As collaborators, the comedian Steve Martin, and the illustrator Harry Bliss (in Manhattan last month) have something of an odd-couple dynamic. Here is a brief excerpt from an article about them by for The New York Times.
Credit: Caroline Tompkins for The New York Times
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Most nights, from the witching hours of 2 a.m. to 4 a.m., Steve Martin finds himself awake, his thoughts spinning. He lies in bed and imagines absurd scenarios: a family of cows sitting down to a fancy dinner; a duck carrying a rifle; a washed-up Tarzan pitching reverse mortgages on television.
He jots the ideas down on his iPhone and turns the best ones into cartoons.
Martin — a comedian, actor, writer, producer and Grammy Award-winning bluegrass banjo player — is one of the entertainment world’s most overachieving multi-hyphenates. He has written essays, a memoir, novels, plays, screenplays, stand-up monologues, songs, sketch comedy and short fiction. But cartoons, which he calls “comedy’s last frontier,” were among the few comic mediums that eluded him, in part because he lacks an essential skill.
“I can’t draw,” he said. “I’m one of the few artists where the paper becomes less valuable when I draw on it.”
As an aspiring cartoonist with no artistic ability, Martin was in a tough spot. So last year, he contacted the illustrator and cartoonist Harry Bliss and asked if he wanted to work together.
Bliss was interested. Over the next six months, they created around 200 cartoons, many of which appear in their new collection, “A Wealth of Pigeons,” which Celadon Books will release on Nov. 17.
The comics vary in style and tone, from absurd, silly and whimsical cartoons featuring talking animals and bored aliens, to more meta, philosophical ones about the creative process and the elusive, subjective nature of comedy.
One cartoon shows an astronaut planting a flag on Mars, thinking, “I just hope this doesn’t define me.” Another shows a scowling woman with her suitcases heading out the front door, as a swamp monster looks at her sadly and asks, “Is it the slime?” In another, two moles stare at a mountain in the distance, and one says, “It started out as a molehill, but then I just kept going.”
Most nights, from the witching hours of 2 a.m. to 4 a.m., Steve Martin finds himself awake, his thoughts spinning. He lies in bed and imagines absurd scenarios: a family of cows sitting down to a fancy dinner; a duck carrying a rifle; a washed-up Tarzan pitching reverse mortgages on television.
He jots the ideas down on his iPhone and turns the best ones into cartoons.
Martin — a comedian, actor, writer, producer and Grammy Award-winning bluegrass banjo player — is one of the entertainment world’s most overachieving multi-hyphenates. He has written essays, a memoir, novels, plays, screenplays, stand-up monologues, songs, sketch comedy and short fiction. But cartoons, which he calls “comedy’s last frontier,” were among the few comic mediums that eluded him, in part because he lacks an essential skill.
“I can’t draw,” he said. “I’m one of the few artists where the paper becomes less valuable when I draw on it.”
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Here is a direct link to the complete article.
Alexandra Alter writes about publishing and the literary world for The New York Times. Before joining The Times in 2014, she covered books and culture for The Wall Street Journal, where she was a reporter for seven years. Prior to that, she reported on religion, and the occasional hurricane, for The Miami Herald. She holds a bachelor’s degree in religion from Columbia University, and received master’s degrees in religion and journalism from Columbia.