The Harlan Ellison Hornbook

by Harlan Ellison

  Again, I hear you: what that is it he don’t do no more?

  Well, he don’t chronicle the adventures of the youthful yodeler and the zig-zag zither; he don’t tell what happened to the toothless scarecrow and the tamed wildflower; he don’t reveal the startling tale of the fashionable fireman and the soft-boiled collar-button; he don’t hip you to the extra-salty sailor and the flat-footed dragon; he don’t regale you with the facts in the contretemps of the coffee-eyed hermit and the unprisoned princess; he don’t…well, he just doesn’t, not any more. And that, woeful folks, is terrible sad-making.

  Because the man known as George Carlson, the incredible artist who—for forty-two issues of Jingle Jangle Comics—scripted and drew a series of unparalleled contemporary fables called “Jingle Jangle Tales,” no longer draws. Jingle Jangle Comics is long since gone. It died in December 1949. At Christmastime. During a season of joy and colored lights and children’s laughter, George Carlson went away, taking with him one of those rare and marvelous gifts we had been joyously allowed to savor from March of 1943 till that emptiest of Christmases. He went away, and he took the “Jingle Jangle Tales,” and most of all he took “The Pie-Face Prince of Pretzleburg.”

  It won’t mean much to kids today—surfeited as they are with this week’s post-puberty sex symbol—but back in 1943 when I was nine years old, Dimwitri (The PieFace Prince) was a very special person in my world.

  Sitting here now, writing about Carlson and his mad brood of improbable characters (was there ever a more convulsive duo than the self-winding organ-gander and the overstuffed bull-fiddle?), I find it barely short of incredible that he happened as he did. Carlson was easily thirty years ahead of his time. He was one of the first cartoonists of the absurd, on a par with Winsor McCay, Geo. McManus, Rube Goldberg or Bill Holman. Without the rampant sex, he was the progenitor of R. Crumb and Gorey and Tomi Ungerer and Ronald Searle and even Rowland Emmett. And how a) he came to develop his style in a time when cuddly animals were the going thing, b) a publishing house like Famous Funnies that trafficked in cuddly animals employed him, and c) kids like myself who really couldn’t have understood what he was about, were wild about him…are improbabilities too staggering to deal with.

  His drawing was neither simple nor retarded as was the bulk of the line-work being done. His style was one of pre-Mad goodies secreted here and there in the panels; of jumbled and overlapping shapes that delightfully bedeviled the reader; of fats and thins that gamboled and bumbled everywhichway; of plot-lines surfeited with double-level puns and plays on words as Oscar Levant would have treasured. Carlson was a rara avis. One of a kind. His like had never been seen before, and since him it has all been the sincerest form of flattery.

  I suppose pedants would find his little flummeries filled with examinations of Man and His Times, of the eternal struggle between Reality and Fantasy, of the Essential Absurdity of Existence. They’re probably all there, replete with literary and allegorical allusions. But what a snore. Dissection of Carlson’s work would merely leave lying about a great many rocketeering doodle-bugs and non-skid dickeys, with no worldview or weltweisheit obtained.

  Carlson, you see, was like cotton candy. Very sweet, very good for you, and totally unclassifiable. Tearing him apart would have served no end, and serves no end now. And like cotton candy, he was ephemeral, dissolving even as you tried to grasp him. His meanings were about as obvious as “Waiting for Godot,” and to those who seek meanings (in either), a Kafkaesque exercise.

  What he had (and what these cartoon fables have even now, in the crackling, brittle pages of comic books nearly forty years old) was magic. Come on, I’ll show you.

  We can begin with the incredible adventure of the Colly-Flowered Walrus and the Woggle-Eyed Carpenter, from Jingle Jangle Comics #39. June, 1949.

  Once, long ago (Carlson begins), there lived a near-wealthy but colly-flowered walrus. His favorite three-tune radio, now of age, had come down with a razz-berry fever on the very day he was going to sell it to the king. So he took it to his dumbest friend, a busy woggle-eyed carpenter, saying, “Look, ole top! The king wants a snappy unwatered concert t’day. Fix th’goofus on this radio so it works, and bring it to him, and I’ll pay you when I get that royal job as royal TRIPE INSPECTOR!”

