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2 1 Interview 2 1 I N T E R V I E W I N T E R V I E W 2 2 TOM TOMORROW’S CARTOON THIS MODERN WORLD HAS LONG BEEN AN INSPIRATION AND There were four of us living in a three-bedroom apartment—one guy SOLACE FOR THE NORTH AMERICAN CONTINGENT OF THE KILOMETER ZERO FAMILY. HIS dragged in a bunch of old wooden packing pallets and partitioned off a WORK APPEARS IN ALTERNATIVE NEWSPAPERS, ON SALON.COM AND IN MAGAZINES LIKE section of the living room for privacy. We were all dirt poor—I was living THE NEW YORKER. TOM TOMORROW, WHOSE REAL NAME IS DAN PERKINS, CONDUCTED on about $100 a week, which was no THIS INTERVIEW WITH KMZ FROM HIS BROOKLYN APARTMENT. mean feat in New York City even in 1981. I used to pretty much survive To start, could we get some month or so sleeping on the floor of a on ramen noodles and, when I really KMZ: biographical detail? friend-of-a-friend’s flat in the Park felt I could afford to splurge, the occa- Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. The sional slice at Ben’s pizza. I was really, I was born on April 5, 1961 neighborhood has gentrified consider- really skinny when I left New York. in Wichita, Kansas. We TT: ably since those days, when stores moved to Michigan and then to Iowa I worked on a magazine about along Fifth Avenue would stock City, Iowa, by the time I was five— comics for a while, and then when the maybe three items—a candy bar, a foreshadowing the impermanence and magazine folded, drifted through a single record album, something like dislocation which have defined much succession of crappy jobs—making that—and have a Prohibition-style of my life, I suppose. My parents copies, doing picture framing, things shutter set into a door in the back divorced when I was about ten, and I like that. After a couple of years of where the real business of the store went off with my mother and spent living hand-to-mouth like this, with was conducted, in five and ten dollar the next few years living in Ft. no particular focus, I moved back to transactions. Lauderdale, Florida, Stone Mountain, Iowa City, followed a girlfriend to Georgia—birthplace of the modern A group of friends and I then Champaign-Urbana and then to Ku Klux Klan—and a couple of very moved to Williamsburg, which has Chicago, at which point I decided I’d small towns in Arkansas, before going become an exceedingly hip artists’ had enough of mid-western winters back to live with my father in Iowa colony, but which was in those days and headed to San Francisco. City. just a strange intersection between I actually stayed put in San Puerto Rican immigrants and Hasidic I moved to New York City for the Francisco for about twelve years and Jews, with the occasional starving first time in 1981, and spent the first would probably be there to this day, artist thrown in here and there. 2 3 I N T E R V I E W but I fell in love with an East Coast hybrids I was experimenting with, Who were your early girl and for various reasons, the only which were more about consumerism KMZ: influences? way to make it work was to move and technology. That’s where the look Well, earliest influences back East for awhile. That was about of my strip really began to develop. would go back to the stuff I five years ago now, and we’ve been TT: was reading as a little kid—Mad mag- married for two and a azine, Peanuts, and when I was a bit half years. And strangely, older, Doonesbury. I can’t overstate the this long circuitous route importance of Mad magazine at that led me back to Park time—in that long ago time before Slope, where we live, society became drenched in irony, it though as I say the was Mad that taught us to distrust neighborhood isn’t quite advertisers, politicians, and the media, as funky as it used to be. and I guess it was probably Mad that How did you taught me that cartooning was an KMZ: start out? effective way to communicate with people. Peanuts, I just loved for its As a kid—and I whimsy and creativity—at the time, mean, maybe TT: nothing else pushed the envelope the eight or nine years old— way that strip did. I’d draw these Mad mag- azine-style movie paro- As I got older, I read pretty much dies, one-pagers, things like that (on every underground comic I could get Like a lot of—though not all—car- lined notebook paper, of course). my hands on (Zap, and maybe more toonists, I have an admittedly limited Later on I experimented with various importantly Zippy the Pinhead, which artistic range, which reminds me of newspaper strip formats, different was also hugely influential) and went something Schulz said once in some things like that—but this was all stuff through a Marvel phase (X-Men, interview, something to the effect of: I was trying to develop because I Ditko’s Spiderman, Kirby’s Fantastic “If I was a really good writer, I’d be thought maybe I could sell it to a syn- Four, that sort of thing). writing novels. If I was a really good dicate. What I was really excited artist, I’d be painting pictures. I’m sort about were these collage-comic of good at both, so I’m a cartoonist.” I N T E R V I E W 2 4 I’ve heard a lot about this see it effectively dismissed as an Since the attack on the World KMZ: 1991 anti-Gulf War protest unimportant aberration on the TT: Trade Center the mainstream you attended in San Francisco and how evening news. I called up the TV sta- media are in full flag-waving mode, so it turned you into a political cartoonist. tion and yelled at their answering I would have to say that my always machine, which was less than satisfy- shaky faith is less than bolstered at This story has gotten some- ing, and then I suddenly realized— the moment. I turned down Time what simplified over the TT: and this seems painfully obvious in because I just couldn’t figure out how years—and this is mostly my own retrospect—that I had a little public to do cartoons in that small space fault—because if you go back and forum of my own. they have without letting my work look at the earlier stuff, there was devolve into cheap gags about the always a political context to the work. What is your opinion of the news. At the same time, I was offered But it had never really occurred to me current state of media and KMZ: a larger spot in US News and chose to think of myself as a political car- journalism in the USA? You turned down that instead. But the readership of US toonist. The day you mention Time magazine and were asked to leave News skews old and conservative, and specifically, I went to one of many ral- both Brill’s Content and the US News they really had no idea what to make lies against the Gulf War in which and World Report. Your work was even of my cartoons, and I was quickly there were thousands and thousands too controversial for the television pro- dropped—apparently by order of the of people marching, as far back as you gram Saturday Night Live. publisher personally. could see—and then went home to Saturday Night Live was a different story. I had a development deal with them a few years ago, which sort of fell in my lap—before this I had given almost no thought to animation, so it was like being dropped in behind the wheel of a race car barreling down the track and you don’t even know how to drive. I spent a lot of time on that project trying to come up with some- thing that had some integrity to it and trying to fight off the pressure from 2 5 I N T E R V I E W SNL to squeeze in as many cheap What is the role of an artist defined as the furthest to the left it is shots as possible. T&A jokes, racial KMZ: like yourself when it possible for any human being to pos- stereotypes, I kid you not. It was a comes to politics and activism? Why sibly go, then anyone to the left of very difficult time. I wanted to do don’t you just do a cute cartoon about Clinton is simply no longer relevant, political satire and they wanted cheap overweight cats? no longer exists in the political quick humor. debate. Similarly if the critique in You do what you have in you. Dilbert defines the discussion vis-a-vis We produced three pieces, all of I think the people who do TT: corporate downsizing, then that dis- which I think hold up pretty well, but cartoons about overweight cats gen- cussion is severely limited. Dilbert’s a the SNL people just thought about uinely believe in what they’re doing. I fine comic strip for what it is—I did stuff way too much—they’d decide on don’t think it’s something you can enough office work to enjoy it on that Friday night that a piece needed a half fake.
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