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Animal magnetism

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

And while McDonnell is the first to admit a deep debt to another famous cartoon strip with cute kids and animals, “Peanuts,” “Mutts” is clearly an original.
“Mutts” appears in more than 390 newspapers around the U.S. and is also in many publications overseas.
The cartoon tells the story of Earl, a small white dog and his best friend, Mooch, a cat with a lisp. And when McDonnell isn’t sure what Earl might do next, at his feet in his studio is the real Earl, a Jack Russell terrier.
But, as McDonnell explains, the cartoon Earl actually came first, back in the 1994 when he first came up with the concept of a cartoon strip.
“When I developed the dog’s character, I didn’t have Earl,” he said. “We had cats then but no dogs. Then the cartoon dog became real, if you see what I mean, and the real dog became the cartoon.”
Earl is the little dog “with the big heart.” Mooch is his companion, who, in taking things into his own hands, gets Earl into one scrape after another.
Aside from Earl and Mooch, there’s Earl’s owner, Ozzy, whom Earl thinks he owns: “My Ozzy.” Millie is Mooch’s owner.
Then there’s Schtinky, the orphaned kitten, Guard Dog, always on duty, and Sid the goldfish in his tiny bowl. There are occasional beach interludes also, when McDonnell takes us to the shore in his cartoon strip, where we meet Crabby the Crab and Mussels Marinara, a mussel who boasts that he is “the baddest bivalve on the beach.”
These are real characters, McDonnell insists. There is real empathy in each strip, and, he says, “they’re not little human beings in dog or cat suits. I try to see the world through their eyes.”
McDonnell has been an illustrator for all of his working life. It’s a career he says has been hard work but always fulfilling.
Things might have been different, however, if his musical career had picked up.
“I was once in a rock band called Steel Tips when I was in my 20s,” he said. “We played CBGB’s and had a hit with a song called ‘Ireland must be free.'”
Today it’s a different freedom cause that concerns McDonnell in his cartooning career: that of animals in the U.S. and around the world.
“Mutts” has been making people smile for almost 10 years, but it also has its poignant moments thanks to the influence of the Humane Society, whose officers could tell from reading “Mutts” that McDonnell was an animal lover.
“The Humane Society wrote me a letter and asked me to mention National Animal Week, which is in November,” McDonnell said. “I do it now all the time. And then there is the Worldwide Adoptathon in May.”
Hence, at certain times of the year the “Mutts” theme becomes “Shelter Stories.” These stories illustrate the plight of pets who languish in pounds waiting for adoption.
Recently, a shelter attendant consoles a downcast cat in a shelter with the words, “Still here, Tom? Don’t worry, someday your prince will come.”
Tom replies: “I’d settle for a happy peasant.”
The purpose is to make the public pause and consider adopting a pet, rescuing an animal from an otherwise grim fate. In another Shelter Story, an old woman with a new cat explains that she was getting lonely.
“Now I have a new man about the house,” she says, then adding, out of the corner of her mouth, “and this one doesn’t snore.”
And in raising awareness about adoption, Earl asks Mooch how he plans to promote the cause.
Mooch, the tiny cat, unleashes an almighty kick at a passing human and roars, “Do it!” at the shocked man.
Before “Mutts,” McDonnell was already an illustrator for several years.
“I was doing cartoons, humorous illustrations for magazines. I used to illustrate the Russell Baker column for the New York Times until he retired.”
“I was very lucky. That was a weekly job, very steady,” he continued. “But I wanted to be a cartoonist since I was a 4-year-old, mainly through a love of ‘Peanuts’.”
Before the “Peanuts” creator, Charles Schulz died in 2001, McDonnell had the chance to meet his hero. It was a moment both instructive and inspiring.
“Before he passed away, I met him and I asked him if [cartooning] gets easier with time. And he said, ‘No.’ And then he looked at me, and we both laughed.”
It’s a job that may sound easy: drawing for a living.
Not so, says McDonnell, who explains that getting syndicated is incredibly tough, but is only the sure way to make it into a paying career.
And it doesn’t end there: You have to be constantly generating fresh, humorous and exciting new strips, all the time.
Typically, cartoonists work five weeks ahead of publication.
And in order to get considered for syndication, “I had to put together a package, five weeks’ work together ahead of time.”
And that’s why McDonnell wakes around 5:30 every morning and takes the real Earl for a quick — and hopefully inspiring — stroll.
Comic strips for the daily newspapers around the world usually comprise three panels, perhaps four, allowing a cartoonist like McDonnell just a brief chance to tell a quick story or joke.
“I try to do little stories or themes. Every once in a while I get a little ahead, but it doesn’t last,” he said.
On Sundays, the color funnies pages allow for more storytelling space. “You get to flex your artistic muscles,” McDonnell said.
What ends as an approximately six-and-a-half-by-two-inch strip starts out not that much larger on McDonnell’s drawing board.
“My originals for the dailies are three inches by nine. I’ve always worked quite small. Other cartoonists work much larger. And I pencil on Bristol board and then ink it in.”
For the Sunday color strip, he photocopies the drawing and watercolors the photocopies. “That’s fairly complex. It takes a day and a half to master the coloring.”
This year McDonnell won a Harvey Award, his fifth in a row, which is given every year by the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art for the best syndicated strip.
And in the fall, he brings out a new book, “Mutts: the comic art of Patrick McDonnell.”
But McDonnell isn’t letting the success go to his head. His motivation, he says, is the fate of the animals.
After all, “they have a really tough time on this planet,” he said.

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