Alex Grand and co-host Jim Thompson interview painter, autobiographical comics pioneer and 11-time Eisner nominee Carol Tyler, author of Soldier's Heart: The Campaign to Understand My WWII Veteran Father: A Daughter's Memoir (You'll Never Know), Fab4 Mania, and Late Bloomer in the first of a two parter. We cover her early work for Weirdo, Wimmen’s Comix and Twisted Sister to her current project, as well as her marriage to Justin Green (Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary), her friendship with the Crumbs, the controversy over her accepting the first Dori Seda Memorial Award, Leonardo DiCaprio’s babysitting skills and her life’s most tragic losses and greatest triumphs. Part 1 of 2. Edited & Produced by Alex Grand.
#Beatles #CarolTyler #Eisner
©Comic Book Historians 2020
Alex Grand and co-host Jim Thompson interview painter, autobiographical comics pioneer and 11-time Eisner nominee Carol Tyler, author of Soldier's Heart: The Campaign to Understand My WWII Veteran Father: A Daughter's Memoir (You'll Never Know), Fab4 Mania, and Late Bloomer in the first of a two parter. We cover her early work for Weirdo, Wimmen’s Comix and Twisted Sister to her current project, as well as her marriage to Justin Green (Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary), her friendship with the Crumbs, the controversy over her accepting the first Dori Seda Memorial Award, Leonardo DiCaprio’s babysitting skills and her life’s most tragic losses and greatest triumphs. Part 1 of 2. Edited & Produced by Alex Grand.
#Beatles #CarolTyler #Eisner
©Comic Book Historians 2020
Alex Grand:
Well, welcome back to the Comic Book Historians podcast with Alex Grand and Jim Thompson. Today we have multiple Eisner Award winning writer and artist Carol Tyler joining us today. Carol, thank you so much for being here.
Carol Tyler:
So happy to be here.
Alex Grand:
Jim and I are going to hopscotch through your life. This Is Your Life sort of episode. So Jim, go ahead and start it off.
Jim Thompson:
Okay. So Carol, I always like to start with your birth and your [inaudible 00:00:33] and everything. This is going to be odd compared to normal because usually when I do it, we don’t know all the answers or we certainly haven’t read stories about everything. Whereas, I’m asking you questions here that I sort of know some of the answers already because they’ve been told in your comic strips over the years. So when I’m asking you these, feel free to reference the stories, like say, “Yeah. Well, I told this in my first story in Weirdo,” or something like that. It’s fine to give footnotes for us here.
Carol Tyler:
Okay.
Jim Thompson:
So, you grew up until age of nine in Chicago. Was that the North Side of Chicago?
Carol Tyler:
Yeah, we lived on Addison Street, which was between Riverview Park and Cubs Field. Right by the L train.
Jim Thompson:
Oh, that’s great. So you were right there by, was it Wrigley field, is that what it is?
Carol Tyler:
No we were we’re Lincoln Avenue. Okay. Wrigley was a ways down.
Jim Thompson:
Oh, okay. All right. So where you a baseball fan?
Carol Tyler:
Oh God. Well, let me just say baseball was so present in our lives back then in the fifties, like everybody played baseball and since we lived there, the L train, and it was crappy underneath there because it was these I-beams that went up, I-beams things so that the L would be up an elevated train. And so nobody had a house under there and it was where people would take their dogs and they’d never pick up the dog poop and there were broken bottles and all that stuff.
Carol Tyler:
And that’s where we played baseball. There’s always a pickup game going on because if you played in the street, you could block a car and somebody would be pissed off. To this day, I remember, “Car, car, C-A-R.” Which meant, “Get out of the street,” we’d be playing Stickball or something. But you could really hit away under the elevated. And then one of the fun things to do was, when the train would be going by, it would stop in a little bit over Addison street, that was where the station was. So as hard as we could, we’d get up and we try to throw stuff up so that the suction would make it stay up on underneath the L train and then it would stop and then bumped down and all the cars. We didn’t do that very often, because you couldn’t really get it up there, we weren’t that strong. But it was one of the fun things we always tried to keep doing. While I lived in Chicago, my parents had a business, they were in the plumbing business, pipe fitters.
Jim Thompson:
Your dad was a construction plumber, right? Is that what it was called?
Carol Tyler:
Well, in Chicago he was doing the whole thing. CW Tyler plumbing. So going through this stuff when my parents passed away, I found their books that they’d kept like, somebody had a toilet leaking up on Ashland Avenue or there’d be Mrs. So-and-so and her drain was stopped up. So my dad had to do all kinds of plumbing stuff. His dad was a plumber and so he learned the trade before he went into the war and when they got out and lived in Chicago, there on Addison, my mom did the bookkeeping and payroll and all that stuff but all of us kids were… That was the thing, I grew up playing with these elbows and copper pipes and bags of asbestos, cause they’d wrapped that around boiler pipes.
Jim Thompson:
Now did, did he want your brother, your older brother, to go into the business? Did he want him to be a plumber too?
Carol Tyler:
My older brother could not stand anything going on in our family. He was gone, he wanted to play, he wanted to be in sports. He was the guy instigating all the high jinks out on the street.
Jim Thompson:
Because he was kind of the leader, wasn’t he? The leader of everybody in the neighborhood.
Carol Tyler:
Yep, he and my sister. And they hated me because I was the baby that they had to drag along. So I was thinking about that. Like for example, when you were with my brother, he’d just say, ‘Today’s test is that we have to get from here to the end of the block and not have our feet touch the ground.” And so it’d be like, “What?” So which meant climbing and crawling and leaping across cars, garages, trees, everything, poor people’s porches because the test was that you couldn’t have your feet touch the ground. It was always something going on like that. We had fun but then I had to stay in the yard so I would do the test on my own. I wasn’t included in a whole lot of what was going on in Chicago because I was little and there was this heavy heaviness of the business and there was some kind of vibe I’ve interpreted over the years that they were maxed out grieving the loss of their first child that never got addressed that wrote about in The Hannah Story.
Jim Thompson:
Right. When did you find out about that?
Carol Tyler:
Well, I knew Ann existed but I didn’t know what really happened. I mean, the story was that she died of burns. So there you go, she died of burns. And then we’d be in the car and my mom, the only other time, once in a while, she’d say, “The first star in the sky, that’s Ann’s star.” So that was the extent of it. And we’d see pictures, you look through the photo albums, stuff which I show in The Hannah Story. I show going through the pictures and asking questions and pretty much being shut down.
Carol Tyler:
So it wasn’t until she was much older, and it was later in life, that she opened up and it happened because she was in a prayer group at her church. And this would be 40 to 50 years later when she finally told me the story. And then I was mortified at what really happened and as I dug deeper, because I wanted to do it as a comic story, and I found out more things and more horrors emerged, I wanted to do something, I was mad. I wanted to Sue them or do something but statute of limitations [inaudible 00:08:09]
Jim Thompson:
Historically speaking, has anyone ever said, “You are not going to tell this story, this is private, this is mine?”
Carol Tyler:
No, it’s all wide open.
Jim Thompson:
Is it really?
Carol Tyler:
Who’s going to say, “Don’t express yourself?” I mean, first of all, the first part, my family of origin, the Tylers, no expectations for me whatsoever. So when I did tell the stories, they’d be like, “Why did you have to make me look like dad?”, what my sister would say. Or some kind of, “Fine if that’s the way you see it, that’s it.” But yeah, it’s the way I saw it, from my perspective, if you got a beef, you do a comic or you tell it a different way.
Jim Thompson:
And that didn’t cause any long-term frictions? I realize all families have difficulties but-
Carol Tyler:
I don’t think I ever really said anything that was horrible. It was all always with love, kindly.
Jim Thompson:
Yeah. You’re probably harder on yourself than on anybody around you in some ways.
Carol Tyler:
Well, I’m not in it for the… What did I tell somebody the other day and I thought, “This should be my catch phrase.” Well, let me think. I’m not in it to hurt anybody. I’m not in it for the humiliation, I’m in it for the humanity.
Jim Thompson:
Yeah, yeah. That comes across too. I just went and re-read your ‘All Those Tommys’ story and that’s a book which is filled with that because that’s the very nature of that.
Carol Tyler:
That was in a book about assaults and me too. And yeah, I told about just how it was during those times in the early seventies, late sixties, early seventies to try to come of age sexually. I think I did it okay. I didn’t hurt anybody there except I did call out some people who were behaving… If they earn that bad behavior, they’re going to be called out.
