Clean Cartoonists' Dirty Drawings (edit title)

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  • Rated 3 stars

  “
  Had I picked up this book and leafed through it in a store, I would have grinned, chuckled, and put it right back on the shelf. I saw it, however, on amazon.com and was intrigued enough to purchase it. My bad...
  
  The description of Clean Cartoonists' Dirty Drawings here at Shelfari includes the line: "These artists… also had a mischievous side they only shared with peers and friends." The back cover of the book itself reads: "When night fell, they abandoned their pursuit of heroic deeds and good, clean fun to draw the risqué—slinging ink to make kink."
  
  Well, some of the artwork in the book is a bit 'kinky', but much of it is simply tame—more 'mild' than 'wild'. In fact, the idea that many of these cartoons are somehow obscene is laughable.
  
  Far from being secret art "only shared with peers and friends", many of the cartoons must have been published in magazines like Playboy, Esquire, and the New Yorker, although there are no credits. Others are just in poor taste: A dog peeing on his master's sofa or a joke about a nudist camp [even though it features no real nudity]. Prince Valiant quaffs a flagon of mead with some fully-clothed slave girls, and a pair of cartoon vamps in tight dresses and up-do's strut across an empty page courtesy of the pen of Walt Kelly. Not much prurience there, I'm afraid…
  
  The most ridiculous "dirty drawings" are sketches drawn from some pretty tame 'life drawing' classes by many of the artists. There are even renderings of women from an Alex Raymond book of on 'how-to-draw'. Including those in a book of racy cartoons reminded me of sneering 10-year-old boys snickering lustfully at a nude painting in an art museum.
  
  Some true highlights of the book: Brenda Starr skinny-dipping in a flyer for a Comic-Con drawn by Dale Messick, some very explicit sketches of amour by Bible illustrator Gustav Doré, and hilariously lewd and lascivious drawings by Beetle Bailey's bawdy Mort Walker, the just-plain-weird Virgil Partch, and Harry G. Peter, the original illustrator of Wonder Woman.
  
  Some quite kinky drawings by Superman creator Joe Schuster do kick things up a notch, too, but what would this book be without the epic "Disneyland Memorial Orgy", done by the troubled but talented Wally Wood? It's simply a ribald classic!
  
  Don't expect to be really shocked by the cartoons in this "unauthorized" paperback, though. The rare art included in it may excite aficionados of comics, but not many artworks here are likely to actually titillate them. In fact, what's really disappointing is that some of the artwork simply isn't even very good.
  
  In fact, it all adds up to being somewhat dull, definitely failing to live up to its own hype.
  
  Unless you can flip through it first, drop $19.95 on this collection at your own risk…
  ”

  Sam [also known as Harry] wrote this review Sunday, July 26 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No