Cartoons — American Style

- Mario Miranda

In Madison Avenue is the small compact office with about 20 very sane individuals that comprise MAD magazine. The editor has a pedal pusher in his office. “This is the only exercise that I get,” he panted as he pedaled away in a frenzy of unspent energy. Jerry de Fuccio, the assistant editor, took me around the cramped quarters and introduced me to Prohias of “Spy vs Spy” Fat and pleasant, Prohias is Puerto Rican and speaks no English (after more than 20 years in America). No wonder his cartoons are wordless. Sergio Aragones looked very much like one of his own creations come to life and Al Jaffee, with a curly mop of unruly hair, blue, bloodshot eyes and a red nose, seemed as though he had a permanent hangover. The whole MAD crowd goes off on a holiday to a different country every year, financed by the man who holds MAD’s purse strings. I asked Prohias about coming over to India on one of these holiday ventures. “Are you mad, Senor?” he screamed.

Before “leaving my heart in San Francisco” (one of the most beautiful cities in the world) I decided to pay a visit to my favourite comic “stripper” - the Peanuts man, Charles Schulz. So off we went (my better half and I) on a Greyhound bus across the lovely Californian countryside to a sleepy little town across the Bay called Santa Rosa. This is where Schulz holds court. He lives and works above his very own skating rink (called the Redwood Empire Ice Arena, dedicated to the one and only Snoopy) and has a very organized set-up: secretary, receptionist, PROs and all the visible signs of the very successful businessman. Schulz, besides being an extremely popular cartoonist, is very, very rich - even by American standards.

I was slightly disappointed in the “man” Schulz. I imagined him to be one of those extremely kind, humorous sorts of chaps, like Herblock - perhaps he is, but if so he’s terribly reserved. Schulz is tall with a very ascetic face, long straight graying hair, pale blue eyes partly hidden behind steel-rimmed tinted glasses. His features stood out in sharp contrast to his rather flamboyant outfit - brightly printed bell-bottoms and a gaudy checked shirt that did not match.