Jim Thompson:
That seems fair. I noticed in a lot of those, in Mary Fleener’s story as well, a lot of times it’s not the sexual assault that hurts after all these years as much as almost the bad manners, the betrayal that goes along with it, the little details sticking in your head as much as any other aspect of it.
Carol Tyler:
Yeah, it was the double standard. In other words, you can’t be a fully engaged. You can’t be fully engaged but boy, we can. And if you do it, we’re going to label you. That’s what mine was about, being labeled as… And being put down because I was experimenting. So it became a stigma that was thrown on me by the men of the time. And I thought, “Well, you fuckers.”
Jim Thompson:
When you were growing up, was there a double standard in your house between your brother or brothers? Because you also had eventually a younger brother that was what? Nine years younger than you?
Carol Tyler:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jim Thompson:
And so did they get treated differently by your mom and your dad than the girls were?
Carol Tyler:
Well, the expectations were that my brother would go into the plumbing business but he didn’t want nothing to do with that, he wasn’t interested in any of my dad’s tools. My brother, Jim, was a little bit more interested in the tools and they decided for him that he’d grow into the trades. My brother was an athlete so he leaned towards that. My sister joined the convent because she was holy and I was wild and that was it. But they didn’t know where to stick somebody. They didn’t know how to deal with somebody who was outspoken or… Like I was very introverted but then I would do something that they considered to be a little bit weird. At the table one night I said, “Oh, I want to go to college.”
Carol Tyler:
He said, “You go to college? You’re just going to get married and be some guy’s wife. Why would I send you to college for that?” And I said, “Okay, don’t care. I’m going to do it, I’m going to go to college.” I had a lot of issues with being a Catholic girl like a whole lot of it that didn’t add up to me. And yeah, so there was that thing about boys and girls, It’s true. Boys could achieve, girls had to become Housewives. You need to go take typing and then become a secretary. Nobody ever said to me, “Wow, you’ve got talent. You can draw so well, I’m going to get you a private tutor.” Which people come to me and they want private tutors for their girls in this day and age. I want to help you achieve, I want to make sure. I guess it wasn’t on that generation to push their girls, I don’t know.
Jim Thompson:
So when you would win prizes for your sign design or something, I know the one that you won that you talk about in the Fab4 book. Did anybody encourage you at that point and say, “Wow, you really have a gift?” Did the nuns at school or anyone noticed that you could draw really well?
Carol Tyler:
Well, they knew it. They knew I could draw but when girls who drew back then could do nice backdrops, paint a nice backdrop for the bake sale. It was considered an additional skill for a good rounded person who could find themselves one day needing to use that skill to make a costume for their children.
Jim Thompson:
Of course. That makes sense. So, we’ve talked about gender. Let’s talk about class a little bit so we get both covered. At some point, you all left the north side of Chicago and you moved on up, as they say, on the Jeffersons to, was it-
Carol Tyler:
Moved on out. We moved out. It was an hour’s drive out of the city.
Jim Thompson:
That’s Fox Lake, Illinois?
Carol Tyler:
No, Waresville.
Jim Thompson:
And you went to a more upscale school where you were a little bit worried about the-
Carol Tyler:
No, it wasn’t upscale at all.
Jim Thompson:
It wasn’t?
Carol Tyler:
No. Chicago had us Catholic school system and we went to the parish school, St Andrews and when we moved to Fox Lake, there was a parish school. So I went from one Catholic school to another type of Catholic school. So there was no sense of class. It was just, you were in Catholic school.
Jim Thompson:
Okay. Because I [crosstalk 00:16:10] you were a little bit embarrassed about your… Making sure they understood your dad wasn’t a bathroom kind of a plumber.
Carol Tyler:
That was in high school, now that was different.
Jim Thompson:
That’s it? Okay. So I’m not wrong, I got ahead of myself. It’s when you got into high school and that wasn’t Catholic school?
Carol Tyler:
Yes, it was catholic school. I had 13 years of Catholic education.
Jim Thompson:
Ah, so it was in high school that you were feeling a class distinction.
Carol Tyler:
Yeah. And that’s because when I went to St Andrews, you had the parish school, so everybody in the neighborhood, they all went to the same school. And then we moved out to Fox Lake, it was local kids out there, all went to the same school, but once it went to high school, there was only one Catholic school in the whole County. And it was right in the middle of the County. So there were buses that would come from all over the County. So you’d have people coming from, out in the sticks like me and then you’d have people coming from larger cities like Waukegan, North Chicago, Highland Park, the wealthy suburbs included over on the North shore, closer to Lake Michigan, which was North of Chicago. There were Lake forest, there were wealthier enclaves communities. And then on the Western side of the County where I lived, up near Wisconsin, it was lakes.
Carol Tyler:
So there was fishermen and people with boats but there’s nothing glamorous about it. It was just very working class. And so we moved out there, that meant that my dad was going to have to commute back into the city because his plumbing ties are still in the city. And my mom had to get a little job local and keep us kids going and stuff like that. And then we’d get on the bus. I had get on the bus at quarter to seven in the morning. So I could get to school by whatever. It took 45 minutes to almost an hour to get to school every day, do the whole school day then they’d come home at night.
Carol Tyler:
And so the big when I got to high school was, wait a minute, I’m not in Fox Lake anymore. I’m not even in my neighborhood in Chicago. There’s a big world out there with all kinds of different people from different backgrounds. And the first order of business was people had to figure out where you fit. And I didn’t really fit because I was a hipster all along. I always felt like I knew what was going on and my brother was king of sports. And so I had an immediate status, we’re up here, because he was the all time champion of everything and people idolized him. So just by default, I was, in some ways. But at the same time, I was from Fox Lake and so part of the sniping that goes on with people is trying to put you down. I finally realized I didn’t belong in any of those groups and I don’t know. I just kind of became a, like a lot of artists, I became kind of an artist or outsider, always looking forward to the day when I’d get the hell out of school.
Jim Thompson:
And we’ll, we’ll save the 1965 and the Beatles and that period for later on when we’ll talk about your other book but [crosstalk 00:19:30]
Carol Tyler:
Okay, so that was the whole time just before high school. That was the end of eighth grade, just before it all turned into that high school angst.
Jim Thompson:
So the high school was tougher for you in a lot of ways, is that right?
Carol Tyler:
Well, first thing that happened was, I had a full set of braces put on. And so I remember having a headache all the time, going down to the counselor’s office and laying there because that’s back when they would turned as though to move your teeth. My jaw was really bad, it’s big now, yeah but… So they had to pull teeth and literally move my jaw back, they were supposed to do surgeries, my dad did it as a barter for this guy. Oh, what do you call it? Orthodontist?
Jim Thompson:
Yeah.
Carol Tyler:
So I would come to school and to just even go like this and touch the top of my head, it would just radiate with pain. I had so much facial pain my freshman year, I just felt terrible. And yet I was trying to look cool. The orthodontist said he wanted more work. My dad put in a bathroom and the guy said that that wasn’t going to cover the cost of the teeth. So just like that, they got all of that… They were supposed to stay on for another year and they just took them off. That’s why I have weird bite because he only got halfway through the job because my dad said, “Hell no, I’m not putting in a kitchen and I paid for your bathroom.” And then there was a fight over what the cost was. So I got stuck in the middle with this terrible grill. But then, the pain was gone and I was quickly able to assess what the hell was going on. And I got a lot of more attention being kind of an outsider artist type. What the fuck.
Jim Thompson:
Usually I ask people about their comic influences. A lot of them start reading and they’re reading superhero stuff and everything else. I know you weren’t doing that but you did read Mad and John Stanley’s, some of his books and Nancy and Sluggo and all of those.
Carol Tyler:
Lulu, and lulu.
Jim Thompson:
And then obviously, you were very into Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy strip.
Carol Tyler:
Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. Because my mother always got the newspaper. We were a newspaper reading family, especially at dinner time, there’d be a paper there. And so that’s when I would read Nancy.
Jim Thompson:
Was it weird? Was it weird going from the Bushmiller Nancy to the Stanley Nancy because they are two very different stories in a lot of ways. Were you reading Nancy when it was the Oona Goosepimple?
Carol Tyler:
Yeah, Goosepimple?
Jim Thompson:
Yeah, I love her.
Carol Tyler:
Well, I know I was reading Stanley in Chicago because one of the stupidest, fun things I ever did and I still love it because I had no power and my brother didn’t let me read his comics at all, of course. So the whole super thing was stupid to me anyway. I mean, I knew there were jokes inside the bazooka comics, bazooka gum. They always seem pretty lame.
Jim Thompson:
Yeah.