  (The panel shows the walrus, a rotund tusky chap with albino fur more like a sheep dog than a walrus, wearing a pink flowered vest, a green morning coat, huge floppy red shoes—certainly inadequate for ballet—white gloves, and bearing a battered radio with three birthday candles stuck in it. It also shows the carpenter who, over a fire composed of a burning firecracker, is boring a hole with chisel and bit in an alarm clock resting awkwardly in a frying pan. I don’t interpret these things, I just tell you how they look to me.)

  In the next panel, the carpenter is dashing off bearing the radio, saying, “Wait! All it needs is a new grimmick! And I know where to get one…almost.”

  In the next panel, the walrus, whose crimson bowler has just blown off his head, is saying in consternation, “Oh-oh, I forgot! I left my triple-best sneezing powder inside that radio! An’ if the king gets a whiff of that—oh, I must get it out before he finds it!” In the far distance, the carpenter can be seen streaking away down an exceedingly twisty road. (By the side of the road there is a gold-colored mushroom, smiling insipidly, for no discernible reason.)

  In due time, says the next panel, the carpenter came to a very, very cross road. “Hmmm! Seems I smell something spice-like from this here radio.” He sits down under a tree that is wearing a trunk-expression like a pregnant woman who has just been led on a guided tour through a slaughterhouse. “Well, I’ll sit down to think…anyway, I’ll sit down.” From behind the tree suddenly appears a yellow foot and the word AHEM! “Uh, what’s that?” asks the carpenter. And since he is alone, we must assume it is the radio to whom he is speaking.

  In the next panel the visitor has stepped around the tree, and in a story-panel (on which is perched a weird-looking bird wearing a blue top hat) tacked to the tree, Carlson informs us: There stood a late weather report who had on hand all the best and cheapest brands of weather as he warned the carpenter. In big red letters: WAIT! (It behooves me, really, to describe this late weather report. He stands about six three, wearing a Mother Hubbard in blue, with pink pantaloons showing underneath. On a generally humanoid body rests his head, which is a large round circle in which the words “fair & warmer” are printed. The buttons on the Mother Hubbard say R-A-I-N. Like I said, I don’t explain ’em, I only describe ’em.)

  At this moment the walrus knew just what to do! (For a wonder.) Hustling down the twisty road past a way-sign reading “To the Very Royal Castle,” the walrus looks like a hirsute Zero Mostel, and he’s saying, “Yessir! I’m goin’ right smack to th’ king! There’s no time t’lose. Any minute now that sneezin’ stuff will get ripe and his concert will be sour!”

  In the next panel, labeled: While the carpenter—, our secondary hero is being chased like a muthuh down the road toward the Very Royal Castle by the late weather report, still bearing the radio, and screaming, “No—I haven’t time to wait for YOU! I must get to this nice dark gloomy castle an’ SOON!”

  BUT (says the next panel) at the very doorway a sign (reading: Rooms to Let—See Janitor), coming down on his head, stopped him. That was all he knew just then. CRACK!

  Overleaf, a large wide guard picked up the drowzy carpenter. It was a grade A, but rough, welcome. “In y’come,” says the guard. In the lower left corner of the panel, the radio also looks bonked.

  In the next panel, the carpenter, clutching his head, is incarcerated in a cell that looks like the interior of a boiler (save that the barred window has curtains on it, and a lopsided stove in the corner sports a dripping old coffee pot). Through the barred door comes the voice of the large wide guard, “An’ here’s y’r cell. A lovely view an’ three kinds of heat—steam, gas, an’ midsummer!” The carpenter is groaning, “Ooo! Th’ radio!” Which really seems dissoc
iated, but then what can one expect when one has fled a late weather report, been zonked by a rooms to let sign, and thrown up under a jail, all in the space of three panels? (The radio is saying, forlornly, “Lissen, boss, when do I get fed?”)

  Now the plot takes on a genuinely helter-skelter pace as we see in the next panel a Rube Goldberg locomotive pulling something that looks like a cast-iron baby’s crib. The explanatory panel tells us: meantime, the walrus boarded a well-buttoned unlocal train headed direct to the castle. Hay was cheap, so the scenery was changed daily.

  The late weather report (whose face now says “hot”) is engineering the loco (which also has curtained windows…on the outside), and on the back deck of the baby crib, the walrus is staring out and intoning, “Oh me! Night is falling with nice neat patches, an’ look who is the engineer! I don’t like that guy! I’m leavin’!” From the sky, needless to add, there are nice neat patches falling.

