Top of the World!

MILO GEORGE Jack and Tyler ends in '96. Top of the World launches in '98?

MARK TONRA: Yes. I spent '97 doing gags and working up two new strips. I worked up a kid strip and sent it in, and then I started working on Top of the World before I heard back on the kid strip. I think I got some rejections on the kid strip, and then United called me about Top of the World -- again, Sparky's "irons in the fire" -- and they wanted to go with Top of the World, which was the one I wanted to do. Whatever I was working on at the moment was always the one that I liked the best.

GEORGE The thing that immediately struck me most about Top of the World is that the concept itself is so anachronistic. If you didn't know that it had been done in 1998, you would think that it was decades old. Especially at a time when entertainments like Oz were presenting this gritty, unpleasant, accurate view of prison life.

TONRA: Top of the World was no doubt a reaction to my first syndication experience. When I was starting out, I tried to think a little bit like the syndicate -- not to the point where I was doing some piece of garbage, because I thought it was marketable -- but I definitely thought a good idea with a smart marketing angle might increase my chances of getting in the door. I thought Jack and Tyler had a nice hook: that multi-generational thing that I knew syndicates, and possibly newspapers, would be interested in. I liked the characters and the humor, but I also thought it had this unique generational appeal. So, when that strip didn't go over well, the lesson learned was, "It doesn't matter what you do -- so you might as well do something unexpected and have a great time."

So, when Jack and Tyler ended, I had a kid strip on my desk, one with a female lead that I started when Jack and Tyler was being considered. Like I said, I was always creating new things. So I threw that at the syndicates to see if anyone would take it, and then I started sketching what would become Top of the World. So Top was truly the first idea that followed the Jack and Tyler experience. I remember sketching in my kitchen on the Upper West Side, picking up my pencil and saying, "This is insane. Nobody's going to take a strip about prison." You know what the marketplace is like now. There are about four situations that a syndicate will buy from anyone: a family strip, a pet strip, a workplace strip and maybe some kind of a Far Side thing. That's pretty much it. But I was having so much fun drawing these little convicts jumping out of windows and hammering rocks that I didn't care. It was like being in the third grade again. I had this great epiphany staring at my kitchen wall above the toaster. That was a very big moment for me, looking at that wall in my kitchen. I knew from that day on, I would never ever do what I thought people wanted me to do. I'm going to do exactly what I want to do, when I want to do it, exactly how I want to do it. I'll put it out there, and if people want it, fine. If they don't, whatever. There are no guarantees, either way, so you might as well go broke doing something you love. With or without a thousand newspapers, if you're creating something that you care about, something that brings you joy without interference, you'll always be a success.

So Top of the World was born. I sent it out and, lo and behold, I got "the call." Two calls, actually; United and King actually called me at the same time. Jay called first with some notes on the strip and while I was on the phone with Jay I got a call waiting, went over to the other line and it was United Media.

GEORGE Was that Amy Lago?

TONRA: No. It was their vice president at the time, Diana Loevy. She said United was "very interested in Top of the World. We love it. We really want to do something with it." I said, "Can I call you back? I'm on the other line." I clicked back over to Jay and finished that conversation, which was very helpful. He liked the strip, but there were certain things he thought could be better. I forget exactly what. We finished that conversation and I said, "OK. Let me get back to you." I called United back and they said, "Don't change a thing," so I went with them.

GEORGE I don't know if there is a connection or not, but prison humor in comics is very much a staple of gag cartooning. Do you think that's where a lot of the Top of the World material came from?

TONRA: No. I never did any prison gags when I was gag cartooning. I don't know where it came from. You know, I don't know where any of this stuff comes from. You pick up your sketchbook and you just start playing around with things. I think at the time, coming off of Jack and Tyler, I was just looking for something very different. I always like to do something that's at the opposite end of what I've just done. It keeps me interested and helps me to grow. Top of the World was very different from Jack and Tyler -- in every way. And that was exciting. I don't know where it came from. It just came, and I'm glad that it did. I had a great time with it and it did a lot for my career.

GEORGE Reading through the material, one of the most noticeable things as the strip progresses is just how the art itself becomes much more assured at the same time that you really started to strip it down, almost to the bare essentials. You could see the progression from Jack and Tyler to James.

