels you wrote a few years ago?

Yes. We did about 15 of them in the 1970s. They wanted me to do a novelization of my strip every two months! At that time, I was not only doing both of my strips, but I was very active in the theater. I had five of my own theaters, some of them with stock companies, and I was writing and directing plays. I've had a whole life in the theater independent of comic strips, and I told them I could only do the first one. I took one of my stories, and wrote about The Phantom's trip to Missouri as a boy to become educated, I think he was the 21st generation, and how he had to return to the jungle to take over as The Phantom.

That was number one. Then they got some other writers, and I gave them proofs of my original stories with outlines, and they wrote some of them up. Every six months I would do one, myself. So in the course of a few years, I did five of them. I'm rather proud of them, worked hard on them, and think they're rather good.

The others, I was very disappointed in them. I gave them the stories, but I think they did a hack job, and knocked them out. I told them to take my name off them, and just put based on my strip. Put their name on it. If it's good, I want the credit. But if it's lousy and I didn't do it, I don't want it.

Killer's Town was one of them, and I thought that was pretty good.

What can you tell us about your Mandrake the Magician and Phantom musicals?

That was good! A couple of young guys in Stockholm, Sweden, wrote me and asked permission to do a Phantom musical. I told them it had to stay over there, because there was always talk of doing something with the property over here. I went to see it, and the guy who wrote the music also played the Phantom. It was their equivalent of Off-Broadway. Pretty good, though it was in Swedish, of course. It had one number called The Bronx Blues, also in Swedish! It wasn't bad!

The Mandrake musical, I wrote the book for that. George Quincy did the music, and his wife did the lyrics. That was produced up in Massachusetts. The theater was quite nice, and the fellow who played Mandrake was very good. A producer took a Broadway option on it; he was a big industrialist who wanted to do a Broadway show. He left, trying to raise money. But it turns out the King Features, without my knowing, sold the option to someone who wanted the movie rights. The industrialist couldn't raise the Broadway money without movie rights in the package, and the film fell through too.

The score still exists, and it may be done some day.

What about working with Wilson McCoy and Ray Moore on The Phantom? How was that?

Well, Moore, as I told you, was inking Mandrake. When The Phantom took off, I knew one man just couldn't do all this work. It's illustration. It's not like Chick Young who could do all his stuff on a Monday morning, before going off for golf, which is what he did on Blondie. You can cartoon very quickly, but you can't do that on adventure strips, they're illustration and take time.

Ray Moore came onto The Phantom, and when World War II came, went into the Air Corps. Wilson McCoy, who was an artist who did work for advertising companies, and a pal of Ray Moore's, took over when Ray was gone. When Ray came back, he was slightly debilitated. He said he was hit by a propeller, but I think he actually got into a fight and was hit in the head with a monkey wrench. It left him with a nervous disorder, and one side of his face was paralyzed. Anyhow, his hands were shaking, but I still kept him on the payroll for a long time, and continued until he died.

I was grateful to McCoy because I had joined the Army, and had done all of scripts ahead of time, so I didn't have to worry about that. I never liked McCoy's work too much, because he started out copying Moore exactly, which was good, but then he got into his own style which was more simplistic. I know in Europe they enjoy his work more, but I didn't care for it at all, actually.

How would you explain the overwhelming popularity of Mandrake and The Phantom abroad?

They're very popular in Mexico, South America, Argentina, and Brazil. I've been to these places and spoke to the people, talked at press conferences, and all that. In Barcelona, they started publishing a complete works of The Phantom, and he got out about six big volumes of comic books before he went bankrupt, publishing them in Spain and Portugal.

For a number of years, they published in Stockholm a Phantom magazine. They kept redoing my stories. In a one magazine, they could run a story that would take three or four months in the newspapers. They'd just chop it down and cut out the necessary repetitions that are in a daily strip.  So they asked if they could occasionally publish some of their own, which we granted. So they have a very good group of artists, from all over the world, doing their own stories of The Phantom, along with reprinting my original work. It has just grown into an industry, it's huge!

The Phantom is popular almost everywhere. In Scandinavia, it's amazing. There's a complete saturation in all the newspapers. Last time I was there, they had Batman, Superman, all the rest. But they told me that The Phantom outsells all the others, combined. Isn't that something?

Another story, somewhat painful, was during War, as people of my generation call World War II.  Norway was under Nazi occupation, a very cruel occupation. They controlled the newspapers, and put out misinformation like Washington bombed, New York bombed, America was crumbling, that sort of thing. It turns out that during this time The Phantom was appearing everyday, including Sunday, in Norwegian papers. And the Nazis did not change the text. The Phantom had not run in Germany, and they did not know him, but the Norwegians did.

Now the following is true, I had a Norwegian publisher who I met after the War come up to me, embrace me, and tell me the story. During the first two years of the War, I was in the Office of War Information, and still writing the strip. It turns out that this whole time The Phantom was being smuggled into Norway, and published in Norwegian, and that it raised the morale factor enormously. The Norwegians figured that if I was still at home, managing to put out The Phantom, that things could not be that bad in America! It was a big joke on the Nazis. But more than that, “The Phantom” became the password for the Swedish-Norwegian underground. I always liked that. Just about a year ago, oddly enough, I was at a dinner table with some other people, among them a woman who had just come from Norway that summer. She said that her brother, who was part of the Norwegian underground, took her out to the barn to show her a radio hidden under the straw, where during the war he would broadcast to the states as The Phantom. When she told me, I was so amazed -- that not only that it mattered then, but that people still had memories of what he meant to them then.

But both of these characters loom very large in the history of comics.

Well, especially The Phantom.  In some places The Phantom's Oath, The Oath of the Skull, where he says he devotes his life to destroying piracy, which stands for all kinds of criminality, cruelty, and injustice, is no laughing matter. Now in those places of the world where there is cruelty, where there is no justice, he has had quite an impact. Some places, like Haiti, for one, there was a rebel movement, a revolution under Papa Doc. After the big parade after the Lenten mass, young officers were coming out in Phantom costumes! The thing fell apart, and they were caught as it happened, but I was told about it by someone who managed to get out of Haiti. So in many places, they take The Phantom Oath very seriously, and it gives the strip another dimension that other strips simply don’t have.

That must be very satisfying to you as well.

It certainly is! You asked me why it’s so popular -- I don’t know, but fortunately it remains that way, or I’d have to go to work!

More Lee Falk tomorrow!