  Next panel, the report (with a face that says “rain”) is saying, “Now’s your chance,” and the walrus has one leg over the rail, ready to dive, saying, “Okay, here I go!” As the loco dashes tracklessly away in the next panel, a delicate “tweet!” lofting back on the breeze, the walrus lands flat on his ass in the middle of a PLOP!

  And in the castle the guard reported to the king, “Yep, he’s in the guest cell AND he has a three-tune RADIO with him!” Before the king could answer—a loud whistle sounded outside. TWEET! (Accompanied by a C-note.)

  The king stalks to the balcony, saying, “Can it be that UNLOCAL on time again? I’ll go out on my 98 cent balcony and look.” Two steps out, the balcony rips away from the outer wall, and the king plunges forward, screaming, “OOOPS! This cheap balcony! It’s loose—an’ HERE I go!”

  The king landed right on the little flat-car (right on his face). The late weather report—now reading “fair & hotter”—says, rather maliciously, I feel, “Hah! Th’ king! Long may it reign! And it WILL rain tomorrow, too!”

  After they had gone a few miles…the sneaky late weather report unhooks the loco, and chortling, “Guess I’ll pull up the hook and leave you, ole bean!” he boils away, his face reading “snow.”

  Meanwhile, the walrus was now walking up to the royal front door. He spies the broken sign that clonked the carpenter. “Huh…a piece of a sign or something!”

  (Held upside the down, the “rooms to let” reads: 137 01 51×10071.)

  Reading the sign in pure arithmetic, he rang the bell at the same time, saying, “137 = 07 ÷ 51 × 100 = 71. 137 = 07 + 51× ÷ 97 ÷ 97 + or - 7000000 × 0 ÷ 1 = ?”

  I particularly like the plus-or-minus.

  The heavy guard of course opened the door. He looks at the walrus holding the broken sign, and making reference to the pure arithmetic says, “It’s a good thing you had the password. Where’s th’ rest of it?” “Over there,” says the walrus, pointing with his cane. Did I mention the cane? Yeah, well, somewhere along the line he acquired a cane.

  As the guard stepped out to look, the walrus sneaked in, slammed the door shut and turned the key, muttering, “Stupid oaf!”

  Next panel, a big round one, the wide heavy guard is blamming on the door with ten thousand fists, shouting, “Hey! Y’big hairy baboon! Whatsa idea of lockin’ me OUT? Hey you, open up!”

  Now…down a treacly staircase in the sub-basement of the very royal castle, the walrus approaches the door of the cell wherein the carpenter lies in durance vile. “Heh, heh, heh! I locked that sap out for good! Now I’m alone in here and I can find out where this smell comes from. It’s just like my SNEEZE-STUFF! I’ll open this door with its very correct doorknob an’—”

  Then, suddenly, from within the cell comes an explosive, atomic AIICHOO! and the door is blown outward, once again knocking the woggle-eyed walrus on his woolly west end. Out comes the carpenter, all smiles, holding the three-tune radio which now looks much healthier. The radio is sending and the candles have somehow become pink, phallus-like tubes. “Look-it,” says the carpenter, holding the radio aloft, “it’s FIXED! I found a grimmick in that—er—cell…and with that sneeze stuff it’s sending out a BEAM, too!”

  Then, in a long shot of the countryside, in which we see the most peculiar shape of the castle (with a nightshirt hanging out to dry and an extremely satiated sun sinking in the East…the East!?!), we read the panel that says: YES, a strange beam came out of the castle. And there it is, humble as little green peas, a jaggedy bolt of something or other that stretches across to the next panel where the legend reads, “Suddenly the king (alone on the flat car) felt something hit the high tip of his crown.” It is, naturellement, the jaggedy bolt of castle-beam. “OW!” shouts the king, “what was that? And the car! It’s beginning to move!” Yes, so it was! And soon it was moving fast, guided by the beam, and direct to the king’s castle.

  While, inside the castle, the walrus and the carpenter stride toward the front door. “I know what we will do,” says the carpenter, reaching for the doorknob, “let’s take it outside and see how it works!”

