Clark, George

George Rife Clark (1902-1978 ) started cartooning professionally at 16, for Oklahoma City's Daily Oklahoman and Times. Within the next five years, Clark became a staff artist for the Cleveland Press. In 1928, Clark created the single panel feature Side Glances for the NEA Syndicate in Cleveland. He continued working on the panel for 11 years, until William Galbraith Crawford took over in 1939. NEA was a notoriously cheap syndicate to work for, so Clark signed a more lucrative contract with the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate. The Neighbors, Clark’s new feature, first appeared on April 24, 1939. He continued working on the panel until 1974, when it was taken over by Bob Bugg.

George Clark was a master of the brush and litho crayon. Formerly the bailiwick of political cartoonists, the brush and litho crayon allow cartoonists the ability to lay shading into their drawings rather quickly, as opposed to the tedious technique of Benday shading tape. Clark had a fluid and loose drawing style, which was suited beautifully by the litho crayon shadows. Clark was also one of the best figure artists to ever grace the funny pages. His figures were lushly drawn and moved with ease, supported by a solid knowledge of life drawing.

In terms of gags, Clark rarely went for the knee-slapping guffaw, but worked for the more subtle humor derived from observation, mostly derived from families and neighborhood folks. There were occasional digs within the subtle humor, as the fabric of the family may not have been as wholly perfect as it appeared on the surface. As is evidenced by some of the work in this gallery, Clark’s WWII era work could be sweet, powerful and poignant. Interestingly, Estelle Waldman, a housewife from Los Angeles, started sending gags in to Clark, who liked them so much that he eventually put her on salary.

Regarding Clark’s process, the following blurb appeared in the Gene Byrnes book, Complete Guide to Cartooning, courtesy of the animationarchive.org site:

'He would create all of his comics for a week in one marathon session. He wrote, "It takes me at least six hours to warm up. I sit there trying to work and wondering what I've been doing all these years that it should still come so hard to me." When the ideas started flowing, he would work nonstop for up to 12 hours straight to complete the six cartoons for the week. He commented on the grueling process by saying, "When I'm trying to think of ideas for cartoons and they won't come, I think it would be wonderful to paint landscapes, with no gags in them."

There's a great article about Clark that appeared in a copy of Time magazine in 1955. For something more recent, check out Donald Phelps' excellent article, which appeared in issue number 9 of Todd Hignite’s superb Comic Art Annual. Even more recent is this wonderful blog entry about Clark by John Adcock, in his terrific Yesterday's Papers.

George Clark remains a tremendously underrated cartoonist, most likely because he was never associated with a single recognizable character. Clark also suffered from a drinking problem, which certainly hindered the quality of his work from the early 60s through the end of his run on The Neighbors. During his prime period on the feature however, there were no better draftsmen (or women) in the newspaper pages.