TONRA: I did all of Jack and Tyler with a brush -- all of my inking with a brush, and it almost killed me. It was slow and very labor-intensive. The line worked, but I was having a nervous breakdown every week trying to meet the deadlines -- something I've discovered never changes! [Laughter.] With Top, I definitely wanted -- and needed -- to work faster, so I switched over to a fountain pen, one that gave me a very straight clean line which was perfect for what I wanted to do. I got it in my head that I wanted Top to have a -- I hesitate to say Art Deco look, because anyone who really knows what Art Deco looks like knows that that's not exactly what was happening in Top -- but I used a lot of very clean, straight lines and shapes that were inspired more than anything else by the look of that period. If George McManus were alive, I might've asked him to draw it! [Laughter.]

So, I changed some habits, but, again, working like that almost killed me. It's funny, but what I love most about this job is the writing; the words and ideas. I've always felt more like a writer than an artist, so it's always shocking to me when people say they get a thrill from my art. Someone will go on about how "fun and free it looks" and all I can think about is the horrible day that I drew it, crying at the drawing table with my little bottle of White-out and straight edge, cleaning it all up -- ugh. So, yeah, that look almost did me in, too.

GEORGE A foundation in classic comics has always been obvious in your work, but it really comes to the fore in Top. It's obvious, looking at your dailies, that you've read your Segar.

TONRA: Without a doubt. I was reading a lot of Thimble Theatre at that time. I still do. Segar was a genius, absolutely. We don't have many in our business, but he was definitely one of them. An enormous talent. And his inspiration, now that you've reminded me, is exactly what steered me towards the continuity stuff I was doing. Top started off with little prison gags to set up the character's personalities, but the longer continuity stuff was where I wanted to go with it. This, of course, was probably the kiss of death for the strip. The market isn't what it was in 1932 -- surprise, surprise -- but that was the type of strip I wanted to do, so I did it. I did one storyline in the strip's last year that went on for three months or more. The warden goes up in the mountains and gets caught in an avalanche. He's missing for days. Mugs and Knuckles go up in the mountains looking for him. He's been taken hostage by a monster, a "Google" -- for DeBeck. The thing just went in every direction. It was so much fun to do. And this adventure just went on and on for three or four months. For better or worse, that's what I wanted to do, so I did it. I just loved the idea of trying to bring back that type of eccentric Segar-inspired continuity, and I thought I had the perfect strip to do it with. So long as Mugs and Knuckles ended up back in their cell at the end of the adventure, I could be as extreme as I wanted without interrupting the internal logic of the strip.

GEORGE The dailies I've read straddle Segar's line between incredibly propulsive narrative and character vignettes; most of the stories in Top rocket by, but there's still enough time for the reader to appreciate the eccentricity of the characters.

TONRA: I really loved doing that strip. It was a lot of work, but well worth it, incredibly satisfying work. Everything just seemed to kind of go in the direction that I wanted it to.

GEORGE It's perverse that the newspapers don't seem to be pushing for continuities anymore. You would think that, since the comics are still the most popular thing in the newspapers, they would actually sink some money into a strip people would follow on a daily basis.

TONRA: Yeah. Top of the World had a lot of subscribers, but the editors weren't putting it on their page, which is something I'll never understand. I don't know if you know about that, but it's very common. I was getting paid, but what I really wanted was to be seen -- or seen more, I should say. That's the only way you can survive and grow. Whenever we got Top of the World in front of readers, they loved it. The hard part was always getting it past the gatekeepers, the editors who bought it in the first place. A lot of them just chickened out. They liked it enough to buy it, but when it came time to put it on the page, they got scared. They couldn't get past the prison thing. People like to blame the syndicates, but really, it's the newspapers themselves who are destroying the comics. There are a lot of interesting voices out there; they're just not getting heard. And for strips like Top, well, I'm afraid that's getting hopeless. Segar and Herriman would have an impossible time in this market. Can you imagine pitching Popeye or Krazy Kat to today's newspapers? The sad fact is, newspapers build their page based on demographics, pure and simple. If today's newspapers had to choose between Thimble Theatre and some lifeless strip about single moms, they'd take the single moms because "One-eyed mumbling sailors with bloated forearms don't read our newspaper." It's a very sad situation and it's not going to get better.

James

GEORGE Top of the World ran for two years. So it must have been right around the end of its run that your son James was born.

TONRA: Yeah. James was born Aug. 24, 1999. That'll change your life in a hurry.

GEORGE I'm sure you get a lot more work done, since you no longer sleep.

TONRA: Where do I even begin?

GEORGE "Insomnia-induced dementia as a boon for creativity."