  As he opened the door, the car, with the king on it, whizzed right inside. “Th’ king!” ejaculated the carpenter. “Yep! Here I come!” said the king humbly. The walrus says nothing in that panel.

  Now, only two panels from the end, the king leans over the flat-car rail, the lightning-rod in his crown still a-quiver, and as the carpenter presents him with the radio, he makes the longest speech of the story, a veritable tour de force. “WONDERFUL! You indeed have it! A radio with a super-schmaltz-beam! You should have a super-schmaltz reward—both of you—you, Mr. Walrus, will become my most royal TRIPE INSPECTOR at an almost salary! And you, my friend,” addressing the carpenter, not the radio, “shall be my ROYAL CARPENTER…and clean up the mess around here.”

  And so, in the last panel, a silhouette square, they both had jobs to keep them busy ever after!

  As for the guard and the weather report, they were certainly never heard of again!

  THE END.

  The epic poem died a lingering death when the form of the sonnet came into vogue. When the narrative style was introduced, poetry began a decline that is evident even today. And even before the poem can vanish, we see both the short story and the novel taking a back seat in importance to the kinetic forms of motion pictures and the other visual media. Comic books were the precursor of this change. And I find it not strange at all that a Carlson should have managed to spin his fantasy webs for so short a time. He was too far in advance of himself.

  What he did was miraculous and happens only once in a particular art-form. We will never see his like again.

  Thank god he passed this way at least once.

  It was a richer world for George Carlson, from ’43 to ’49. And have you noticed…it’s been a lot sadder since.

  APPENDIX B

  Interim Memo

  In several of the Hornbook essays I made passing mention of being out on the road, touring with a then-popular rock group called Three Dog Night. It was not the first, or only, time I’d been thrust into liaison with musicians. Many years ago I made a brief, and precarious, living as a singer; and off’n’on I’ve been a music critic—mostly jazz—for about thirty years.

  But during the Sixties and Seventies it chanced that I was called on either to write an article about the rock scene for some magazine, or was solicited to write a movie for some musical entity. (Did you know there’s a rock group named after your humble columnist? They call themselves Harlin; and it may be the source of their name that has denied them stardom.) Auracle, The Rolling Stones, Vikki Carr, Kenny Rogers…yes, all of them crossed my auctorial path.

  The weeks I spent with Three Dog Night in 1970, however, were particularly invigorating. I liked the group, I liked the guys who made up the group, and I liked the feeling of imminent damnation that came with running alongside them.

  How it came to pass, was not all that extraordinary. What happened during the tour, and what happened after…ah…those were pitted prunes of another variety.


  In 1970, the billionaire Huntington Hartford decided to start a magazine called Show. Big, glossy, very chi-chi magazine, filled with writing on the arts and entertainment by the top wordsmiths in the country. The editor was Dick Adler (until its demise last year, with the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner). He called one day, and asked me if I wanted to write a piece on science fiction movies. He offered me what was, in 1970, enough lucre to purchase several fair-sized islands in the Comoros chain. I counted to seven, just to let him know I was an independent kind of guy, and to Dick I said yes. That was a 10,000-word article succinctly titled “Lurching Down Memory Lane with It, Them, The Thing, Godzilla, Hal 9000…That Whole Crowd.”

  When they ran it, they retitled it “Them or Us.”

  Ah, me. Where hath fled the opulence of yore?

  Anyhow, the piece made a bit of a splash; Huntington Hartford—hisself a man who liked to play at being an editor—took notice of the scads of letters (well, perhaps only half a scad), and advised Dick Adler to keep me working for them. Almost before “Them or Us” (yechhh) appeared in print, I was put onto a piece about Sal Mineo. That was March, 1970; six years before Sal was murdered. We became good friends, and I began writing an extended essay-interview based on about twenty hours of taped conversations we held over a period of many weeks. The tapes are here, the article remains one-third written…maybe some day I’ll finish it. Not that it’ll do Sal any good now.

  But Sal got a gig in Italy on some potboiler that never got made, and because I couldn’t go further with it till he got back, I called Adler and asked him if there was something quick and now that I could do to fill the dead time.

  He told me they were interested in Three Dog Night—very hot at the time—because Mr. Hartford had attended one of their concerts and was impressed. Was I interested in doing a rock-oriented piece? Was I knowledgeable about the rock scene? Did I have something already in print that might establish a credential in that area?