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John
A. Lent: A
fascinating story
The story began in 1986 when the former Hungarian newspaper editor, cartoonist, and political refugee Joseph George Szabo decided that if he could not find a suitable full time job in his adopted homeland, he would hire himself. He went about doing just that by conceptualizing an international cartoon magazine which he named WittyWorld. Throughout the year, Szabo solicited international help in the designing of the logo, created a prototype issue, and built the core of what became a staff of correspondents in 53 countries. But other essentials were still missing: an individual to supervise the editorial side, an advertising base, and composing, production, marketing, and distribution capabilities. On the occasion of Szabo's interest in one of my books, he and I met for the first time at a fast food restaurant in North Philadelphia, where he excitedly told me his plans to start WittyWorld. He invited me to join the venture, thus I became managing editor. Over the next three months or so, Szabo stayed in perpetual motion, imploring advertisers to take a chance with this new magazine and seeking individuals to share various staff responsibilities. He and I met regularly (and talked incessantly on the phone) to decide on regular features (some of which Szabo had already conceived) and give them standing titles, to write and edit copy, and to iron out other editorial wrinkles. There was no separate office, virtually no equipment, and certainly no capital. We worked in a tiny corner of the bedroom Szabo, and his wife, Flora, shared, using the bed to display cartoons and spread out finished pages and cranking out copy on a (640 K!) computer with rather limited functions. Sometimes, we met at my house. Eventually, WittyWorld did move into a new three-room office and the equipment was considerably updated. Seeing that inaugural issue in print was an exhilarating experience, a high of sorts, but even more uplifting were the readers' reactions. They liked what they saw and read; they were intrigued by the idea of dual covers for the maiden issue-one left blank to be used by cartoonists as their canvas; the other a cartoon by comic book artist, Stan Sakai. On the first page, Szabo greeted the readers in 34 languages. In the opening editorial, he said the quarterly was "designed for professional and aspiring cartoonists, as well as those with a vast interest in any genre of comic art." That Summer 1987 edition set the standard for WittyWorld, with interviews, articles, and profiles on all genres of comic art and representing nine countries; interesting news-bits in a "Witty Wire" section; columns on syndication and law; reviews of animation, cartoon books, comics, and journals; a cartoon laboratory; a pioneering calendar of international competitions and exhibitions, and a two-page centerfold designed for display. Another characteristic of WittyWorld can be traced to the first issue, the striving for an international audience which soon was spread over more than 100 countries. Before that happened however, the magazine was threatened with closure immediately after the first issue left the presses. The printing company miscalculated the cost, the real price being more than four times the original estimate. But as on many other occasions in subsequent crises; Szabo proved that he was a true survivor. Having had no money to cover the expenses, he worked 18-hour days, relentlessly searched for new opportunities, made deals, and in the end, with his unshakable determination, managed not only to keep the magazine alive, but to build it into the premier international bridge of the cartooning industry. In the initial years, in spite of the difficulties, the magazine maintained a steadfast schedule, coming out in a 48-page plus cover format every three months. With No. 6/7 in 1989, a joint venture with Cartoon Aid of England resulted in an issue that was double in size and full of color. It was the first of three issues printed in London; however, the cooperative effort with Cartoon Aid president Graham Cooke deteriorated by 1991. There were huge lapses in the production, communications broke down, and losses amounted to tens of thousands of dollars. In the end, only the hiring of a law firm with Philadelphia and London based offices could get the magazine back on American soil. Soon after, Hong Kong became printing and distribution center. At the advent of the 1990s, WittyWorld explored other avenues sponsoring a very successful conference and exhibition in Budapest, holding meetings of editors in various parts of the world, and publishing a line of cartoon books. The Budapest International Cartoon Festival was held from August 20-24, 1990, featuring an exhibition that attracted more than 3,000 artworks from 72 countries, a conference of individual and panel presentations on varied topics and a full schedule of social events. Prominent cartoonists from every continent attended, among them being Adolph Born (then Czechoslovakia), Marco DeAngelis (Italy), Gerhard Gepp (Austria), Tony Grogan (South Africa), Tibor Kajan (Hungary), Dusan Petricic (then Yugoslavia), Martyn Turner (Ireland), Ze'ev (Israel), Mikhail Zlatkovsky (then Soviet Union), and Kevin Kallaugher, Mell Lazarus, M.G. Lord, Jack Higgins, Jerry Robinson, David Seavey, Paul Szep, Signe Wilkinson, Brant Parker, Brad Anderson (all USA). The festival added to the attention and praise WittyWorld had been receiving from mass media such as Time, The New York Newsday, Washington Post, and broadcasting stations in Australia, Canada, U.S., and various parts of Europe. The first of a series of WittyWorld editors meetings was held in Budapest, attended by at least 32 editors from a couple of dozen countries. The following year, 11 met in Skopje, Macedonia (of the former Yugoslav Republic), in conjunction with the opening of the Osten exhibition. In October 1992, 19 editors from 17 countries showed up in St. Just le Martel, France, and the following year, in November, 21 editors met and held conferences as part of the Third Omiya (Japan) Cartoon festival. Other meetings have been held in Sydney, Australia in 1994, Bratislava, Slovakia, in February 1996, and Istanbul, Turkey, later in September. In June 1998, Havana, Cuba, hosted WittyWorld's 8th conference.
After a gap that saw a transition from magazine publishing on to the world wide web, in April 2002, the Philadelphia suburb of Lansdale gave home to the first international editorial meeting held on U.S. soil.
