The Art of Richard Thompson

By David Apatoff, Nick Galifianakis, Mike Rhode and 2 more

A tribute to the cartoonist known as “Michelangelo with a sense of humor,” the creator of the beloved comic strip Cul de Sac (Pat Oliphant, editorial cartoonist).

Richard Thompson is renowned among cartoonists as an “artist’s” cartoonist. Little known to all but those close to him is the extent of his art talent. This is the book that will enlighten the rest of us and delight us with the sheer beauty of his work.

Divided into six sections, each beginning with an introductory conversation between Thompson and six well-known peers, including Bill Watterson, the book will present Thompson’s illustration work, caricatures, and his creation, Richard’s Poor Almanack. Each section is highly illustrated, many works in color, most of them large and printed one-to-a-page. The diversity of work will help cast a wider net, well beyond Cul de Sac fans.

“Even working wordlessly, from his wheelchair, Thompson was, and is, the supreme comedian. And that comic timing is among the embarrassment of rich gifts on beautiful display in The Art of Richard Thompson . . . one of the most anticipated art-retrospective books of the year.” —The Washington Post

“A new collection of art, interviews and commentaries . . . a more complete portrait of a multi-talented artist whose career ended far too early.” —IndieWire

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781449452810

Book preview

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Acknowledgments

Richard Thompson would like to thank the authors to start with. Everyone who tried to teach me art. Then everyone I’ve ever drawn for, especially Tom Shroder, Lee Salem, Mike Keegan, and my mom.

We’d like to thank the following for their assistance:

Amy Thompson, for all kinds of assistance. And for putting up with Richard, and the rest of us . . . especially Nick.

Steve Conley, who designed this book.

Cathy Hunter, Kevin Rechin, Andrew Postman, and Karen Yankosky assisted with the production.

Britt Conley, who scanned and prepared hundreds of the images in the book.

Joe Procopio, who jumped in at the last minute and dammed the ever-changing scanning overflow created by editors who couldn’t make up their minds, thus saving the day. Twice.

Sara Duke and Martha Kennedy of the Library of Congress; Jack Thompson, Richard West, Hans Bruland of the Hay-Adams Hotel; Matt Wuerker, James Sturm, and David Bragunier; John Glynn and David Ohman of Universal Uclick; Jenny Robb, Caitlin McGurk, and Marilyn Scott of OSU’s Billy Ireland Library; John Read of Stay Tooned! Magazine, Tim Thompson, Steve Sullivan, Tom Specht of BonoTom Studio, Carolyn Hax, Peter Docter, and Tim Cook­—all of whom provided artwork for the book.

Delve Withrington, who is Richard’s font designer, and gave his permission for its use in this book.

Bruce Guthrie, Richard’s long-time friend, and the Team Cul de Sac photographer.

Dorothy O’Brien, our editor at Andrews McMeel, with thanks for her patience and support.

Contents

Introduction by Nick Galifianakis

Richard Thompson: A Brief Biography (With a Few Observations Mixed In) by David Apatoff

Can he draw something during the operation? by Richard Thompson

Alice was looking underinflated . . . Parkinson’s disease discussion with Nick Galifianakis

Illustration Interview by Peter de Sève

Bono Mitchell recalls Richard’s early illustrations

My New Favorite Nib by Richard Thompson

Richard’s Poor Almanac Interview by Gene Weingarten

Below the Beltway by Richard Thompson

Slinky McBits and one of my favorite Almanacs by Richard Thompson

Caricature Interview by John Kascht

Hopeful Monsters, or, Caricaturing Berlioz by Richard Thompson

Music, a dilettante’s love story by Richard Thompson

Cul de Sac Interview by Bill Watterson

Historic Otterloop Artifact by Richard Thompson

Early Cul de Sac

The primeval Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson

A master of the art form . . . by Lee Salem

Contributor Biographies

Introduction

By Nick Galifianakis

Poor Richard.

He’s finally stretched out on the lounge chair he spends the night in, ready for sleep, tucked in by his wife and illuminated only by the light from his studio where I’m working on this book. After a while, I turn off the light and sneak out, but not before considering my old friend.