Carol Tyler:
So I didn’t care but when I read Nancy Goes to Summer Camp, I was about as far away from the country as you can be living in Chicago there on Addison street, I told you with the crappy, crappy lots. Where the alleys were also equally as crappy stunk garbage but the alleys were set up so that you’d pull in there and you could get into your garage because the other side would be a main thoroughfare of your street.
Carol Tyler:
So the blocks were set up in such a way in Chicago that there’d be a main street, somewhere halfway between that and the alley, there was thing called the gangway where you could cut through so you didn’t have to go all the way around. Then you’d be in the alley, then you’d find the gangway to the next front street and so on, you’d go through the whole city of Chicago going through gangways. So I got this idea one day after being completely demoralized by my siblings and thinking, wait a minute, I’ll skip thinking about summer camp and my parents were not going to be sending me to summer camp. But I thought, maybe I can have a pretend summer camp. So I got a towel and I put a t-shirt in it and I rolled it up like a bedroll. And then I made a sandwich. I don’t remember, it could have been either bologna or sandwich spread.
Carol Tyler:
I don’t think it was peanut butter it was probably a bologna sandwich with ketchup on white bread. And I probably folded it up in wax paper. And then I went through two gangways to an alley and I thought, “This one will do.” And I found [inaudible 00:25:00] somebody’s garage where it was set back from the alley just a little, just enough for me to put down that towel and eat my sandwich. And I thought I was at summer camp just like Nancy. And in my mind it was the summer camp from the big specials, remember? They make the fat-
Jim Thompson:
Oh yeah.
Carol Tyler:
So that to me was the ultimate thrill. Then I was at Camp [Fafa Mama 00:25:24] .
Jim Thompson:
That’s no worse than any other camp story I’ve ever heard.
Carol Tyler:
It was totally stupid. Could you imagine seeing a kid walking with a towel and eating a bologna sandwich and that’s what I did and I was thrilled and it’s amazing because ever since that comic, I had breeze in my head thoughts., You know, I did a comic in… I think it might be reproduced in Late Bloomer called Little Crosshatch Mind.
Jim Thompson:
Yeah. That’s in there. That’s the one with Nancy in it, right?
Carol Tyler:
Yeah. I talk about the way they drew the screens on the summer camp buildings at Camp Fafa Mama and just the idea that there would be a building that was all screens, there’s something about that. So I’ve always been attracted to screen doors and just the idea of that.
Alex Grand:
And there is also a bit of a discussion of Nancy versus Lulu in that too.
Carol Tyler:
Cause my mom said, “You liked Lulu, all the way and I remember reading Lulu and yeah, I made it into a punchline with the feet going [inaudible 00:26:47]
Alex Grand:
Yeah. Which, I mean, they’re different but I could see how there’d be a… I actually kind of messed them up too a couple of times before, so…
Carol Tyler:
I didn’t even know. I didn’t even know the ownership. I didn’t understand authorship. So I would read that and I was interested in the character and then it was like, sometime later, I’d say, “That looks a little different than the one I see in the paper.” And then it was like, Bushmiller by Ernie Bushmiller at the top, in the big bold letters. And then it took me years to figure out that somebody else drew that, how could that be? And then it was, Oh, the character, the character is the same, it was a little different but I didn’t really put the name John [stamp 00:27:34] , I didn’t understand that.
Alex Grand:
But also the Lulu was almost like situational comedy, right? Like a sit-com whereas the Nancy, there is all these funny geometric like breaking the fourth wall things that were going on all the time in that.
Carol Tyler:
Well, the Bushmiller Nancy, when I got on that, I thought, I mean, to me it was like perfection. This guy could nail a gig in three [inaudible 00:28:02] boom.
Alex Grand:
Yes, absolutely. Yep.
Carol Tyler:
You could read that and get the wholeness of that world, you could get the moment you’ve got the characters, such great writing, the brevity of it, it was perfect. And for me, challenged reader, I’d look at the other stuff on the page, like Mary Worth or… Be like, “Argh, so boring.”
Alex Grand:
I also like the Nancy’s head shape, I like a circle face.
Carol Tyler:
Well, I mean, I got it. I get this. I would look at the other stuff, I didn’t like the serialized work. I liked that it was done and done and here’s the strip, here’s the joke, next. And that kind of has carried on into my work when I started doing Weirdo stuff, I realized I had to have the joke in one page. So with Bushmiller, when I learned it’s all about the timing, it’s all about the setup and the timing, it’s all about that. So putting that thought that, “Wait, I got X amount of real estate here and I got to make something happen. And I got to set this up and I got to deliver.”
Jim Thompson:
Yeah. Both of them Stanley had a great comic timing too in terms of setting up the joke, you could just see it as he was coming.
Carol Tyler:
He did it better. I could not stand Archie Comics. My sister read those. They’d be like the boring, here we go, what’s going to happen at Riverdale high this week. I just could not relate.
Jim Thompson:
Well, that’s interesting. Did you just not care about the teen, that particular genre or was it just the lack of skill of the gag?
Carol Tyler:
My sister liked it, therefore I did not like it.
Jim Thompson:
Ah, that makes sense too. I got that.
Carol Tyler:
She was reading it in her teens and so there was nothing that I was going to be repulsed by more than her stuff.
Jim Thompson:
So was she playing sugar, sugar in the house and all that?
Carol Tyler:
My sister was Holy, but then she’d say things like… And she would listen to the radio, yeah. And she was overweight, she was unhappy and I found out later, she had a lot of responsibility thrown on her, but she was very quick to remind me how what a flake I was. She’d say, what’s the name of that gas station? We’d be in the car. What’s the name of the gas station right there? And I’d say, “Sinclair.” “Chico, Ooh, you’re going to hell. You told Claire to sin.
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Jim Thompson:
Oh, that’s hilarious.
Carol Tyler:
I’d just be mortified. She was holy and she was official and I never believed. You talk about feminism? I remember sitting in church when I was little, little thinking, how come it’s God, the father and the son and the Holy ghost are all guys and then the woman is over here in a little special, extra area by herself. Why didn’t he send, why didn’t she send? So I never bought into the whole thing. I couldn’t believe that you look around the church, half the people in here are girls, women, ladies, the male priest, male servers, men, men, men, men. Oh, there’s Mary over there and we’re supposed to adore her, she’s perfect. I didn’t get it.
Jim Thompson:
So your brother goes off to college at Dayton and then you want to go to college too and you don’t have exactly the same options that he does-
Carol Tyler:
No.
Jim Thompson:
And you ended up going, you ended up going to Tennessee. Tell us how that happens.
Carol Tyler:
Because I didn’t have any counseling or help, like today, a counselor would try to get me placed in a school with art. The cultures back then, it didn’t work like that, there was no school counselor. You were kind of on your own, although I just said I was down at the counselor’s office with bad, painful mouth, but truly, I don’t know. I didn’t get the right kind of thing and there was no money and there was none of this, “you can do it with scholarships.” I had absolutely zero confidence in myself. I didn’t do well on that.
Carol Tyler:
… zero confidence in myself. I didn’t do well on the SAT scores. I had problems with reading comprehension. I could do math. I was good at art, but when they would give you those, read this paragraph, now answer the questions about what just happened in the paragraph, just seeing that gray box of text frightened me, so I always did poorly on these tests. [crosstalk 00:33:29]
Alex Grand:
You mean if there’s an essay that you had to read, and then answer multiple choice, the essay part was… was the part you’re talking about?
Carol Tyler:
I would just go [inaudible 00:00:39]. If I walked outside and saw that water was coming off the building funny, and I’d have to figure out a way to drain it from… In other words, my engineering skills were through the roof. I could figure anything out. I could modify things. I invented things. I could see things in my mind, but the matrix spec, then the thing was you have to do this, and you have to do that. Then we’re going to label you. Perfect example was when I was in kindergarten, I could see music in my head. I could hear it, and I would make up songs. So, let’s see if she could learn to play the piano, send me over to sister so and so. She sat me down in front of the keyboard and she said, “This is middle C. All right. I just showed you where is the middle C, now find the middle C. Find middle C.” And I could hear her saying that, and to me that was music.
Carol Tyler:
And then it was like she wants me to hit a key. I don’t know what she’s talking about. So now I’m turning around, told my mother that I had no musical ability whatsoever, but yet I had just composed a song based on her yapping at me. And to this day I have that happen where I’ll wake up, and I’ll have a complete song, or something in my head, but I can do that, but I’ve been taking this little app trying to learn how to play the piano by reading notes again. And I can’t do it. I cannot read notes, but I can compose music as much as I could. That’s why I like it out at my farm house. I have to figure everything out, how to fix things, I’ve taught myself electric, of course plumbing is easy.
