“Pretty never helped a man like a mule,” warned friends of the beauteous young artist Rose O’Neill when she took a fancy to handsome, aristocratic Virginian, Grey Latham.

Rose O’Neill, after a three-year stint as a child actress, had dazzled judges in art contests from the age of 14, and became a professional illustrator when her precocious drawings so astonished adjudicators that they made her sit in front of them and produce work by her own hand before they would give her first prize.

In 1893, she moved to New York City and lived in a convent. Back then, a girl’s virtue not only counted for something, its reputation was fragile. Nuns accompanied the stunner O’Neill on visits to publishing houses where editors were captivated by the art of the teenaged girl. She worked for numerous major clients and produced over 700 illustrations and cartoons for a series of famous publications, including the legendary magazine Puck. Her income and reknown bloomed like a rose.

However practical considerations were not a concern for O’Neill. She took up with Grey Latham, who visited her while she was guarded by nuns in New York. He also traveled to her family’s country home. Smitten by the handsome Latham, Rose made him the model for the gorgeous men in many an illustration.

Latham was a beaux of the old school, the son of a Confederate officer turned chemist and professor. He did not take well to work, and neither did his decorative brothers Otway and Percy, both of whom were clever and well-liked, but were raised to believe that gentlemen did not labor.

Their father, Major Woodville Latham, had survived the fall of the Confederacy. He was tough-minded and ambitious. From an old Southern family, he was born into wealth and privilege. But as the fortunes of the day changed, Latham had to seek new business ventures to keep him and his family living in the style to which they had been born.

One year after Rose O’Neill first went to New York City to seek her fortune as an illustrator and cartoonist, the Lathams and a school chum sauntered down the avenue of the big city where they stumbled across the new wonder of the age: the Kinetoscope.

The tiny peepshow screen featured a popular performer of the day doing gymnastic routines. Grey Latham saw dollar signs.

“There, that’s a business to get into,” he declared. “I’ll tell you what! Everybody’s crazy about prize fights, and all we have to do is to get Edison to photograph a fight for this machine and we can take it out and make a fortune on it.”

Otway and Grey Latham, Samuel J. Tilden, Jr., and Enoch Rector formed the Kinetoscope Exhibition Company, and formed an alliance with Edison, giving them a contract that would restrict their Kinetoscope efforts to fight exhibitions while Edison’s other scientists tried to develop their own films and technologies.

The technical limitations of the Kinetoscope were daunting, especially considering the length of a prize fight. The Kinetoscope could only hold a negative of 50 feet, too short to record an entire fight.

Rector was able to come up with new Kinetoscope technology that allowed them to flim longer and longer segments of the fight. They then set up the kinetoscopes in a parlor to which patrons could come and view segments of the fight on a series of scopes screens.

The results were sensational. They had created the longest film to date, and the Lathams, once bordering on shabby genteel, were the dandies of the town. Police had to control the crowds wanting a look at the modern marvel.

However, it wasn’t long before the public lost their taste for peep shows and prize fights. As business trickled off, they began to seek new ways of making movies and showing them.

“You see, if we could project that picture on a sheet, like the stereoptican slides, there’d be a fortune in it. Can we do it?” asked Otway Latham.

“You can project anything on a screen that you can see with the naked eye and which can be photographed,” replied Woodville Latham.

The Lathams and their small company – together with Edison company employees – came up with the technology to not only project motion picture film onto a screen, but they created one of the most important tiny bits of common sense tech ever: the Latham Loop.

The Latham Loop is that loop of slack film that winds around the projector wheels. That small loop keeps the film from catching and tearing itself up. This enables the projector to run long strips of film.

The result: the Latham’s filmed another fight, and on May 20, 1895, the world saw the first film projection on a screen.

There were squabbles and lawsuits over who did what, with Edison and his company claiming much of the credit. The court battles went on for 13 years, and the Lathams were crushed.

However, when Rose O’Neill met Grey, he was the toast of New York. They wed in 1896.

Hard working O’Neill was the main breadwinner and a celebrity in her own right. There was even a popular song that is supposed to be about her: the Rose of Washington Square. The lyrics, and a very old recording of the song are available here.

Grey Latham was a beautiful beaux, but a lazy rat. Content to rest on his laurels, he was also content to rest on hers, and was not above squandering her money. His film ambitions notwithstanding, he was not considered a responsible man by many who knew him.

Grey made several movies as a director and is listed as Gray Latham at IMDB.Side-Walks of New York (1897), Bullfight (1896), Drill of the Engineer Corps (1896), are the only listings of his work at the site, though there were a few other attempts at film making. They are not works of art, but are very important to the history of art, among the first motion picture films for the screen ever made.

Latham loved to gamble, loved the high life, and exploited his talented and successful wife.

Apparently, this established the pattern for filmakers screwing over cartoonists that has continued to this day.

