Slug Signorino and "The Straight Dope"

"The Straight Dope," a question-and-answer column written by the rare and elusive Cecil Adams, has appeared in the Chicago Reader since 1973 and in syndication for some time since then. This year marks forty years of fighting ignorance by Mr. Adams, the world's smartest human. In that time, "The Straight Dope" has had but one illustrator, the equally elusive though less fictional Slug Signorino. Mr. Signorino is a Hoosier and lives in La Porte, Indiana. I believe I know his approximate year of birth and his real first name, but those facts are not really the point of my writing today. Instead I would like to direct readers to the website of "The Straight Dope" and the question of the day concerning television-watching habits of middle Americans. Robert Clark, subject of my posting from earlier today, thought enough of his home state to rename himself Robert Indiana. Cecil Adams seems to be less enamored of neighboring Indiana, for the last sentence of his current column reads:

If asked what's most likely to cause brain damage: daylight savings time, watching TV, or living in Indiana, I ain't going with DST.

I'll take that as a swipe at my home state and assume it's all in good fun. After all, Cecil Adams' illustrator lives in Indiana and he obviously does not exhibit any signs of brain damage.

Link:

Slug Signorino Studio

Text copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Robert Indiana (1928-2028)

Pop artist Robert Indiana turns eighty-five this month. His career in art is the subject of a retrospective exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Entitled "Robert Indiana: Beyond LOVE," the exhibit opened on September 26, 2013, and runs until January 5, 2014. Mr. Indiana created his iconic painting, called and spelling out the word LOVE, in 1966, the sesquicentennial year of his home state. He is known for his bold and brightly-colored pop-art imagery.

Robert Indiana was born Robert Clark on September 13, 1928, in New Castle, Indiana. He attended Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis (1942-1946) and served in the air force for three years before studying at the Art Institute of Chicago (1949-1953), the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine (summer 1953), and Edinburgh University and Edinburgh College of Art (1953-1954). He returned to the United States in 1954 and settled in New York City. Since 1978, he has been a resident of Vinalhaven, Maine.

Links:

Robert Indiana's own website: Robert Indiana

Whitney Museum of Modern Art: Announcement of the exhibit "Robert Indiana: Beyond LOVE"

Robert Indiana created an iconic image simply by stacking and tilting letters in his painting of 1966, entitled LOVE. In 1973, the U.S. Postal Service issued an 8-cent LOVE stamp. Happy eighty-fifth birthday to Robert Indiana and happy fortieth anniversary to the LOVE stamp.

Update (December 6, 2019): Robert Indiana died on May 19, 2018, in Vinalhaven, Maine, at age eighty-nine.

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Robert W. Lahr (1890-1970)

Robert Wadsworth Lahr was born on February 18, 1890, in Evansville, Indiana. He received his education at the Art Students League in New York City and at the Art Institute of Chicago. Lahr served as director of the School of Fine and Applied Arts at James Milliken University in Decatur, Illinois. He was also a college professor in Pullman, Washington, perhaps at Washington State College (now University). The early 1940s found Lahr back in the city of his birth. He died there in January 1970.

I have found just one illustration credit for Robert W. Lahr, A Book of Giant Stories,  compiled by Kathleen Adams and Frances Elizabeth Atchinson, from 1926. The compilers wrote their introduction from Evansville. Unfortunately neither is listed in Indiana Books and Their Authors.

An illustration for "Mollie Whuppie" from A Book of Giant Stories.

And one for "The Selfish Giant" from the same book.

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Mac Heaton (1925-2002)

I would like to observe two anniversaries by remembering Indiana illustrator Mac Heaton. Tomorrow, September 1, 2013, is the seventy-fourth anniversary of the beginning of World War II. Next month, on September 20 through 23, the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources at Purdue University will celebrate its centennial.

Malcolm C. "Mac" Heaton was born on June 29, 1925. As a child he lived in Bloomfield, Indiana, which may have been his place of birth. When he was in high school, Heaton received a few lessons from a commercial artist in his hometown. Otherwise he was mostly self taught. Heaton graduated from Bloomfield High School and went to work for the Indiana Department of Conservation in June 1945. Six months later he had his first illustrations printed in Outdoor Indiana magazine. His illustrations also appeared in a magazine published by Purdue University under the guidance of Howard Michaud, a longtime professor of forestry.

