[Editor's Note: Darren Schroeder's career retrospective of Bill's work will return next week. This week we are lucky enough to have Bill flying solo for the first time. Sit back and enjoy!]
So I was asked to appear at "Career Day" at my local institution of higher learning, the Samuel L. Clemens Middle School and Technical Institute. "All you have to do is stay in one classroom and the kids will come in and listen to you talk about how you became a cartoonist." Hey, what could be easier? Talk about myself for a day? I love talking about myself! And I’ve spoken to the occasional art or English class before. It’s fun! I bring a few props - sable brushes, non-photo blue pencils, three or four penciled pages, a few inked pages, some color comps of covers I’ve collected over the years (the various cyan, process yellow and magenta plates printed on acetate sheets to show how four-color printing works). Some wise words about the work ethic and getting ideas from everyday life, a few questions and we’re done.
I collected my samples over the next couple of days, reviewed my career, found it most entertaining, and carefully selected a wardrobe which was neither too flashy, nor too casual. I was ready. I arrived at the school fifteen minutes early; an earnest gentleman in a coat and bow tie greeted me at the door, "You’re here for the thing, right?" I nodded and he took me through several miles of hallways, and down two sets of staircases to arrive at the stage in front of a crowded auditorium, with four other souls, each one easily thirty years my junior, with a huge banner stretched overhead: "Welcome Yellow Ribbon Award Winners."
"Umm," I said. "This isn’t Career Day, is it?" It wasn’t. It wasn’t the Middle School either. This was Samuel L. Clemens High School and Technical Institute. Sprinted I down the hallways and across the parking lot to my car, where traversed I the three miles to the middle school at roughly the speed of sound. I was somewhat concerned that I might not know which door to go to this time; I needn’t have worried. Have you ever seen the Biblical etchings of the long lines of satraps and ambassadors bringing wagon loads of tribute to the Pharaoh? Well, the scene outside the Samuel L. Clemens Middle School and Technical Institute was sort of like that, but gaudier. You could see the kegs of free golf tees and golf balls the guy from the driving range had brought; there were crates of free fried chicken and pizza from the restaurant managers; the guy who ran the local dealership was dragging in wheeled carts stuffed with model cars; the man who sweeps out the cages in the zoo had brought a baby elephant. I was fully expecting the local astronomer to arrive with a comet on a leash. Somehow my grocery bag with art supplies and seven comic book pages was starting to look less, I dunno, impressive.
"Don’t worry," commiserated the teacher, when I located the room where I was stationed that day. "The kids are going to get bored with all the presents." Yep, I thought. That was what was boring to me, when I was in Middle School… presents.
Let me skip lightly over the first hour. I lead with my absolutely best material, stuff that I had honed over twenty years of panels and chalk talks at comic book conventions. I gave them my list of credits: writing and drawing JOURNEY, the Adventures of Wolverine MacAlistaire for five years, on and off; writing three years of JONNY QUEST, three and change of FLASH, about three of WONDER WOMAN, plus EPICURUS THE SAGE, DR. FATE, ATOM, SUPERMAN, THOR, JAGUAR, WHAT IF…, drawing WASTELAND and SILVERBACK, writing the BATMAN newspaper strip and THE MAXX, and ending up with my creation of BLISS ALLEY. Plus the new book The Amazing Exploits of BOREANNA BEAN, Enigma of the North. I had funny stories for all of them, scintillating stories of my adventures in the skin-tight trade; a lifetime of hilarity and drama condensed into forty-five minutes, and it just …laid there. Have you ever had to clean out mouse traps and come upon one with the mouse still viable, its back broken, horribly crushed, but still alive, just … waiting? There is a look of terrible patience in its eyes that is unforgettable. And each of those kids had that look. It was not a hopeful sign.
After that first hour I turned to the teacher and asked, "So… how did I do?" She smiled encouragingly. "Not badly. Really. It was … good." She groped for an example. "I mean, I think they liked the cartoons. Just try and relax. You were sort of… screaming at them at the end. And sweating. Try not to sweat so much. I think you were scaring them."