TONRA: Keep that in mind. And it continues. He's a very early riser, so it's been a long time since I've had what I used to call a full night's sleep. The disclaimer in this interview is that if anyone reads anything here that they disagree with or that they find offensive or ridiculous, the disclaimer is that I'm really, really tired. I haven't slept for three years, so I can't be held responsible for anything that I say.

GEORGE I would assume that there had to be a certain amount of frustration regarding the trouble with Top of the World.

TONRA: Well, yeah. I was aware of it. I knew that it was struggling that last year, but what was more important to me was the fact that I was succeeding with what I wanted to do. My primary goals have always been artistic ones. That's my yardstick for success. It's not about how many papers you're in or how famous you are or whatever. It's always about what happens in my studio. I really liked the characters, and when I started expanding the storylines into longer and longer continuities and found that the characters actually worked in those situations, it was all very exciting to me. Top also had a very dedicated fan base, here in the States and around the world. A fan base that included Sparky Schulz, who sited Top as one of his two favorite modern strips -- what more could anyone hope for? Top was a dream come true in every way that mattered to me.

GEORGE Did you begin working on James while you were still doing Top of the World?

TONRA: I started working on it, but I didn't know I was working on it. When James was born -- do you have kids?

GEORGE Most of our readers don't.

TONRA: Anyone who has kids of their own will know exactly what I'm talking about. Before James was born, I was at my desk, working every day of the week from morning to midnight, and all I can think about is Mugs and Knuckles and Top of the World and what they're doing this week and what they're doing next week, and I'm fixing this, and finessing that, blah, blah, blah -- that was my life.

And then, James is born and suddenly all of the crap disappears. Things fall into their proper order; you know who you are, you know what's important -- you know that you could make that cell door a little bit straighter, but you just don't have to, because it's beautiful as it is. It's a powerful thing, having kids. And so, because I do what I do, the sketchbook gets hijacked. The convicts start giving way to these daydreams I'm having about this little stranger living in my house. Children are so pure and unspoiled. They're just these big hearts with open arms; a clean slate. James shows up and I'm completely fascinated. I'm looking at him and I'm thinking, "This is where it starts." You start off with this clean slate, this innocent being, and then life interrupts. Without knowing it, I was creating another strip.

GEORGE So it was very much an organic reaction to fatherhood?

TONRA: Totally organic. And that was the nice thing for me, because when it came time to do a new strip -- remember, you're talking to a guy who created a strip about prison. [Laughter.] I don't sit down and say, "OK. What can I sell to the papers?" -- it was a natural thing for me to do. It was just a nice situation where what I was interested in writing and drawing at that time also fit a niche in the marketplace. James may present ideas and situations in a way that falls outside of a more traditional gag structure, but essentially, at its foundation, it's just a kid strip, pure and simple. It's about a little kid and how he relates to his parents and the world around him. That's a lot easier to sell than a prison strip.

GEORGE So much of the strip itself is obviously drawn from direct observation, especially the recent runs.

TONRA: The first year of doing the strip was done when James was an infant, so I had to rely more on my imagination. The character in the strip was much older than my real son -- who obviously wasn't walking and talking yet -- so a lot of those strips were just me anticipating what his life might be like; the obstacles he might face and how he might choose to address those obstacles. Now that he's older -- he's going to be 3 pretty soon -- he's walking and talking and he more resembles the character of the strip. He's also hilarious, so I find that what happens in our living room now will find its way, in some form or another, into the strip directly. So that changes the balance of the strip. He's interacting more with the secondary characters in the strip than he did in the past -- because I see him doing that in real life.

GEORGE One of the major aspects of the strip is James' relationship with his parents. Do you intentionally leave any images of his father out of the strip?

TONRA: One of the things that I really liked about the original concept of the strip from those early sketches in my sketchbook was that it was a one-man show. As I said, I have him interacting more with the kids in the neighborhood and doing different things now. But I think the foundation of the strip will always be those solo strips. I really like the simplicity of it and it's also very different than what I've seen other people doing. There have been so many prominent kid strips -- Peanuts, obviously, and Calvin and Hobbes and others -- and they throw a very long shadow. So it was important for me to find a way to make this strip different, otherwise I wouldn't have done it. When I stumbled onto the monologue thing, I thought, "OK. I can do this." So, not overdoing the mom and dad keeps the one-man show going.

That's why the shadow character works. It's a great way to have James work off of another character without working off another character. Even though the shadow is a character, because he's a shadow, it doesn't really feel like another character walked into the room. It's not like seeing Charlie Brown talking to Linus.

GEORGE Would you consider Barnaby to be an influence on James?