I have felt sorry for Richard Thompson exactly once.

It wasn’t when his startling symptoms arrived, or when he was subsequently diagnosed with Parkinson’s, or any of the times I’ve witnessed the myriad difficulties and indignities he navigates without complaint. It wasn’t even when he was rushed to the emergency room with a pulmonary embolism last fall.

No. The only time I ever felt sorry for Richard was twenty-five years ago, when he first looked through my portfolio.

I’d just had my first cartoon published, in a small paper down South, and I came back home to the D.C. area to conquer bigger mountains. While I browsed a gallery that specialized in animation drawings, the owner suggested I call a regular customer of his, this cartoonist I had never heard of. I did. Richard Thompson agreed to meet me at a restaurant in the city.

He walked in—loped, really—at just under 6 feet tall and what seemed like 75 pounds. Dirty blond hair hanging over one eye, Ichabod Crane’s Adam’s apple and glasses perched on . . . that spectacular nose.

He smiled, upping his charm. Immediately, I felt a protective affection for him.

He seemed to enjoy letting me indulge in storytelling, which I did enthusiastically because I feared awkward silences with this very articulate (anyone who uses the word lapidary can’t possibly draw, right?) but soft-spoken man. He peppered our chat with dry asides but possessed what seemed an air of uncertainty . . . or was it just old-world courtesy? Still, we managed to talk about whom we liked, in the way all cartoonists do.

I let a respectable interval of time pass before finally reaching for my portfolio. I didn’t want to bruise this exceptionally likable fella’s ego before his career had really started.

So, yeah—I felt sorry for him.

Richard went through each page with great deliberation, studying and chuckling over each picture. Maybe my drawings would inspire him to get out there more, I thought. I appreciated (and expected) the nice things he had to say about my work. Then, more out of politeness than anything, I asked to look at his portfolio.

I opened it.

And Richard was immediately and forever transformed in front of me as I realized I was sitting across from the only actual genius I had ever met.

I couldn’t speak. I could scarcely even gasp. A stunned expression undoubtedly contorted my face. The entire restaurant seemed all of a sudden empty but for us. The ceiling parted; the clouds and sky itself parted. Celestial light beams flooded our table. Rubenesque cherubs hov-ered above. Somewhere, the sound of a choir.

Richard Thompson’s drawings staggered me. Their deftness, humor, and depth made mine feel amateurish, self-important, and shallow. In an instant, I saw not only just how long the road was . . . I was astonished to realize I wasn’t even on the road. Ability? Sure. Effort? Absolutely. But how does one convince the gods to fashion your visions, and an angel to guide your hand?

Richard provided me with the aha! moment of my creative life. This book exists partly because I want current and future artists to feel as worthless as I did.

In the years that followed, a warm friendship grew. But there were always bracing reminders, aside from his regular, published brilliance, that my friend was working on another plane from the rest of us.

Richard has been a relentless experimenter across a wondrous variety of media, creating masterful digressions that no one outside of his studio would ever see. He was as unconcerned with money or fame as he was exacting in pursuit of artistic purity. His studio wastebasket regularly filled with what he calls first thoughts and false starts—what everyone else calls suitable for framing. He can come across as unaware or even naive, but then a week or a year later he’ll describe in a cartoon a personality or situation so accurately and with such observation that one is frightened into self-consciousness. He once insisted that I destroy an oil painting of his that I and every artist I know would have been thrilled to produce. It broke my heart to do it. But he stood firm, and the painting it would lead to—somehow, even better—is in this book.

Indeed, among those who know, it has long been considered a crime, even a sin, that a book featuring the breathtaking range of Richard Thompson’s work has not existed before now. That inexcusable absence is due mostly to the fact that Richard’s talent is in direct proportion to his stubborn unwillingness to self-promote. Quietly creating in the predawn hours against a soundtrack of classical music in a tiny studio, while consuming food of decidedly negligible substance (usually from a bag or Styrofoam box), contented to measure himself artistically only against himself, has always meant more to Richard than publicly shouting, Look at me!