Jim Thompson:
Your first school when at college now, was that Tennessee Tech? Was that the first one?
Carol Tyler:
Yeah.
Jim Thompson:
Okay. You went there and then… We’ll talk about the Tommy’s, all the Tommy’s that went there. But didn’t stay there, and was it there, or at the next that you met your first husband?
Carol Tyler:
No, it was a Tech.
Jim Thompson:
It was at Tech? And he was like a big man on campus.
Carol Tyler:
He was the ugliest man on campus. It was called ugly man contest. And the fraternities had this ugly man thing. There was hardly any women at this college cause it was a technical college. Now I was not there for engineering. I knew I was going to go for a couple of years, and then transfer ultimately. And I just did it cause it was… I could commute. My grandma died. And so I used the money to get a car, and I commuted to the school that was cheaper. I didn’t pass any of the tests, I didn’t get any scholarships, so I ended up paying full fare at Tech until we established my residency right away. Drove to the campus. I just took the classes, and right away one of the art teachers said, “What are you doing here? You’re really, really good. You should not be at a technical school.” And I said, “Really?” She said, “You’re really good. Why don’t you try The UT?” So I did. And just before I went to UT that’s when I met Alex, my first husband, Bob.
Jim Thompson:
And that was around 1970 or so?
Carol Tyler:
Yeah.
Jim Thompson:
And you guys got married, you did what your father said, you went to school, and you got married.
Carol Tyler:
I got a husband. [inaudible 00:37:28]
Jim Thompson:
And you guys were together for about five, five and half years?
Carol Tyler:
Yeah. Five, six years. We were together through songs in the key of life. We started out with maybe Derek and the Dominos. You know what I’m saying? I can run through the art albums of my marriage. He loved The Moody Blues, I hated The Moody Blues. [inaudible 00:37:52] Never again.
Jim Thompson:
And he was, he was a water quality control engineer, and…
Carol Tyler:
And a stoner dealer.
Jim Thompson:
And were you doing any art at all during this five years?
Carol Tyler:
Yes. We would get ripped on hash, or what’s that stuff called hash oil. We would get ripped. And I have pictures of me somewhere. I would lay these pages down on… I started doing comics. They were wordless, just a few words, a few characters, and they were completely nonsense, but everybody would go, “Wow, that is so weird. That is so weird” I was just painting strange… I liked album art. I liked Yes, and stuff like that, looking at that kind of stuff. So I did some trippy shit. But then we moved to Nashville.
Alex Grand:
Is this influence by Underground comix at the time, because you…
Carol Tyler:
I’d see him, we’d see them because all the Stoners… Actually back when I first went to college, and back in the early Stoner days, they were around, people would have these stuff. And I remember looking at… There was a summer that I moved back up to Chicago area, back up to Fox Lake, the summer of 70. I got back with my high school sweetheart. He had a hippie van, and all we did was get stoned, rock the van, and go to concerts while I worked at the sausage store.
Alex Grand:
[crosstalk 00:40:00] I’m imagining The Mystery Machine from Scooby-Doo, and it’s like Daphne and Fred and the van, is that kind of what’s going on?
Carol Tyler:
Scooby-Doo was there after my time. I didn’t see it.
Alex Grand:
Well, that came out in like, I think it [crosstalk 00:40:12].
Carol Tyler:
Bread truck, it was a bread truck.
Alex Grand:
It was a bread truck.
Carol Tyler:
The last place I left off with television was… What was that show? I was just thinking of it the other day. Well, there was the good time hour with the Sonny and Cher. When I went off to this college, I did not watch any television. So it abruptly ended in like mid 1969 ish. And it was Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. Okay, and then no TV. I missed most of 69, all of the 70s TV. I missed it all.
Alex Grand:
I think that’s fine. Watergate is overrated anyway. Totally.
Carol Tyler:
It was too hard for me to get to a TV set. It was the thing to do. Anyway, when I was with this guy, it was literally about the Stone scene, and we would go to rock concerts, and people there were reading comics, and stuff like that. I saw all that stuff, but just like I told you a little bit ago, I didn’t spend time figuring out who did what, except for one artist. I like Robert Armstrong’s Mickey Rat. Cause it was a perry. Liked Mickey Rat. But all of that stuff… I remember seeing Crumb Stuff. It didn’t log in so much, it didn’t get into the sex fantasies so much. It’s just the stoner… Again it was like all those guys are really cool. [inaudible 00:41:53] the cool stuff that those guys draw.
Alex Grand:
You were looking at Underground comix though at the time?
Carol Tyler:
Yeah, drawn by the cool guys.
Alex Grand:
Zap and all that, you were checking that out?
Carol Tyler:
They’re all just one monolithic those guys.
Jim Thompson:
Nice. That’s cool. So when did you read Binky Brown for the first time? Was it when it came out? [crosstalk 00:42:16]
Carol Tyler:
Not till a long time later? That was 1981. So my first foray into Underground was as a Stoner, hanging out with hippies. It was just more for the masses to consume. I’ll tell you what I really liked. There was a thing called the Whole Earth Catalog. You could sit there, and read that. And then across the bottom, there was a story that was going across every page, across the bottom. And I used to love that. We still love to read that. But my drawing was… I worked at the Lake County Planning Commission. So my skills were used on a drafting board, creating zoning case files for people that wanted to do zoning changes in the county. So I’d have to go through the maps, and prepare plats, and do overlays. And I learned all about the graphic materials that I use today, inking and everything, Leroy lettering set and all that, working at the Lake County Planning Commission. And I was their zoning case file prepare. And that was from 72 to like 74.
Carol Tyler:
It all went to blue because I was married, but there was a guy who worked there… I could not describe, but I had feelings for. Now I realized that we were like hot for each other, but he was married too. And so going to work changed from making a nice line, perfect, press on lettering, to he’s over there, oh my god! I had like a nervous breakdown, and had to leave work because I didn’t know what was going on in my head. It turned out I was miserable. I was miserably married, and I didn’t want to admit I liked this guy. And it didn’t matter because my husband was cheating on me all the time anyway.
Jim Thompson:
That part I had read. When you left, left that marriage, is that when you went to middle Tennessee state, or was that…
Carol Tyler:
Well, we moved to Nashville.
Jim Thompson:
You moved to Nashville?
Carol Tyler:
“Let’s move to Nashville.”He got a job with the state of Tennessee, and closer to his family, and my family had a house in Tennessee. It was a three-bedroom house that we got. One bedroom was ours, one bedroom was his, the middle bedroom was mine to do whatever I like. So I piled it up with my art supplies and I would walk in there and say, shut the door. I didn’t know what to do because I hadn’t met myself. So when I started to go back to school while I was in Nashville, commuting down to MTSU, I met people down there who were fully committed to doing art work. And I thought, “That’s who I am.” So no wonder I can’t be married and going into the room, and doing some art coming out, making like a beef roast. It didn’t add up for him and his fucking Stoner friends. So I though I had this idea that like I got to going to leave him, and the Songs in the Key of Life came out. It was to the backdrop of that, that I left.
Carol Tyler:
In MTSU I found like my, I found something called a personal vision of what it is I wanted to do. Like when you’re stoned, you’re going to make bullshit Stoner art, right. Or when you’re doing this or that, and school going to do a poster, or do what the assignment is or whatever. But here I was in school, and the way forward was express yourself, do what you like. That’s where it all started. That’s where I started to be an artist in 75.
Jim Thompson:
So tell us about… because I love this story about how you decided to leave the South, and how it connects with your brother, and the Olympics, and all of that.
Carol Tyler:
Okay. So I was at MTSU, and I had a great three years there. I learned a lot from the people there. I had made great friends, and I was one of the guiding stars.
Jim Thompson:
Cool.
Carol Tyler:
So also people who didn’t do what the professor said, we did what we wanted. So we invented a bunch of shit, and we all ended up turning out to be pretty great artists. Anyway, I got out of school. I decided to do the census. I did that, I made a bunch of money. I was going to go out to Mexico, and do the census. Remember I am a registered census taker from the 1990 census. It occurred to me that I have to wait 70 years from 1980 till I can look at my own work, but I made a bunch of money. It was amazing. Great census taker. I was cool by then. And then I decided to go live in Knoxville. Guess where I lived? I lived in a house owned by Johnny Knoxville’s mother.