Latham plundered Rose’s earnings, and she finally left him, only to return later. But the pretty man mulishly refused to change his ugly ways, and Rose, on more than one occasion, found herself arriving at her publisher’s office to pick up her payment, only to discover that her decorative louse of a husband had beaten her to it, leaving her so broke she could not even afford cab fare home.

Finally, in 1901, Rose O’Neill had enough. She dumped pretty Grey Latham.

Mistreating Rose O’Neill was the dumbest of all Grey Latham’s dumb moves, because not only was she about to become one of the world’s most famous women, she was about to become filthy rich as well.

After another unsuccessful marriage, this time to her dour Puck editor, O’Neill retreated to her family home in rural Bonniebrooke where she came up with a series of drawings featuring cute, pudgy, cupid-like characters called…well…Kewpies.

The Kewpies became a worldwide phenomenon as a cartoon strip and as merchandising. O’Neill herself carved the first Kewpie statue, and her earnings from the Kewpies came to about $1.5 million dollars, making her the highest paid woman illustrator in the world. At a time when the average US income was around $500 per year, O’Neill’s earnings would be worth about $35 million dollars now. Income tax was dead low, so her dollars went far.

Grey Latham, who had used O’Niell’s money to finance his film ambitions and lifestyle didn’t get a penny of the real fortune that was to come.

Perhaps that is why, one year later, the still very young Latham was dead. So was his brother Otway. Brokenhearted Major Woodville followed his sons in 1911, but lives forever in cinema history.

As for O’Neill, her generosity was legendary, and her multiple homes were used as the salons of the rich and famous, including poet/philosopher Kahlil Gabran.

However, Kewpie money began to wane by the 1930′s. O’Neill had already taken a hit when her German kewpie-making factory was stilled by WWI. O’Neill, who loved her new, affluent lifestyle ran low on cash.

Her timing for her new artistic venture was lousy. Trying to recreate the Kewpie Phenom, she came up with a new character called HoHo, a cute, laughing little Asian Buddha.

Just in time for Pearl Harbor.

No wonder she began having strokes.

O’Neill was dead broke in her beloved estate Bonniebrooke by 1944, having written her incomplete memoirs that are especially incomplete on the subject of the natty but ratty Latham.

The story of Rose O’Neill and Grey Latham…film and comics, together – and squabbling – from day 1.

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FOLLOW UP POST HERE: HAPPY BIRTHDAY KEWPIES!

This post originally appeared on the old blog, but has been updated and images have been added, some from my personal collection of the work of Rose O’Neill. Photo of the Latham family from the Picture Showman blog, an excellent cinema history resource where you can learn more about the Lathan loop.

Thanks for stopping by.

This is one of my favorite comics, ever.

Dick Dillin was the artist, with John Calnan inks.

Dillin’s barrel chested, solid-as-a-rock men remind me very much of Alex Ross’s aesthetic, only Dillin also created impossibly beautiful women whose hair always looked as if it was made of plastic. It just never really got messed up.

This issue was the first I read and I loved it, even though I now acknowledge that it is as ridiculous as an issue of Prez.

Dillin is the first artist I noticed who made a point of trying to give characters individual faces. When he got bad ink jobs it was hard to see, but he got a terrific ink job on this comic. Young Clark and Young Bruce are both dead handsome, and most artists wouldn’t bother to try to vary their facial shapes or noses, but Dillin did here, and that made me sit up and go, “Hey! What a great idea! People should have different faces!”

Duh.

Clark had a younger, smoother face with a little nose like Dean Cain and Bruce was more chiseled and patrician.

Even Dillin’s gorgeous women got attention as some had little button noses and some aquiline. I know this sounds like a dopey minor point, but it set the gears to rolling in my noggin since individualizing women’s faces was something a lot of artists weren’t doing.

This Super Sons adventure was howlingly goofy. Bruce and Clark are out for a jaunt like the hip young guys they are and they run across a gorgeous woman working in a blacksmith shop, hurling a hammer and anvil.

That’s so not normal.

Bruce (who is a sexist pig) bounces up to help the glamorous chick with the hot tongs and the anvil, and she reacts with fury.

Clark (who has better manners) admonishes Bruce to move along and get over rejection, so off they go, driving their studmobile into town…a town populated entirely by gorgeous women!

Jackpot!

While Bruce tries to get over his case of Tourette’s Syndrome (he cannot seem to utter two sentences together without calling someone “babe” or “chick”), Clark plays peacemaker.

But none of the glamorous gals are having any of it! No sirree! Despite the fact that Clark and Bruce look like young Greek Gods, these women will have nothing to do with them and try to run them out of town!

What, are they lesbians or something?

No, worse!

They’re FEMINISTS!

That’s right, they have decided to live in a World Without Men! And yet, none of them look like Andrea Dworkin, they all look like Charlie’s Angels! They wear mini-skirts, makeup, and they have perfect hair.