Art director Bono Mitchell, who hired Richard so many times that she long ago became more family than friend, has been pushing for a book like this for years. So have Richard’s wife, Amy, and his parents, his artist friends and admirers, and pretty much anyone who ever stepped inside his studio and had even the tiniest aesthetic sense.

And then Fan Boy Extraordinaire, Chris Sparks, rallied the cartoonist community for the book Team Cul de Sac: Cartoonists Draw the Line at Parkinson’s, which honored Richard while raising money to help others fight a terrible disease. This worthy adventure led Chris to share some of Richard’s non–Cul de Sac work with Bill Watterson, the famously private creator of Calvin and Hobbes (who had previously been wowed by Cul de Sac through his friend and cartoon historian Rich West), and a door once barely cracked was thrown wide open.

And so . . . (insert circuitous story here that includes jolly North Carolinians visiting Ohio, reclusive Ohioans visiting Virginia, a big Greek dinner, brain electrodes, a house move, masterpieces locked in storage, a broken hip, endless hours excavating images, turf battles, lots of hugs, a regular supply of potato leek soup, and Lily, the feline therapist) . . . the World’s Most Overdue Art Book was born.

It wasn’t easy. Maybe the only thing worse than not enough of a good thing is too much of one. It was painful to select these images because of the ones left out. Richard’s consistency is ridiculously high.

Easily my favorite part of this process was unearthing this or that picture in his studio and holding it up to him. Sometimes he’d simply consider it for a long moment, or maybe say, Yeah . . . I like that, or even better, he’d instantly laugh, the latter reaction securing prompt inclusion in the book.

The cast of admirers that came together to produce this book includes:

David Apatoff. His deep understanding of good draftsmanship in all its forms has been a great asset. Four hundred Richard’s Poor Almanacs later (Chapter 2), he can still photographically recall the previous 399, and this on nothing but pistachios and Girl Scout cookies. And no bathroom breaks. We also needed an attorney.

Steve Conley is our talented book designer. Tech savvy, creative, and improvisationally skilled, he was the last stop in the building process, as all relevant parts flowed to him. Or, more accurately, were hurled at him with great force, relentlessly and at all hours.

Mike Rhode, ComicsDC blogger, friend, and organizer, became our timekeeper. The group lacked spreadsheet humor . . . or even a spreadsheet, so Mike was called in to focus our collective ADHD. He took to the job, maybe too well, eventually nicknaming himself The Enforcer. He’s been superb. We will never speak to him after this, but he has been superb.

Chris Sparks, a perennial gold medal winner in the Excitability Olympics, has never met a no he didn’t ignore, either by being jovially brash or too wonderfully dense to know better (see Watterson, meeting with earlier). There’s a decent chance you’re reading this book because Chris thrust it in your face.

Bill Watterson. His great eye and good sense were crucial, particularly to the Cul de Sac chapter, a ripple that carried throughout the rest of the book. His remarkable chat with Richard speaks for itself (though it may surprise people to know that the entire conversation was conducted in operatic verse).

Our interviewers. Sports fans and non- know that Michael Jordan is a great athlete, a peak in his sport, but few can appreciate what goes into becoming Michael Jordan more than fellow players such as Magic Johnson or Larry Bird or Kobe Bryant can. They simply get Jordan on a whole other level. So, along with Watterson, here are our Magic, Larry, and Kobe:

Gene Weingarten, a great spotter of talent and renowned humor columnist, actually won his first Pulitzer for a sad story and then won his second for a really sad story. And there’s something strangely funny about that.

John Kascht describes caricature as a portrait with the volume turned up. His elegant caricature portraits are long the standard and can be found in myriad publications, academic institutions, and museums. John set the bar high by approaching his interview with the same thoughtfulness he does his lovely pictures.

Peter de Sève is one of the most influential illustrators of his generation, an extraordinary draftsman, and yet he wore his humility like a badge of honor