Carol Tyler:
I didn’t know that until years later. And then John Lennon got shot while I was in Knoxville, and I went, “What am I doing in Knoxville?” I wanted to grieve. I was so enraged. I tried to make art. I had no money. I turned in my cans of beans so I could buy red, yellow, blue, and black and white, and I took cardboard, and I made pictures about it, and I got into graduate school, and that’s how I got the fuck out of Tennessee. There was also the 1980 Olympics. Both of my brothers were in the broad’s way team, my brother made USA’s lead one, Jimmy came in third, he lost by an eyelash hair. It was terrible. It was very excruciating for him, but he made the 84 team.
Carol Tyler:
And so it was like wait a minute, I could go to the Olympics, and I could stay at his house, and I could live up there, and work there, and I did. I think now I know, put your hat on right Tyler. The Olympics came in the winter, and it was after the Olympics that I went back to Tennessee. And that’s when I did the census. And then from there I flipped over Knoxville, and that’s when John Lennon got shot. And that’s when I said, I’m going back to graduate school.
Carol Tyler:
So you see these events, these things, really propelled me because it’s like what are you going to do? You’re going to stay with this guy, or is this guy going to move to New York? Is he coming with you? You’re going to do this? You’re going to follow a guy along your whole life? What are you doing? I always wanted to do my own thing. Find a way, follow something. And I just, the idea that I could go work at the Olympic games was incredible. I got the job being a… First they hired me as a children’s art coordinator, but then I had my eye on the prize, which was to hang the show. The thing about the Olympics in 1980, it was the first year that they brought sport and art together for what was called the whole man, and they use DaVinci’s arts and sport.
Carol Tyler:
So they had a complete art exhibit. They had a fine arts center up there. And I noticed that they were going to have paintings by some of my favorite artists. And I thought, you mean I get to hold in my hands a Susan Rothenberg. You mean I can hold an Eric Fischl? You mean I can hold it done nice in my hands, and help hang that show? So I got that children’s art thing done in a snap, and right away focused my attention on working at that fine art center. And yes, I got to look at up close and personal all the paintings and all the artwork, and everything that I ever loved of my art stars. That got done and they said, “We need somebody to coordinate the closing ceremonies.” Now look, I saw everything. I saw Eric Heiden, winning seven gold medals. I saw this, I saw that because it was small, and I was hitchhiking up there because it was a small town. It was loaded with snow. Nobody could get around, but I could get around. I lived up there.
Carol Tyler:
Well, they needed somebody to do the closing ceremonies. Okay, I’ll do that. What does that mean, I get to meet Chuck Mangione? I met every athlete in the whole wide world, and guess what? One of my brother shows up, “Here’s two tickets for this hockey game.” “Hockey game? I can’t go to a hockey game. I got work to do. I got to take the Yugoslavian ski jump team, they got to be at practice.” All right, I’ll drag my ass over to this freaking hockey game. So I’m sitting there, and it’s the game where U.S. Beat the Russian team.
Jim Thompson:
Most amazing hockey game in the history.
Carol Tyler:
I know.
Jim Thompson:
Absolutely. Let’s get you to California. I mean, you start doing some trips. Your boyfriend from the South comes up.
Carol Tyler:
I need to tell you, it was during this time before I moved to California, this is a very important time because I was doing artwork all along. I’m a reviewing up at the Olympics, doing … They had a little fanzy, and I was doing artwork for that. And then I started doing kind of like adding the words, and making sure that everything I said, all the narration was added to the panels. So even though I loved fine art, I was really starting to add the graphic element, and stuff I had learned as a zoning case prepare. I was putting that into my paintings. My paintings were very narrative. I was telling stories. I was doing standup comedy. I was doing all that stuff before I ended up getting through with graduate school. In graduate school I was doing minimalist new image type paintings with language, with words.
Jim Thompson:
I saw a reference to that. You were doing narratives, even in single panels during your art and things. I was just curious about… Your boyfriend comes up, and he goes to school of visual arts. He’s not at Syracuse, and he…
Carol Tyler:
No, he didn’t enroll in school. He crashed [crosstalk 00:53:47]
Jim Thompson:
That’s right. He was taking classes. And he made connections such that that allowed the two of you to go on summer trips out. You got the addresses for people like Griffith and Justin Green.
Carol Tyler:
All the SF people, yeah. Because there was that one summer that I said, I’ll be damned if I’m going to stay down here in the lower East side with you, we’ll end up murdering each other, so I’m going out to be with my roommate from Tennessee, she’s living in a house full of women in San Francisco. I’m going out there. And while I’m out there, I’m going to look up all these people.
Jim Thompson:
And that sorted such a course for your life at that point, because you make these connections that are going to follow through to your next stage that we’re going to get to in a minute which is doing actual comics for Weirdo and stuff. But you meet Justin Green at that point, and there’s some confusion between your relationship with him, and your relationship with your boyfriend at the time.
Carol Tyler:
When I went out there, I was there to see what my friend Marion do. I was going to go see all these people. And I met them all. I’d call up one, ” [inaudible 00:55:04] My name is [inaudible 00:55:07] I’m from [inaudible 00:55:07] I love Zipi.” And they would be like, “Great. Okay, bye.” I’d call Spain. I’d call different ones thinking fan girl all the way. I called up Justin, he said, “How about lunch?” He was on the, there’s a girl coming in here, let’s see what this is about. So I met him at a sign job. We had sandwiches. We went for a sandwich. He was working at a Tommy’s Joynt, and he was different. He was interested in me personally, not just like, hey fan girl, good for you.
Jim Thompson:
And at that point you had read his book?
Carol Tyler:
Oh yeah.
Jim Thompson:
That’s a gigantic influence in the kind of comics that you were going to tell, correct?
Carol Tyler:
Well, because I thought, wait a minute, this guy is from Chicago. I’m from Chicago. He look he’s Catholic. I was Catholic. So I got all the jokes. And I got all the letters, a lot of inside Chicago stuff, unless you’re from that area, you probably wouldn’t get [inaudible 00:56:18] on the one EchoSign. There was just some things about Midwest life that just went like, I get this, I got this. So when I got out there, that’s what we talked about. And of course he was on his best polish and being swell. And I was of course googly-eyed, and amazed that I actually got to meet the guy who wrote Binky Brown. And he was very much presenting himself like the suburban boy that he depicts in the book. And I never could think… I thought he’s probably not as fucked up as that character he did.
Jim Thompson:
But you were wrong?
Carol Tyler:
He can’t be that fucked up.
Jim Thompson:
And there we go. And then you guys have a daughter together in 1985.
Carol Tyler:
No, that’s not where we go. I had to go back to…
Jim Thompson:
No, I know you go back, and you don’t know where…
Carol Tyler:
…and be with this other guy, and forget Justin, and be with this other guy until Justin shows up, and there’s a big fight. And then I ended up in San Francisco with Justin. And, there’s a lot in between there. There’s a lot of me helping this other guy. I helped this other guy launch his career, but you never hear about that.
Jim Thompson:
Yes, that was very frustrating to you once you had your baby, right. That’s the outrage story. Let’s talk about that.
Alex Grand:
Yeah. What was that story? What was that guy? Roy or something? Yeah, I read about that. Did you have that in the story.
Jim Thompson:
Yeah. So we’ll talk about that story because that’s a great one. So Alex let’s get to Weirdo.
Alex Grand:
All right. So then you started doing stories for Weirdo published by Last Gasp. And for our listeners, just a quick review, Weirdo was a humor comics magazine started by Robert Crumb that ran for about 27 issues from 81 to 90 plus a final issue a few years later. Before talking about your own experiences and work there, what would you say about just Weirdo in general, were you familiar with it before contributing to it?
Carol Tyler:
No, I just knew that after the underground scene that there were these anthologies, and I became familiar with arcade. And then when I lived in New York city, there were a couple of times I’d go to Art Spiegelman’s place with Francoise, and we would hang up raw posters and stuff like that. So I did my time in the trenches with helping RA and I was aware of Miles and the struggles that he would discuss. Art would talk about things that were issues for him. And it was nice to have that. And then you’d go to a Jean Michel opening.
Carol Tyler:
It was the scene in New York, but when I got to… It was through that network of that, that I became aware of who was doing what in comics. And then when I got out to San Francisco, Justin was not interested in that scene at all. He was doing childcare because he had a kid and signs. And so it was on me to seek out things. So I did a letter to the house, it would say burrito party, come on down. Ron Turner would have a burrito party every year, his famous burrito parties. And so I’d say, Justin, we got an invitation to go. He said, I’m not going to that. because Justin has no interest in social anything.
Carol Tyler:
Can I go? Yeah, you could go. Why not? So I go, I started making the scene, and when you make the scene, that’s when you meet this one, and this one, and this one, and this one, and that’s how I met this one, and this one, and this one did that. And then it was like you want to see some comics [inaudible 00:27:38].