TONRA: No direct influence, but Barnaby is a great strip. Mr. O'Malley is perfect. But as for my shadow, I never wanted the shadow to become a gimmick. I still feel that way. I love having him in my bag of tricks, but I wouldn't want him to take over completely. It's important to have a balance of things and, while a fantasy element is a part of that balance, this strip is most satisfying for me in its truth. And there's not as much truth in those shadow strips as there are in the strips where James is speaking directly to the reader from his heart. Shadow James and the other kids are like an intermission from what I think is important about the strip. But that balance is what makes the whole thing work.

GEORGE Well, Shadow James is a really fanciful conceit.

TONRA: Yeah, and a lot of people like the shadow. Maybe if I was a different cartoonist I would say, "People love the shadow. I should do more of the shadow," and I've played around with that. But it just didn't work for me. I think he works where he is. That could change, but I have to be careful. It might become a gimmick if I were to rely on it too heavily, and that would get boring.

GEORGE Another thing that struck me when I was rereading the strip is that, while this work is your most current, it's the most thoroughly informed by classic comics. James in particular looks like what you would imagine Schulz and Percy Crosby would create in collaboration, especially in the faces.

TONRA: Well, those are Skippy's eyes. It's interesting that you say that, because Sparky loved Top of the World's Noozy character, the little newspaper boy. And when I told him that I was ending Top of the World, his suggestion was to refocus the strip on Noozy and get away from the prison thing. He thought that would be great and Noozy could be a "Skippy for the '90s." That's a quote. Of course, I had to remind Sparky that the '90s were almost over; it was almost 2000. But he said, "Oh, it would be great."

So when I started thinking about the James strip -- definitely when I drew those eyes on James -- I think it had everything to do with that conversation. It was my way of paying tribute to Sparky and also, of course, to Percy Crosby, who was brilliant. Another way I think Crosby influences James, for me, is that the strip is more about the ideas than it is about the characters. Crosby used Skippy as a platform to express his own thoughts and philosophies and, near the end, his own politics, which got him into trouble. Top of the World was all about the characters, the interaction between personalities. Going in the opposite direction, James is more about thoughts; what I've observed about myself, my son and the world that we keep company with. Crosby also gave me the courage to throw away my pencils and ink without a safety net. I wanted to enjoy drawing again -- like I did growing up. The pressure had become too much. Top's super-clean look almost killed me, so I wanted to break free of that and seeing Percy Crobsy -- and I should also mention Jules Feiffer's work -- have you ever read Tantrum?

GEORGE Certainly. That's a great, great novel.

TONRA: Oh, it's just this beautiful mess. I looked at his stuff and thought, "Why am I killing myself to white this out, to do this straight line?" So much of what excites me is this spontaneous, vibrant...

GEORGE A very line-first approach.

TONRA: Yeah. Percy Crosby and Jules Feiffer, that excites me. Herriman too. Herriman dipped his pen and went for it. I know that's what Sparky did. There's a great quote about Percy Crosby, Feiffer's quote actually, where he says Crosby "captured lightning in a bottle and learned to draw with it." So I ask myself, "Why am I obsessed with clean lines when everybody I admire lets it go?"

GEORGE How much under-drawing do you do for James?

TONRA: I'm doing a little bit more now. But nothing close to what I did with Top. When I first started doing James, I didn't do any; I freehanded the whole thing, which was a completely different way of working. But I think it was necessary. I had to do something because I was losing my joy for the job, for the drawing. The great thing is, it works for the feature; because I'm writing about children, the looseness -- the almost-childlike line -- compliments the premise. And there's a spontaneity and energy that I like. I've given up the perfectionist thing but I'm getting a lot back in return -- mental health, for starters! [Laughter.]

When I first started, I had a very traditional idea of what it meant to draw a comic strip: You sell your strip and you do it for 50 years, with this type of pen and this type of paper, and then you retire. But now, having done the gag cartoons, Jack and Tyler, Top of the World and now James, each with its own approach and style, my idea has changed about what it means to be a cartoonist. I love the twists and turns, the more experiences the better. It's all process. We're all working towards something and this is my journey. Every step is necessary. Every step is the next step in my evolution towards whatever I'm going to become with my art. Top of the World was a reaction to Jack and Tyler and James is a reaction to Top of the World. I had to do something that was completely different, so I came up with this really simple, loose, minimalist thing, and it works. The line is as innocent as the children I'm writing about.

[To read the rest of this interview, please see The Comics Journal #246.]

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