Throwback Thursday

The First Bob Issue: December 1979

If you build it, they will come. Trust me, one day that will become a catch-phrase. Welcome to my first edition to Substack.

The other day in school we played with this new gadget that electronically allowed me to play chess against it. I won easily.¹ I am now creating one of the first ever websites. It has my illustration work I did for TV Guide and an animated dog that wags his tail. Nobody will see this for now because 1) it’s estimated only 10,000 have this new computer system. 2) The 25 minutes plus it takes for my website to open will mean most people will just walk away.

Never going to catch me driving a small car.

Work is doing good. I’m getting equal amounts of illustration, writing and design work. My plan of insisting I have to illustrate my own written pieces, and design them, has been working out. I don’t understand why more don’t go into freelance magazine illustration work. I see no end to this.

I recently went to the Playboy Christmas party with a girlfriend and I met, of all things, two cartoonists there! They work for The New Yorker, as well, a magazine my cousin reads.² One of them was named Leo Cullum, an airplane pilot, and the other was someone already in my Rolodex because he is the Art Director for Smoke magazine. His name was Sam Gross. Both were very nice. I can see myself being friends with Leo but Sam seems too rough to ever want to know someone like me—he was smoking a cigar and had a serious drink in his hand. I do neither.³

My first cartoon appearing in The New Yorker.

I never did run into the two cartoonists I ghostwrite for that evening, which was fine by me. Neither seem to understand the underlining point of our cartoon strip, Little Annie Fanny, or that it is supposed to be political. Not that I don’t hate the cartoon, I do. But I hope to convince Hugh to have me to write other humor for the magazine—the future is in writing humor for newspapers and magazines, I say. But I never saw him at the party. I’ve NEVER met him in person.⁴ At their New York City office, I only deal with beautiful, buxom editors. I haven’t seen any men there except the two artists who draw Little Annie Fanny. And I haven’t told anyone I work for Playboy, embarrassed at what my family or some friends might think. Getting complimentary issues mailed to me in itself creates tremendous guilt—nude photos of women are being delivered to my door. This is unimaginable.⁵

This week I went into B. Dalton bookstore on the corner of 8th Street and 6th Avenue to flip through the magazines and collect more mailing addresses and editor’s names.⁶ I love this store. It’s the only place I can see so much commercial art collected anywhere in one place and I search for my favorite illustrators, like Robert Weaver and Walt Spitzmiller. I saw a New Yorker cover by one of my favorite Sports Illustrated artists, Charles Saxon.⁷

May 28, 1979 cover of The New Yorker by Charles Saxon.

Then I went to order more rubber stamps at that place south of there.⁸ The prices are not bad. $10 a custom stamp. That day I bought a rainbow colored ink pad.

Next was the SoHoZat comic shop on Broadway and Grand. The place always gives me ideas for new styles and what’s the cutting edge. I found one of my favorites, Mark Marek. I looked for my own work which appears is in the music alternative, The Bob. They were the first place to ever run my drawings. One day I will call my own publication by that name. Their new issue contains a square flexi-disc by a new band’s first release, interestingly named Echo & the Bunnymen.⁹

I’m always inspired leaving there to reach out to more places. My next project will be polyurethaning toast and using a squeeze bottle to write out “Keep in Toast” with pale yellow gel medium that looks like squeezable butter. It should be durable enough to send as is with just a 21 cent stamp.

I end the day, the same way I do so many, dreaming about being a fine artist in the Steve Heller Galleries on Broadway, staring at the German abstract paintings.¹⁰

2025 Amendments

1. True story. Thank you to our Physics teacher Mr. Lynch, Patchogue-Medford High School for picking me to be the first to take on the COMPUTER.

2. I lived with my cousin in Rego Park, Queens, who once convinced me to enter the caption contest (I was a finalist). Many years after that I would begin submitting to The New Yorker.

3. Many years later we would become good friends, both from the South Bronx and both with a hard-to-understand South Bronx accent. Sam introduced me to Bob Mankoff of The New Yorker, who ran my first gag cartoon I drew; Hecklers on Poetry Night.

4. I later did cartoons for the magazine. I never read the cartoons in the magazine.

5. Years later, Victoria Secrets catalogs would follow to my shock. The new Art Director for Playboy, who is gay, tells me he will try to make the magazine more inclusive in its print return this summer and include male erotica photography.

6. I also paid for a service called Steve Langerman mailing lists, which is how many professional freelance illustrators obtained the mailing addresses for Art Directors.

7. It was Sports Illustrated that initially piqued my interest as a kid, to one day become a magazine illustrator.

8. Lots of illustrators used custom rubber stamps to decorate their enevlopes and postcards we sent to potential clients. Mailings would go out monthly. It was the best way to get work, even more effective than portfolio dropoffs. Holiday cards, decorated with rubber stamps, were important. Some held mailing parties to break up the monotony and have everyone help with stuffing the envelopes. Once I made a trade with a famous illustrator, S.S., who begged we exchange our mailing lists only to have her disappear before getting hers. Others fell to the same scam, I was told. It was very competitive back then to get work and there was real money at stake.

9. Later became my favorite band. Best concert ever: Echo & the Bunnymen with the Royal London Philharmonic, Radio City Music Hall.

10. Now closed. No relation to Steve Heller, former Art Director of the N.Y. Times Book Review and my first big break.