Alex Grand:
Yeah. Okay, cool. You brought art with you.
Carol Tyler:
I’d sell my portfolio. I think we had an open house when I first moved out to San Francisco. Everybody came over, I have a drawing table set up. Justin had his set up. I wish somebody had taken videos of that, but that turned into a disaster because an old girlfriend of Justin’s was there, and he had unfinished business. And so they were yakking it up over that way.
Carol Tyler:
I was mad by my drawing table, but I was sitting there with Bill Griffith, Spain, and I was like a perfect array of people I wish I could talk to get around a table today. So they were like don’t worry about him. He’s just being Justin. It’d be like [inaudible 01:01:37] I didn’t know the guy. I just knew some stuff from his comics. And so it’s kind of like the way it’s been with us. I do my thing. He does his thing. He did signs, he had a kid, and soon I was expecting, and we had a kid, and pretty much he lives in his room, and I live in my room artistically completely because he was set. And I said to him, “I’m meeting you late in your life.” At that time he’s 37, 38. I can’t expect you to change because of me. And I’m who I am, and I’ve been around looking for my art, and trying to do my thing. I kept my maiden name. I don’t want to be Mrs. Green. I just want to be who I am, and tell my story.
Alex Grand:
Do your own thing. Yeah.
Carol Tyler:
It’s been the way it’s been. We don’t get together. We don’t say like hey, come over here, and look at this panel. What should I do? Nope. Although I have often coughed up a punchline when he was doing the sign game. Yeah, they would go [inaudible 01:03:05] Come on, tell me the script. Well, the guy comes in and say… I’d think about it for a while then I go, here’s what you need to say, then deliver. So I should have been a gag writer because I always can come up with that gag, or at least that thing that pulls it together at the end.
Alex Grand:
Right. the punchline
Carol Tyler:
It’s like Busch Miller. I’m not comparing myself to Busch Miller, but I liked the way he would tighten it up, or he would wrap it up.
Alex Grand:
Make it clean. Yeah. Clean exit. When you were contributing to Weirdo then, and you kind of met people at the party, you started in contributing your stuff, then it sounds like they liked what you were showing in your portfolio, so you contributed some stuff, and when it was under Aline Kominsky-Crumb, your stuff was then… You submitted your stuff over to Weirdo. Is that right?
Carol Tyler:
Yeah. And I think I had the feeling that there weren’t a whole lot of people submitting.
Alex Grand:
So that was kind of a nice… There was actually an opening probably for some material.
Carol Tyler:
We have an opening for a girl just like you. Yes. People were submitting. There just wasn’t dull time. You got to remember the 60s, and then there was the hippie time, and then Gerald Ford came in, everything dropped like a thud, disco was going on. People were doing cocaine. And so that just kind of pulled the rug out on a lot of stuff.
Alex Grand:
And creatively people were too coked out to create.
Carol Tyler:
Oh, there was a lot of coke. And comic books were weird. They were printed on glossy stock, and they were overproduced, and I just hated that. That was the furthest thing from my mind, was anything comic book like that. And art had come out of this abstraction period, and it was starting to come back into figuration. And so things were really getting different, and Michael Jackson was back.
Alex Grand:
Right. Okay. That’s great that he’s factored into this somehow. I like that. Your first issue of Weirdo was Weirdo 18. And that was the first one that Aline Kominsky-Crumb edited, that was in fall of 1986. Yet some of your pieces show up in 20 to 25 and 27 to 28, so what was it like to be a painter working with colorful things, and now to then distill it into a black and white kind of story delivery? Did you have to change how you’re expressing it, and fit it into a black and white framework, or was that easy for you? Cause you were already into strips that were black and white?
Carol Tyler:
I had to learn all over again because.
Carol Tyler:
I had to learn all over again, because-
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Alex Grand:
Okay, there you go.
Carol Tyler:
… for me, color has always been a vehicle for emotion.
Alex Grand:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Right, exactly.
Carol Tyler:
And I had a sense of … They had assignments. So now, it’s like all that’s stripped away, and now you’ve just got to draw it. I had to really find my way back into drawing, and I noticed, when things got printed that, “Oh, there you are Tyler, trying to make paint strokes. It doesn’t work, graphically.” If you’re going to be graphic, you got to go graphic. You can’t halfway be in color, with your mark making. So that meant getting very rigid, kind of like, less expressive.
Alex Grand:
Right.
Carol Tyler:
I kept, figure out a way to be expressive, and then it started shaping the panels, and it started doing this and that. I’m sure you’ve seen how my work has evolved. Because once drum scanners were invented, then the technology allowed … These comic book publishers doing independent stuff, they could afford to do color, because it became low cost, whereas before, cost was prohibitive, so we had to do everything in black and white. The only thing color was the cover.
Carol Tyler:
I was never given any … maybe one or two, cover jobs. They always went to … Well, Robert had all the weirdo covers, but over the years, I never got any covers. Then I just assumed that meant I wasn’t strong enough, but that’s also during the time when I was known as Anne Moore.
Jim Thompson:
You did do that Wimmin’s Comix, the final cover on issue-
Carol Tyler:
Didn’t Ends. Yeah. I was given the honor of that and I loved that. I wanted to do more, but it just didn’t pull out that way, and I had a kid, and I had to have work. She had asthma, I had to have health insurance.
Jim Thompson:
Yeah. Domestic demands are serious. Now your first story in issue 18, 4 Red Brides, did you have a sense of what you wanted to bring to Weirdo? Oh, do you feel like you were still kind of a work in progress at this point? Or do you feel like-
Carol Tyler:
Yes. Absolutely. Because even though I could tell a great story, I could tell a good story, like, standup comedian style too. I always kept … I had crowds that would listen to me tell my stories. It was amazing. And then I did performing and stuff like that. So now I got to do it in the comics form, and what I did with 4 Red Brides, I just kind, half baked idea. I don’t know.
Carol Tyler:
And again, technically it didn’t work, cause I was still kind of trying to bridge the gap between, am I going to do it graphically? I never really wanted to give over to that.
Carol Tyler:
What’s matter, looking for a hair tie. I never fully wanted to give over to that. I didn’t want to give up the painterly marks. I really liked a brush.
Carol Tyler:
I didn’t like the rigidity. I don’t like doing perspective. There were a whole bunch of things like that, that I’d see Justin over there working and he’d be like, “Oh, it’s so dry and harsh.” You know, maybe he can pull that off. I was so glad when the color did come, because then I could start with a-
Alex Grand:
Be more.
Carol Tyler:
… solution, yeah, then.
Alex Grand:
Express more, be more yourself.
Carol Tyler:
[inaudible 01:09:57] show wind! How do you show wind? It’s hard to show wind with black pen marks? Oh yeah, you can go like that, but I wanted to show, you know, a certain thing and then I had to … I’m still figuring this out. I’m still trying to draw everything. As I’m getting older and work, the stuff I’m working on now, it’s like the book I’m working on now, this is after Soldier’s Heart. Guess what? All black and white, I’ve gone back to black and white, and now it’s like “How can you do this? You never learned that lesson. So now you’re going to ace it, or you can get out of here.”
Alex Grand:
So it’s almost a challenge also, but it’s interesting. It’s just kind of what you’re in the mood to do, also. So then Uncovered Property in 1987, I thought it was a fun story. And it kind of goes to what you were saying earlier, about in your family girls being treated different than boys, bit of a double standard, and the shirt being off, and how that’s different between the siblings, and that you had this Marilyn Monroe reference in the story. So at this point, were you thinking, “I want to make … I like autobiographical”? Were you basically thinking, “Autobiography is kind of what I want to be doing, comic-wise”?
Carol Tyler:
It was never a conscious decision. I just knew I could never do that superhero thing.
Alex Grand:
Right.
Carol Tyler:
Because I just saw my family as characters. I’ll always … Maybe it’s because as you know, the child that was told to shut up and I spent a lot of time under tables, just watching people, or you know how it is for the little one, sit down and shut up. I just always observed and couldn’t get a word in edgewise, so I’d listen. And it seemed interesting enough to me.
Alex Grand:
So in a way it was almost like a lot of the responses or observations you made finally were able to find a voice, because back then, as they were happening in real time, you were probably, what? Kind of repressing a lot of that. Would you say that?
Carol Tyler:
You mean like when I was growing up?
Alex Grand:
Yeah.