She also suggested that I might try and relate my own years in middle school to how I became a cartoonist. This was easy. When I was in Middle School, there were three of us - Mike, Ronnie and me - who were designated the class wimps. This meant every day for an entire year someone from the "in" group was sent up into the bleachers to beat us up. Or two or three someones. We were referred to as "The Untouchables", not referencing Elliot Ness, but a film strip on India the class had had to sit through. We were hated. Despised. Actually spat upon. Naturally I kept the comic strips I was working on a deep, dark secret; except one day, before school started, several of my tormentors spied me drawing, and came over, ready to mock. And were fascinated. They listened in awe to the stories I was telling, and nodded intelligently as they viewed the illustrations. Naturally, just like you, I expected a set up, but the other shoe never dropped; it was the only moment of actual popularity I had during that whole year. Now, nothing really changed — I wasn’t elected class president or anything. But it was something and it came from telling stories. That was probably the start of everything.
The class listened to this silently, dutifully, unmoved. This was worse than the mouse. At least the mouse had been interested. A few class cut ups in the back began to giggle sadistically, imagining how much fun it would have been to torment me. I had forgotten; of course these kids would hate this story — they were living it.
The next two hours passed with equal cheeriness. Thinking that the kids might be distracted by the fact that I have only one arm, I decided to fold that story into my narrative; how I had been born with a malignant tumor on my right arm and how 13 days later the doctors had amputated it; how I had grown up without the arm and so never missed it, and so on. They loved it! Unfortunately, what I just told you is the whole story — everything. My parents raised me not to worry about it; I didn’t worry about it. I would happily have expanded the tale, padded it out with angst, but there was nothing else to tell. Regretfully, I turned once more to the boring, loathsome, depressing world of cartooning. And watching the young faces with their young, dead eyes, their young bodies slumped into postures of utter disinterest, I suddenly remembered how boring it was to be in middle school; how utterly without interest was everything adult and adult-oriented. To be bored was cool; it was your only defense against the tyranny of schoolwork. To show enthusiasm was faggy, suck up, geeky. Christ, I was doomed.
During lunch I talked to the blind, folk-singing priest who was laboring in the room next to mine. (Yes, there really was a blind folk-singing priest. I had always thought that the mere presence of one insured that the airliner was going to be hijacked, or the ground was going to open up and swallow us all. But no such luck.) "Are there any kids in this school?" he asked desperately. "I mean, really? This isn’t some practical joke or something? I can’t even hear them breathe." He fiddled for a moment with his cane. "They won’t sing along. They don’t want to talk about religion. All they really ask about is what it’s like to be blind! And I’ve got no stories about that." Shallow of me, but I felt a little better.
The last two hours were the Bataan Death March. I thought I’d try drawing characters on the blackboard. That did spark some give and take, but … "Draw Flash!" "No, not like that!!" "Draw him like he was really running!" "Now draw him like he really looks!" "Draw Batman!" "Draw Spawn!!" "Draw Jimmy so he looks like a FAG!!" What made this all the more painful, is that I knew these kids. The quiet, painfully shy ones were me at that age; the rambunctious, obnoxious ones are now my best friends. They would grow up to be cartoonists, if they were allowed to grow up, and I would like them for their easy, smartass qualities, but in this time and this place, we were natural enemies.
I have mercifully tried to block out the last few minutes of the day. I staggered to my car and ran away, hiding in the Putney Falls library until I had the strength to drive home.
Several weeks later I got a plain manila envelope from the Samuel L Clemens Middle School and Technical Institute. I already knew what it must say: "Dear Mr. Messner-Loebs, though we appreciate the effort you put into your Career Day presentation, we have decided to go next year with people who are actually interesting … Blah, blah. Sincerely yours…" Instead what came spilling out were hundreds (Okay, thirty-seven) drawings, mostly illustrating ideas or characters I had been talking about. And with them, letters …
"Dear Mr. Messner-Loebs, my name is Bobby and I want to draw when I grow up…" "My name is Elise and I want to be a cartoonist." "This is my character, Minus-Man and I’m going to have a comic book of my own, just like yours…" Very sappy, I agree. And I know it was part of a class project to write all the featured guests. Still…will I agree to come back next year? Try and stop me.