OK, maybe they are lesbians, but one thing’s for sure, if a town full of gorgeous women won’t have anything to do with Bruce Wayne, then something must be wrong with them!

And women are mysteriously disappearing in the Southern swampy swamp! What could it be?!?

YIKES! It’s an alien invasion! An alien with a feminist agenda!

This big lizard alien thing has an enormous eye and is really ugly. I am not giving away any big scene spoilers because the retards who edited this book show you the damned thing right there on the cover.

Anyway, the alien hates beautiful women! Because, see, she’s really ugly and has been rejected by everyone! One ponders – but only for a moment – exactly why a big scaly one-eyed alien would even begin to consider American chicks the pinnacle of beauty – even if they are Southern – but that’s the plot, so there you go.

And to take revenge, she has lured all the most beautiful women to her town to create a World Without Men so she can manipulate them, make them call each other “Sister”, force them to wear spiked heels and false eyelashes even when they are working in a smithy, and then kill them one by one! It’s a diabolical plot indeed!

But it is stopped by our noble Super Sons, of course.

The loutish Bruce Wayne JR, then encourages the gorgeous gals – now free of alien influences by big scaly aliens who read too much Gloria Steinem – to line up for their dose of smootch medicine from the Doctor of Love, for they must have been fretting having to be away from hunkalicious guys like the Brucester for so long!

Clark Kent remains in background looking exasperated. What a Boy Scout.

This is one of the best bad comics ever.

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From the old blog, regular Donna noted in the comments: “I guess I have to be the one that points out that there is a BIG ONE EYED MONSTER on the cover of this comic. I mean seriously people, did no one else spot that yet?”

I have had that comic for years, and I never noticed it. Now that Donna has pointed it out, I can’t see anything else.

For more fun and games with classic, goofy comics, Check out Allan Harvey’s blog Gorilladaze. Enjoy this PREZ flashback.

Here’s another classic: Superman plays Witch Doctor Priest at the wedding of Jimmy Olsen and a gorilla.

Jimmy even has to rub a body part with his bride during the honeymoon. Good Lord.

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This Indiana University website is a fine online resource of political cartoon history with examples as far back as the Colonial Era. Abraham Lincoln depicted as a monkey is always a crowd pleaser.

Every time I think cartoonists are rude of late, I just have a look back at those polite and gracious days of yore. Crikey.

Some years back, I won a government grant to study American popular culture. It was a thrill to get to go into the bowels of the Library of Congress and look at cartoons stored carefully in the vaults, in archival boxes, covered in tissue paper. There were Thomas Nast originals, breathtaking to see up close.

There were also some vile cartoons about the sex life of Marie Antoinette. These vicious cartoons and the misinformation spread in them helped fuel the hatred of the peasants during the French Revolution.

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Some time ago, a number of artists (me included) were approached about possibly doing the art for a graphic novel adaptation of Peter Beagle’s The Last Unicorn for Scholastic. I never got around to doing any samples because I was already contracted and knew I would not be available, but James Owen has posted his samples at his blog.

Mike Kaluta nailed the gig (and I’d kill to see that art), but for a variety of reasons, it appears the project has fallen through and now the contract is up in the air.

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I first met Neil Gaiman back in 1989. I had received a grant from the Delphi Institute to study American pop culture with cartoonists from around the world. The group traveled across the USA visiting various companies and museums.

One of our stops was DC Comics. Since I already worked there, it didn’t strike me as a particularly unique experience. So, while the others got a lecture from Archie Goodwin, I wandered off to scare up some gigs and meet people. One of the people I met was the not-yet-famous Neil Gaiman who was hanging out in Karen Berger’s office.

I didn’t know who he was. After leaving the office and getting halfway down the hall, I suddenly realized he was that Neil Gaiman, author of the comic I thought was keen, but the rest of the world had yet to discover. After my double take, I ran back to the office and shouted “You’re that Neil Gaiman! Sandman!”

We did the mutual admiration thing. He told me he enjoyed A Distant Soil, a revelation which made me all tingly. He said would like to work with me sometime, which made me tingle even more.

It was rather comical to watch I am sure, because as I recall, we both burbled a lot.

Sandman was on the ropes, alas. To stave off cancellation, DC decided to try publishing a special edition of issue #8 as a freebie and introduction to retailers.

He gave me one of those promo Sandman #8′s which wasn’t in stores yet. In it he left his name, address and phone. Don’t you wish you had one of those?

Later I began receiving a series of charming postcards – all the way from England – written in Neil’s own dainty hand.

I considered donating these to a charity auction. By golly, they are just too cool. I’ve decided to keep them.

And with Neil’s kind permission, I am posting the first of them here, the one where he asks if I would work on Sandman sometime. A little bit of comics history.