Carol Tyler:
I was just watching the adults. I was just tuned in. Those shows would come on TV, and it’s like, “What’s the difference between The Honeymooners and my parents?” None. There’s no difference. Look at them. I’d sit back and just watch. My mom would be at the sink, and my dad would want something. She’d get it out of the refrigerator, and my sister would kick my brother. So it’s like, “This is a TV show.”
Alex Grand:
Yeah. Interesting also, because you’re a professor and you do talks and things, but there was one story, 1987 Pork Chops. There’s like high art gallery people, and how they can build almost like a fake fame. And there’s comedy around that. So it sounds like you still have this, almost like down to earth approach as you observe people. Even if they’re in this kind of high art status, you still can almost somewhat reduce them to a comic absurdity, right?
Carol Tyler:
Well, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Help me figure this out. Because when you observe people … Like, the other day I was in the car with Justin and he said, “Oh, look at that guy up there. Thing I like about it is you can really … If you’re parked here,” it was a Kroger, “… you can really see because of the high sidewalk. You can really see these characters walking. I need to come back with my sketchbook.” And I said, “I would never come back here with my sketchbook. I don’t need to do that. All I need to do is tune into what I know. It’s in my head.”
Alex Grand:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s cool.
Carol Tyler:
I don’t need to sketch at Kroger. There’s nothing walking by that I can’t … I’m not saying I’m above that, and I do need information. Yeah. I mean, if I just drew a panel about my brothers throwing chairs into a dumpster, it was like, how many times have you seen a dumpster? You know what they look like. But I had to look, and then it was like, I couldn’t find the one that was in my mind’s eye.
Alex Grand:
Oh, interesting. Yeah. So sometimes there is still a need for reference somewhere.
Carol Tyler:
So everything I saw, I didn’t like, so I ended up drawing what I had in my head mental, and it looked right. The only thing … There’s just a few little references, like when you’re in a dumpster, I always liked to climb in them, which means that there are stairs. There’s rungs, and then to get on that first rung, you got to put your …
Carol Tyler:
So that tells me the scale. I don’t need to see a picture of a guy doing that. I just imagine going to look inside of one, and then, “Oh, okay. So if I had to go like that,” and you can’t look into a dumpster from standing, you got to get up on the rungs to look over, so it’s over my head. So they’re this tall.
Alex Grand:
Yeah, there’s a couple Weirdos pieces that you had that I thought were very endearing. They’re in two different issues, but they were kind of the same theme. In issue 21, took place in 1958, and you’re 7 and Auntie Mary smacks you, and your scrawny body coming out of a wetsuit. And then in Weirdo 24, you’re thirty-seven, and she points out the scrawny body again, you wrote like, “Some things never change.” It was like those little moments in time, kind of sentimental moments that are endearing that you’re able to put out there. You know, when those moments happen, do you then think, “I want to put that down on paper?” or is it more like, you think of it later and then decide to express it?
Carol Tyler:
I don’t live life for content. What I did last time, or what I did when I started out is changed so much. I’ve been at this 40 years, you know? So when I think back on Auntie Mary, it’s just ancient ago, and why I did it the first time was because it seemed like I needed to correct an injustice. And then a miracle, or a strange turn of events I was back at her pool. I never thought I’d be back at my aunt’s pool. And yet there we were, and she did the same exact thing. It was shocking to me that nothing changed. Nothing changed her behavior, in all those years of that.
Carol Tyler:
So when I think about now, like what I’m doing now, I have no axe to grind. I have no agenda, but I have something I’m trying to say. Right? And it is based on what has happened, or what I’ve experienced, but you know I’m sick and tired of talking about me. I’m sick of being the central character, and I want to pass the football. I want to get out of it. And that’s part of what I wrestle with, and part of what I communicate in my next work is getting away from the self as subject matter.
Carol Tyler:
I [crosstalk 01:17:59] want to be the star of the show. I just want to tell the stories that I happened to be in. Because, I mean, then it’s like, well then why don’t you make up characters? And it’s like, I don’t want to do that, because I’ve already figured out or draw my head, and my hair and stuff. It’s easy. It’s kind of like a way in, and I don’t think I make them about me. I think they’re just about … I hope they’re just about life, or people connect something about-
Alex Grand:
Right, There you go, yeah.
Carol Tyler:
… what they-
Alex Grand:
The connection with people. Yeah.
Carol Tyler:
Yeah. And I’ve been really trying to backpedal out, and get more into other stories, but I’m also very concerned.
Carol Tyler:
It’s hard to love other people’s families, you know? “Oh my great aunt So-and-So,” and the minute people start talking, you go …
Alex Grand:
You lose interest. Huh?
Carol Tyler:
I don’t your aunt, or your grandmother, or something like that. I mean, I-
Alex Grand:
But if they were born with like, a very large birth defect, that’s more interesting. Right?
Carol Tyler:
That’s terrible. No, it’s just, how do you get it away from being like you’re precious … Only, you know, some people who … You know, it can’t be just, you’re doing this because of a family treasure component. There has to be something to it. And I can’t make it be about, “Oh, this is me and my family.” It has to be about, “Do you get this about humanity?”
Alex Grand:
Right.
Carol Tyler:
Have you had this feeling?
Alex Grand:
That makes sense. This vibe?
Carol Tyler:
The human exchange. Yeah. So there was one, Weirdo 22 took place in 1967. I think you were 16 at this point, and Grandma had a stroke trying to elope. Is that right? Did that really happen?
Carol Tyler:
That wasn’t mine.
Alex Grand:
That wasn’t yours? Return of Mrs. Kite? No? Did I read that wrong?
Carol Tyler:
Oh, yeah. Yeah, no. Yes!
Jim Thompson:
That definitely is.
Carol Tyler:
Oh yeah!
Alex Grand:
That was yours, right?
Carol Tyler:
The Return if Mrs. Kite.
Alex Grand:
Yeah. Yeah.
Carol Tyler:
Grandma.
Alex Grand:
Okay, good.
Carol Tyler:
Had a stroke!
Alex Grand:
I’m glad because I was going to commit myself to a hospital if I got that wrong. Yeah.
Carol Tyler:
Don’t worry, I’ll rescue you. Yes. The Return Mrs. Kite!
Alex Grand:
Yes, yes.
Carol Tyler:
Yeah. That was my Grandma Stella and that was a-
Alex Grand:
Okay, so that happened?
Carol Tyler:
Yeah. True story.
Alex Grand:
True story.
Carol Tyler:
I think, the other thing is my parents were story … My dad and mom were both storytellers. My dad would sit down. I think he’d sit around the table, and they’d be getting drunker, and he’d be sitting there and the next thing, he’d be slamming the table, the jokes, and they’d be laughing about “Oh Chuck, you’re a son of a bitch!” Just, that they would encounter life and then talk about it, and I’d hear that.
Carol Tyler:
So I heard that story about him shoveling her driveway, and then she stepped across, I heard that. And this shiny sleeves thing, my mom told me there. She had the shiny sleeves, cause she’d use it to rub her nose. It’s so gross. But it’s just like, my mom remembered that funny, odd thing, that grandma had shiny sleeves. Just things about them. So it’s just putting that together. And it was my 16th birthday, she had that stroke and then died. It was like … I intended for that to be a long saga. I was going to continue that. In fact, I drew the second part of it, takes it up the next day in the high school and all this stuff. But it just, it never … It didn’t get finished.
Alex Grand:
Okay. I got you.
Carol Tyler:
Kids, you know?
Alex Grand:
Right.
Carol Tyler:
Needing job.
Alex Grand:
Right, and-
Carol Tyler:
You know, they’re talking about “Oh. Want to do a story for Weirdo?” I’m going to get, what $35 a page? Well, I’m going to work my ass off and I’ll end up with $200 at the end of this. That’ll just about cover what?
Alex Grand:
Well yeah, cause that kind of goes into the Anatomy of a New Mom in 1988, and you’d show varicose veins, unshaved legs, bigger thighs, plugged milk ducks, everything’s painful. Just brutally, brutally honest adjustments to the new state.
Carol Tyler:
Do you have this in your family? You got kids?
Alex Grand:
Yeah. Uh-huh (affirmative). I wouldn’t say that I have it, all those things, but yeah. I mean, I know there’s definitely a change. Yeah. Yeah.
Carol Tyler:
But that’s going on?
Alex Grand:
There are things going on for sure. Yeah. Above and below.
Carol Tyler:
[inaudible 01:22:43] did this, and then later I did the outrage of that same time, we were still being sold the idea that motherhood was so beautiful and perfect, and there was no downsides. And you know, you had to do a natural childbirth and it was going to be wonderful, and we were going to be better than our mothers. We’re not going to use forceps, and all this kind of stuff. You know, this was the epic epitome of womanhood, and all this.