Eventually Mac Heaton worked his way up to be art director at the Indiana Department of Conservation, now the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. His illustrations appeared in Outdoor Indiana for many years. He also created designs for stamps and postcards, and he illustrated Escape from Corregidor by Edgar Whitcomb (1958), who later became governor. In his book, Gov. Whitcomb recounted the story of his escape from captivity during World War II. Unfortunately I don't have an image of Heaton's artwork for the governor's book.

Malcolm Heaton was married to Naomi Noel, a schoolteacher, in 1948. He died on January 1, 2002. She passed away nearly six years later. They are buried together in Carmel, Indiana.

Mac Heaton specialized in wildlife art. Here is his design for the Indiana Gamebird Habitat Stamp for 1980. It's worth noting that Heaton's home county, Greene County, passed one of the first conservation laws in Indiana, making it illegal to poison fish. The year was 1849.

A postcard design by Mac Heaton of Chief Simon Pokagon (1830-1899) of the  Potawatomi  tribe.

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Indiana Illustrators and Hoosier Cartoonists

Beginning today, I have changed the title of my blog to Indiana Illustrators and Hoosier Cartoonists. I have directed readers of my Hoosier Cartoonists blog to this updated blog. Welcome, readers and fans of cartoons and comics. I have covered a few cartoonists so far on Indiana Illustrators, including today's entry. There will be more to come. I will also continue to cover Indiana's illustrators. If you have any questions or comments, please email me at:

info@hoosiercartoonists.com

Thanks for reading.

Text copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Dick Wingert (1919-1993)

Richard Thomas "Dick" Wingert was born on January 15, 1919, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Although his father wanted Dick to follow him in the printing business, the young artist had other ideas. Dick Wingert's Indiana-born teacher, Eliot Porter, arranged for a three-year scholarship to the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis. Wingert started out in the fall semester of 1937 hoping to become an illustrator. His teacher, Paul Wehr, claimed Wingert as one of his best students. When Wingert's scholarship ended in 1940, he returned to his father's print shop and enlisted in the Army National Guard. Inducted in February 1941, Wingert shipped out a year later with the 34th Infantry Division, the first American division dispatched to the European Theater. Wingert was first billeted in Ireland and was assigned duties as a medical illustrator. Upon discovering that a revived Stars and Stripes was in the works, Wingert submitted some cartoons to an early weekly edition of the paper. By May of 1942, Wingert was transferred to the paper's main offices in London.

Once in London, Wingert began illustrating the Stars and Stripes humor column, "Hash Marks," and at the suggestion of reporter Sgt. G.K. Hodenfeld developed a character for a regular cartoon. "Hod and I went through my cartoons," Wingert remembered, "and selected the scuffiest [sic], oddest looking goof-off I'd drawn and named him 'Hubert'." Paired with a sidekick named Stanmore, Hubert made his way across Europe, dodging bullets, bombs, and any trouble he might run into with NCOs and MPs. Hubert was a favorite among GIs, many of whom preferred the cartoon dogface to Bill Mauldin's Willie and Joe. While on staff with Stars and Stripes, Mauldin met cartoonists Curt Swan, John Fischetti, Roy Doty, and Gill Fox, and journalist Andy Rooney. He also met William Randolph Hearst, Jr., who asked Wingert if he had ever considered syndicated cartooning. Whether he had or not, there was still a war on.

Wingert returned stateside not long after the war in Europe ended. Back in Cedar Rapids, he worked up samples of a civilian version of Hubert and shopped his character around to the syndicates. King Features gave him the go ahead, and Hubert made its debut on December 3, 1945. Hubert would become Wingert's life's work, running for almost four decades and outlasting many of its contemporaries from World War II.