WittyWorld also organized or co-sponsored international cartoonists conferences in Asia, Europe, and the Middle-East, with slide shows, panels, and talks, and cartoon exhibitions. In the early to mid 90s, the magazine and United Feature Syndicate joined efforts to launch a new international single panel cartoon series titled "Carrousel." A decade later, the feature took on another life on the Internet. Later another partnership involved Pen Tip International Features for the production, sales, and distribution of op-ed illustrations. Book publishing started with Was It Worth It?, a gallery of cartoons worldwide on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Columbus's landing in America. Others, all compiled by Szabo, were three volumes of typically-relevant and segmented political cartoons, The Finest International Political Cartoons of Our Times (1992, 1993, 1994); WittyWorld's illustrated Directory of International Cartoon Festivals; Competitions, and Awards, the first such international listing anywhere; and Just Kicking (and Kidding), cartoons about soccer. Cartoonometer, Taking the Pulse of the World's Cartoonists, by Szabo and Lent, also was groundbreaking, pulling together data on hundreds of cartoonists from around the world. It featured everything from their salaries to their purposes for doing cartoons, as well as 20 celebrity profiles and scores of cartoons. These books were displayed at various festivals and international fairs (including the Frankfurt Book Fair), reviewed in many periodicals, and most of them translated into other languages such as German, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. The magazine has gathered much data about the world's cartoonists in addition to that in Cartoonometer. From the beginning, profiles of the world's cartoonists meant for a "who's who,' were compiled, many of which have since been put on the Internet. WittyWorld has built a database on about 6,500 cartoonists worldwide. WittyWorld was involved in its share of controversies in those early years, as it was later. When its law columnist was charged with defrauding cartoonists, the magazine did its own investigation and gave the story prominent display. On another occasion, Szabo engaged in debate in the trade press with Cartoonists & Writers Syndicate president Jerry Robinson over the issue of creator's rights. In 1990, one controversy led to the White House, when Time magazine chastised First Lady Barbara Bush for writing the greeting for WittyWorld's Budapest festival. Time, as well as then Newsday cartoonist M.G. Lord, said many of the fest's works were scatological, and that in light of then-current censorship instances concerning nudity in the United States, the First Lady could not be affiliated with such an event if it were held in her homeland. Szabo responded to Time that the news magazine "had an unwholesome focus in examining an enormous body of creative work" and that the festival covered a "wide range of topics which went far beyond the single-handedly picked few instances of depictions of male genitalia." WittyWorld has also been a leader in displaying examples of plagiaristic activity; at the same time, Szabo has kept abreast of, and reported upon, governmental and religious censorship and persecution of cartoonists around the world. WittyWorld's findings were widely discussed and reprinted, among them in the New York Times in an article by Garry Trudeau. Flattering as it may be, others have also taken--often without permission or proper credit--from WittyWorld. Numerous articles, cartoons, and research information have been lifted and then reprinted in other cartoon periodicals, including Kayhan Caricature (Iran), Mieux Vaut en Rire (France), and Cartoon (Bangladesh). In other instances, WittyWorld features and ideas, especially the calendar of competitions and the depictions of plagiarized cartoons, as well as the magazine's design (Shpitz in Israel and Inkspot in Australia), have been imitated. Among the borrowers are domestic and international trade publications and well-known consumer magazines, including the official FECO (Federation of European Cartoonist Organizations) and CAPS (Comic Art Professional Society) newsletters, and unbelievable as it may sound, even The New Yorker magazine, which just weeks after WittyWorld made international news with its blank cover for cartoonists to draw on, published its own version of the same idea. Cartoonists interviewed by WittyWorld staffers read like a who's who - David Levine, Friz Freleng, Mort Drucker, Chari Rachawat, Larry Alcala, Charles Schulz, Jim Unger, Pat Oliphant, Jerry Robinson, Oleg Dergatchov, Jock Leyden, Lat, Carlos Gimenez, Miroslav Bartak, Ares, Roland Fiddy, Roland Topor, Liao Bingxiong, Tati, among many others. During the years, WittyWorld has published cartoons and/or reported from 110 countries and territories. In the mid-90s two other advances were made. In 1994, WittyWorld was one of the leaders, if not the first, to build a major cartoon site on the World Wide Web of the Internet--it's still a puzzle why it was destroyed by a hacker a few years later. Then in January 1996, the magazine was changed to a bulletin, carrying most of the old features, but adding the quality of more timeliness. For the next two years the new yearly format was ten bulletins along with a color annual magazine. After a twelve-year run, due to personal reasons, Szabo suspended all of WittyWorld's activities in 1999 until the end of 2001, when the organization re-emerged with a completely rebuilt and redesigned web site. In less than a year WittyWorld's international syndication service was launched. Among the first newspapers to sign up were The Washington Post, New Zealand Herald, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Hong Kong Standard and The Boston Globe. WittyWorld's contributions to the advancement of the field of cartooning were due to a versatile and conscientious editorial staff, made up of individuals accomplished and famous in their own right; a former deputy minister of culture, professors, a museum curator, an editor of cartoon and comics encyclopedias, founders and directors of five international cartoon festivals, heads of cartoonists organizations, the executive director of International Animated Film Association (ASIFA), editors of six cartoon and comics periodicals and an online magazine, one of the fathers of the anime movement in the U.S., and many famous cartoonists whose works are seen everywhere. One former editor moved on to become an ambassador of his country. |
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WittyWorld's
life span has been fruitful, yet frustrating, concordant, at the same
time, controversial, but almost always innovative and instructive. It
has been a history that mirrored life itself, containing its share of
peaks and pits.
