Stilwell -- the final strip

The final comic strip for "Stilwell," which appeared in the Cleveland State University student newspaper The Cauldron, was allotted a full tabloid page. That had more to do with the fact that the editor of the newspaper, my good friend Chris Smith, was a fan of the strip than because it was popular on campus, although it did have a following that exceeded my wildest expectations when I started drawing it in 1971. This one was published, to the best of my ability to ascertain, on March 1, 1973, eerily almost 40 years to the day that I am now completing this project of digitally restoring the strips from frayed clippings, stained photocopies and yellowing originals. Full disclosure: Shockingly, the story line is not original. It's also not my finest hour, because the strip gained whatever following it had, I believe, because of its ability to poke fun at campus life. This had none of that and was just a self-indulgent way of wrapping up my work and moving on, and it is clearly a rush job because the drawing and lettering are even sloppier than usual. There are a couple of veiled references that merit explanation. First and foremost, the character of Polley's ghost was my way of paying homage to Peggy Polley, who was Cleveland State's dean of students at that time and the faculty adviser for The Cauldron. As a cartoonist and production/editor guy, I had very little direct dealings with Ms. Polley, but I remember her as a very positive, cheerful presence in the newspaper offices, a true friend of the paper's staff and a first-rate administrator. So I experienced an unexpected wave of sadness a few weeks ago when, in researching Peggy Polley, I found her obituary recording her Dec. 27, 2010 death, published by a group of small northeast Ohio newspapers -- the Chagrin Valley Times, The Solon Times and the Geauga Times Courier. The reference at the end of the strip to Tiny Tim in a hand cart pays homage to two things: Tiny Tim, the performer, who enjoyed his brief flash of fame at that time, thanks in large part to Johnny Carson finding him an amusing novelty act for "The Tonight Show." Aside from the "Christmas Carol" reference, Tiny Tim also actually appeared at a concert at the Agora, one of CSU's nearby 3.2 beer clubs (and even more trivia: I interviewed Tiny Tim for a Cauldron story about his concert appearance, which turned out to be my one and only celebrity interview, ever). Also, the hand cart that Tiny Tim is sitting his legless body in pays homage to one of the funniest single-panel cartoons I have ever seen, by cartoonist Sam Gross, which depicted a legless frog in a hand cart looking forlornly up at two customers reading a menu at a table in a restaurant that bore a sign that read "TRY OUR FROGS' LEGS." I found that cartoon on the Internet and am including a copy below. It's a classic, obviously, because after 40 or so years, it's still around! And so now, I'm cutting the legs off this project. It's done. Restoring these strips (there are 35 in all) has been a fun exercise, and while I consider it purely a vanity project mostly for my own amusement, an unexpected joy in revisiting these strips was the rekindling of a lot of lost memories of my college years at Cleveland State. Working for the newspaper was a blast, especially the drawing of the cartoons part. But I was not particularly proud of my college years at the time. In fact, I came very close -- within one letter grade, in fact -- to flunking out of school during my sophomore year. When it came time to graduate, which I did, thankfully, I skipped commencement ceremonies, feeling that it was all just a bunch of nonsense and a waste of money to rent a cap and gown. But a nameless woman at the CSU graduate office in Fenn Tower left a deep impression the day I went there to pick up my diploma. As she unceremoniously handed it to me in the office lobby, I remember saying how glad I was that school was finally over. "Oh," she said to me, "you're going to find that your education is just beginning." She was right. That simple statement stuck with me far longer than I'm sure any valedictorian speech would have. This cartoon is posted on this blog in two halves because the image size makes it hard to display as a whole.