Dick Wingert lived in Connecticut, the home of cartoonists, for many years. John Frost (a Hoosier) and Tex Blaisdell assisted Wingert on Hubert. Among Wingert's friends were fellow sports car fans Stan Drake (The Heart of Juliet Jones) and Alex Raymond (Rip Kirby). (Drake was riding with Raymond when Raymond was killed in a car crash in 1956.) Dick Wingert returned to Indiana in 1989 after nearly half a century away. The cartoonist settled in Nashville, home of Indiana's famed art colony, and continued drawing Hubert until his death on November 21, 1993, in Bloomington. Hubert came to its end exactly eight weeks later, a day after what would have been its author's seventy-fifth birthday.

Dick Wingert illustrated several books. His first was a collection of Hubert cartoons, published in London in 1944. Those first cartoons were drawn with a pencil on textured paper. Later, Wingert switched to ink and Benday patterns, also called film screens (below). 

Here's a cartoon from Wingert's second collection, called Hubert After "D" Day, issued by the same publisher in 1945 with a practically identical cover. Anyone who has served in the military, having learned the very important skill of sleeping "any damn place," can identify with Hubert.

Wingert also illustrated the "Think and Grin" page of Boys' Life magazine. Those pages were collected in book form in 1967 in The Cub Book.

Here's a page from The Cub Book. It's not the best page, but being a forester, I couldn't pass it up.

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Glenn O. Coleman (1881-1932)

Glenn Odem Coleman was born on July 18, 1881, in Springfield, Ohio, but grew up in his parents' home state of Indiana. His father, Cassius M. Coleman, was a pressman for an Indianapolis newspaper, his mother, Minnie Odem Coleman, a singer and pianist. As a boy Coleman hung around the riverfront on the west side of the city, in rail yards and around Kingan's meatpacking plant. The urbanized and industrialized landscape would become the focus of his art.

Glenn Coleman attended the Industrial Training School, forerunner to Manual Training High School. His classmates would have included illustrator Walter Jack Duncan (1881-1941), illustrator and author Robert Cortes Holliday (1880-1947), poster artist and performer Robert J. Wildhack (1881-1940), and artist and educator Harry E. Wood (1879-1958). Coleman did not finish his high school program however. Instead he went to work. In 1901 he was listed in the Indianapolis city directory as an illustrator with the Indianapolis Press. Three years later he was in New York City, also working as an illustrator. Coleman continued his art education in New York, studying first under William Merritt Chase, then under Robert Henri. Chase's other students at the time included not only Wildhack and Duncan from back home in Indiana, but also Rockwell Kent, Coles Phillips, Edward Hopper, and Guy Pene du Bois.

Glenn O. Coleman is known now for his association with Robert Henri, Everett Shinn, John Sloan, and the other artists of the "Ashcan School," so called because of their interest in city scenes and the grimier side of life. In 1909 The Craftsman printed four full-page reproductions of Coleman's series entitled "Undercurrents of New York Life." Within a few short years, the artist began contributing to the leftist organ The Masses under the editorship of Max Eastman and the art directorship of John Sloan. Art Young (1866-1944) was probably the most well known and accomplished of the cartoonists who contributed to The Masses. He may also have originated the term "Ashcan School."

For the rest of his relatively brief life, Glenn Coleman created paintings and graphic art depicting contemporary life in the city. His work found its way into the collections of several museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Brooklyn Museum. In the year of Coleman's death, art critic Holger Cahill placed him in the company of John Sloan as a leader among realists "whose notations of contemporary life in paintings, etchings, and lithographs are among the fine contributions to American contemporary art."

After keeping a studio in Long Beach, Long Island, for many years, Glenn O. Coleman died childless on May 8, 1932, at age fifty. His father, a widower, died three months later, thus bringing an end to the Coleman line.

A cartoon by Glenn O. Coleman from The Masses, 1915. The medium looks like crayon on textured paper or perhaps on linen. The style is dark and heavy and hearkens back to the lithographic cartoons of the nineteenth century. Honoré Daumier was the exemplar of that type of cartooning. The gag is the old "He Said-She Said" type from before the refinements brought about by The New Yorker and its cartoonists of the 1920s.

Here's another cartoon by Coleman, really an illustration for an unwritten story or even a piece of graphic art approaching fine art. The gag, though pertinent today, is mostly superfluous. This is from Art for the Masses: A Radical Magazine and Its Graphics, 1911-1917 by Rebecca Zurier (1988).

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley