European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - February 2, 1992, Darmstadt, Hesse Peters hardly grim As cartoons move to funny Page Jonsson super to wow ape Nowith of Roctor sums Attu. Mike Peters continues to draw political cartoons while producing Mother Goose a Eric Siegel the Baltimore Sun on a recent saturday morning the editorial pages of several newspapers carried a political cartoon in which a concerned president Bush was being told by an aide to a convince these people to Start buying american the president was seen replying a where Are we a a America a the aide replied. Meanwhile on the comic pages the mis Chivious Bull terrier who is the protagonist in Mother got we amp Grimm was dumping the litter Box of his feline Nemesis Atilla into a trashcan emblazoned with the instructions a put litter and in the saturday morning animated version grammy As he is affectionately called by his elderly owner Mother Goose was being transformed by a Witch into a creature with a High squeaky voice. A i m either turning into a cat or a new kid on the Block a he said. The creator of All of the above is one and the same Mike Peters a pulitzer prize winning political cartoonist turned comic conglomerate. A a it Sall using different parts of the brain a said Peters 49, who is promoting the to version of Mother Goose amp Grimm which began airing stateside last fall on lbs on saturday mornings. A when i started doing the comic strip in 1984the big thing i Learned was that you can do More than one thing have twice the body of work and not be twice As tired. If in a hitting a Wall with a cartoon i can put it aside and sit Down with the strip and do some silly Little thing with the dog and be refreshed because it s so As for the animated Mother Goose amp Grimm which he writes with Mark Evanier creator of the sharply satirical Groo comic books he said a i always wanted to do an animated show. I love having the ability to do physical humor. You can to really take that to the nth degree in a comic when Peters talks he exhibits the same kind of engaging self examination he imparts to Grimm who he pointed out is a a Bull terrier like George Patton had not a pit which is no Surprise since As he said a when the strip is most fun is when i get me into the and Peters who has a pair of Lap dogs he describes As Quot absolutely the opposite of Grimm Quot added a people ask me if i get my ideas from my dogs. No. I get them from Peters a who began drawing political cartoons for the Dayton Ohio daily news in 1969 and for National syndication in 1972 a developed the idea for Mother Goose amp Grimm not Long after winning the 1981 pulitzer for his political cartoons. As he tells it he had been spending about half his time giving speeches when he realized that his real gift was for cartooning not talking. A i was interested in seeing what i could do with another Side of me a he said. At the time the comic strip Field included not Only such Well known animal cartoon characters As snoopy and Garfield but also several other dog strips. Quot people told me a do something different. Do a Kangaroo. Do a kid who drives a but i always thought of myself As a dog a recalled Peters. A a comic strip has to be like a marriage a he added. A if its successful you have to be doing it for the rest of your life. So it has to be something you enjoy. I Felt natural with this so apparently did his audience. Today the strip appears in More than 500 papers and has spawned 11 softcover collections not to mention such Miteel Lania As Book Marks and calendars. Because he continues to do four political cat Toons a week Peters says that he feels no need to do Quot political stuff in his strip a la Garry Trudeau a doonesbury. But he said with a twinkle in his Eye a on the plane up Here i did come up with an idea about Pat Buchanan and i May do while Mother Goose a Grimm May not be political it can be pointed. Peters has used the strip to skewer everything from anti drug commercials to Michael j. Fox. And although he is Seldom at a loss for opinions in his cartooning political or comic Peters sounds More like an even handed editorial writer than a satirical cartoonist in talking about the great comic strip controversy of 1992. In that tempest cartoonist Bill Watterson creator of the hugely successful Calvin and Hobbes demanded that beginning today newspapers give the strip half a Page of space on sundays a or not run it at All. A me has a lot of conviction and i respect him for sticking to his beliefs Quot Peters said of Watterson. A on the other hand it really makes it difficult for editors to have someone dictate the size they re going to be running the with a name whether its Rockne or Schwarzenegger Andy Rooney lot of people done to like their names. Its perfectly possible to be detached about it. You done to have to hate yourself to dislike the name you got through no fault of your own. While i recognize that it has a certain ring to it i never cared much for the name a Andy its hard for me to take the name seriously. It always sounds like someone else. Its really too bad we can to choose our names. The trouble with that is you need to have a name before you re old enough to decide for yourself what you a like it to be. I often see a name in the paper that id rather have than my own although i object to anyone changing his or her name and dream of doing it myself. There was a picture in the sunday paper of a woman named Isabel Toledo. Now there a a name with panache. For some reason a lot of names of places like Toledo make Good names for people. I know a Tom Spain a Nancy London a Bill France and a Phillip Brazil. Eleanor Holland was As pretty As her name. Most names Are neither Good nor bad. Johnson Ross Brown Carter Cooper Wilson. There Are hundreds of perfectly useful names that done to stand out in a crowd. They re probably the Best names to have. An unusual name can be a time consuming pain in the neck. You face the same jokes about it 50 times a Day. Some names including nicknames Are perfect for the people who have them. I can to imagine babe Ruth having any other name. There never was another fax Tiball coach with a name As Good As Knute Rockne. Sometimes an unusual person makes an Ordinary name special. There a nothing notable about the name Paul Newman except that the actor has endowed it with his own attractive personality. When we hear it the name conjures up a favourable image. Sometimes there san unusually unattractive name that is made acceptable because of the person who has it. I can to offhand think of an uglier name than Arnold Schwarzenegger but Arnold has overpowered it with his own personality and made it acceptable. He a married to Maria Shriver but she has kept her own name for profess ional purposes. She did the right thing. Who a Trade in Quot shrivers for Quot Schwarzenegger a woman often gets a bad break when she marries a Man and gives up her name for his. When a woman named Sally Dale Cornell marries a Man named Mervyn Fruch Mun As one did recently she must not be wild about the idea of being called mrs. Mervyn Fruchtman the rest of her life. For what reason i done to have any idea but some people particularly poets arc known by three names. You always refer to them by All three. You Call the author of the poem the Raven de Poe. He a never anything Short of Edgar Allan Poe. That a equally True of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. There Are some distinctive names in Congress. Morris Udall is gone from Congress now but that s a name you done to forget. Olympia Snowe of Maine Weisi Mfume of Maryland Guy Vander Jagt of Michigan. Les Aucoin of Oregon has a Good name although i notice there a trouble about How to spell it. Sometimes its spelled Quot Aucoin Quot and sometimes there a . Pickle of Texas and Harley o. Staggers or. Of West Virginia. It always strikes me As wrong when i hear a Man in his 70s being called at some Point the Junior ought to be dropped. Maybe when the senior Dies. It Points out the foolishness of any father giving his son his own name. My All time favorite name in Congress is Kika de la Siarza of Texas. Id like that if i were the congressman from Texas. If i were a female Singer id want to be called Olivia Newton John. Tribune Media services Andy Rooney is a Borrner stars and stripes reporter february 2, 1992 sunday a a Page 7
