Larry’s Cartoon Vault: Things Don’t Change Much

A clipping from May 8, 1916. The cartoonist is Richard K. Culver. Culver worked for the daily newspapers the San Francisco Call, the L.A. Herald, Baltimore American and L.A. Express and freelanced to humor magazines Puck, Judge and Life. This cartoon was probably drawn for the L.A. Express.

RIP Alan Cumings 1944 - 2022

 With great sadness, I report that my old friend Alan Cumings has died.

                                 Alan at our place on Thanksgiving. He and his wife Claire came every year.

Alan and I first met in San Francisco on our way to a meeting of the graphics guild Artists in Print (AiP) sitting across from each other on the bus. I’m guessing that was around 1976—over 45 years ago.

Alan and me in Golden Gate Park, SF. circa the late 1970’s

Alan came to graphic arts in a roundabout way. He already had a Ph.D. in English (He got his B.A. at U.C. Berkeley and his doctorate at University of Wisconsin) and had spent time teaching English and working for one of the biggest advertising agencies in Chicago.  (He went from studying James Joyce to writing jingles for breakfast cereals). When I met him he was fed up and appalled with advertising and was turning his energies toward political cartooning. 

He was doing cartoons for political publications and the progressive radio station KPFA but ultimately wound up doing illustrations (and advertising!) for a variety of companies.

Alan evolved a very tight, clean, starkly black and white and obsessively concise style which was reminiscent of the work of Otto Soglow.

Appropriately enough one of his early illustration jobs was for the Artists in Print publication Graphiti. Jerry Mander, the author of Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, presented a talk for AiP titled “Four Arguments for the Elimination of Advertising”—which became an illustration job that Alan was perfectly cast for.

Later, Al Hayes, an advertising executive, came forward with a rebuttal—also illustrated by Alan.

After some years in the wonderful world of freelance graphic art, Alan returned to teaching.

I think he was the proudest and most committed to teaching English.  He was an adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Literature and Language at Dominican University of California in San Rafael, Marin county for probably 20+ years. 

Professor Cumings

I found that his online student ratings tended to be pretty consistent:

 

“I've never learned as much from an English professor as I did with Dr. Cummings.if you understand dry humor you will find him really funny.”

 

“He will spend individual time with students making sure they improve and succeed. Very worldly and critical.”

 

“Hard class, but I learned a lot. He was very helpful and funny.”

 

Although I noticed most students referred to him as “not very energetic”. 

 

It’s a shame they didn’t meet the Alan I first met on that bus. The youthful Alan was wildly energetic and deeply intellectual. He could entertain with long lectures on the corrupt nature of society (with a glint in his eye). He gained considerable pleasure from his own cynicism. Health problems took him down slowly but he never, ever, wanted to stop teaching and his eye never completely lost that glint. 

I’ll miss him.

Claire and Alan Cumings