Carol Tyler:
For me, it was like, “This hurts!” It was terrible! And I had such a long labor, and it was … I was also by myself, isolated. I had no help. It was just me and Justin, who was gone on sign jobs a lot. So I was an isolated mom, and it was awful. I’ve talked it over with my kid. She knows. You don’t have a kid with an unavailable mate, or solo with no resources, without having that take on it.
Alex Grand:
Right. Of course. Yeah. It’s a very real, very, it’s almost-
Carol Tyler:
And there was no label-
Alex Grand:
… there’s a disappointment.
Carol Tyler:
… no name for postpartum. I had postpartum psychosis. There was no name for that.
Alex Grand:
Right. Yeah.
Carol Tyler:
You know what I mean?
Alex Grand:
It wasn’t as defined. Yeah.
Carol Tyler:
That wasn’t a thing. You were just had to pull it together. So when I drew that, that was like exactly what … This is what I went through. Cause when I had my baby, in the maternity room there, there was a picture of a woman in soft focus, and she had her infant and she was laying and it was perfect. Just like Mother, and I was like “Get that thing off of me! Get her away!” I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t want it.
Alex Grand:
Yeah, yeah. [crosstalk 01:24:48] And that Anatomy of a New Mom was a very, very focused image. There was no soft focus on any of that.
Carol Tyler:
Yes, I had a baby, but look what it did to me! There was no talking about that. Nowadays they do. There’s hope for women. I did my part. I tried to bring people to the awareness that it’s no cakewalk.
Alex Grand:
Right. Now, still talking about Weirdo. Tell us about Lisa Lee. It was like a secret identity of like, critiquing or commenting on submissions and writing. Who was Lisa Lee? Who was this character?
Carol Tyler:
Aline said “Carol, help me! I’ve got so many people sending in stuff, and I don’t have time to read all this. Could you do this?” I said “I’ll do it, but I can’t do it as myself. I’ll do it as fake character.” So I became the Weirdo offices, which don’t exist, the office slut. And I was going to tell these stories. I was going to review all the stuff, but mostly all I did was talk about the working conditions-
Alex Grand:
Yeah. I got you.
Carol Tyler:
… at the Weird. It was all fake.
Alex Grand:
I liked the head swagger, as you said office slut. You have a good way of expressing these ideas. Very well-animated.
Carol Tyler:
I had this idea. She was going to make money on a … She had a money-making scheme to get her out of this hell that she was in.
Alex Grand:
Right.
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Carol Tyler:
I don’t even remember it, but it was just, you know, something. And then I, at the bottom, name a few people. People who’d sent work in. And so the main thing is I turned it all about Lisa Lee and her complaints. And then it was easier for me to do, because it was like “Holy God, I’m supposed to read through all?” I couldn’t. Like more than Aline could, cause I also had stories due. I had a little kid, and I’d have to get a story due by her deadline, and then working through all the stuff is like “Nah, just do it that way.”
Alex Grand:
Right. That’s that’s good.
Carol Tyler:
Yeah. Nobody seemed to care about it. I mean, I never heard a word about Lisa Lee. It didn’t take off.
Alex Grand:
And was this in any … The alliteration? Was that in any way linked to Lois Lane at all?
Carol Tyler:
Yes! You caught it! Very few people did.
Jim Thompson:
Well. It was me.
Alex Grand:
Well, yeah. I mean, Jim and I discussed this beforehand yes.
Carol Tyler:
Lois Lane and Lana Lang, right?
Alex Grand:
Lana Lang. So it was about that. Even though you weren’t really Superman or … You still had these [crosstalk 00:21:35]?
Carol Tyler:
It was our household. It was in the house.
Alex Grand:
It was in the house. So you knew the name?
Carol Tyler:
My sister and brother, when we were little, they were always … You remember the fifties, there was always some secret decoding thing going on, or there’s always stuff they were throwing at us in pop culture. One of them was L.L.
Alex Grand:
Yeah. There’s a lot of L.L. In pop culture.
Carol Tyler:
So …
Alex Grand:
So, now in 1988 you were awarded the inaugural Dori Seda Memorial Award for Best New Female Cartoonist from Last Gasp.
Carol Tyler:
Yes!
Alex Grand:
So did you feel like “I’ve made it. I’ve become recognized. This is a validation of what I’m doing.” Tell us about that experience.
Carol Tyler:
It was gut wrenching. I’d had a couple … I was in the right place at the right time. I just showed up in San Francisco, and I was painfully aware of the fact that people were there for years, and yet I was getting stuff published, and people liked it. People were writing into Weirdo saying they liked it, and I felt like, “Ooh, did I earn this?” You know? And then I was in some Wimmen’s stuff, and Wimmen’s had been around a long time and I here I was showing up. And then I got a cover, and I felt bad about all that because I’m from a working class family. You start out as an apprentice, and then you’re a journeyman, and then you’re a master, and here I just kind of showed. I just felt terrible.
Carol Tyler:
And then there was the … Dori was a wild woman, friends with Christine [Critter 00:23:25]. And those two were San Francisco with Don Donahue, drinking a lot, partying a lot. And the Crumbs loved her, and she had worked in Weirdo. But Trina and Ron Turner came up with the idea for an award, and when she passed away they thought that they would put it in her name, which mortified Aline and Diane, because it was as if “Wait a minute, she wasn’t rolling with Wimmen’s. She was ours.” You know, it was like this faction thing. It was like, what do you mean faction?
Alex Grand:
Territory. There’s a territory deal,
Carol Tyler:
Territory. You knew about that?
Alex Grand:
Well, no.
Carol Tyler:
They never talked-
Alex Grand:
I mean, we’re getting this from you now. Yes.
Carol Tyler:
Yeah. There was this idea that there was women who did comics for political reasons, and then other people who, as Aline said, likes to get laid.
Alex Grand:
Right? Yeah. Some people like that.
Carol Tyler:
And so there was like these two, and here I am nominated for this award. And people are saying, “Don’t accept it. You know, it’s in Dori’s name.” Other people would say “It’s an honor to accept it.” It’s like, I’m in the middle and I’m like “I don’t even know if I belong at this party!”
Alex Grand:
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.
Carol Tyler:
In the middle.
Alex Grand:
Yeah. There’s like politics around this.
Carol Tyler:
Yeah. I loved Dori. I met her and she was wild. She was okay. You know? And then I won. I won. It was in the San Diego Comic-Con, given to me by Ron Turner. And I was standing there with this huge trophy he put together, with her dog on the top. I was just standing there. I could not talk.
Alex Grand:
Right. Kind of a rock and a hard place.
Carol Tyler:
I could feel the … I could just feel it. Like, if I accept this, they’re not going to like me. If I don’t accept that, they’re not … It’s like why is this happening? I just said “Someday, I’ll be able to talk about this,” but I think I was able to get out, “I feel terrible that this woman died. I feel honored to accept an award in her name.” Something like that.
Alex Grand:
There you go.
Carol Tyler:
But I couldn’t … I absolutely could not talk. And here I was a blabber mouth who used to get in front of crowds and tell wild stories and have them laying them out in the aisles. And yet I was at San Diego, couldn’t talk. I just cried too much.
Alex Grand:
Yeah. Yeah. You’re kind of speechless with all that. Makes sense. There’s quite a few conflicting forces happening at the same time.
Carol Tyler:
And I mean, it wasn’t just the Wimmen’s. There was people who were … People would have fist fights at these underground comics parties. They were fighting over women. They were fighting over this. They were fighting over that. They’d get drunk and they fight. There were people punching. This one would punch this one. This girl would be with him, and then she’d go be with him. And then he’d be with her. It was a mess!
Alex Grand:
Wow. Sounds like rock and roll lifestyle, though. Right.
Carol Tyler:
It was, it was. The early undergrounds, totally rock and roll. And then I jumped into that, there was more drama, more rock and roll, crazy. But then of course, I was in the domestic side. I was up in Sacramento with a kid, and Justin sign painter, so it slowed down quite a bit, but the Crumbs were my neighbors. So they saved my ass. The Crumbs were over here in Winters and in Dixon there was Bob Armstrong. I didn’t get to see him that often-
Alex Grand:
Oh cool.
Carol Tyler:
But I did go hang out. Aline and I hung out a lot. For awhile, there.
Alex Grand:
Okay, Winters. That’s where the Crumbs lived? That’s interesting. Yeah. That’s cool. All right. Well Jim, go ahead on Wimmen’s Comix.
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