MAD ARTIST PROFILE

RAY ALMA

“UGOI OF THE MONTH” JULY 2005

Ray Alma began drawing everything from Astronauts to Apes when he was a kid because those were really cool things to draw at the time. They still are! Who would have known then, that he would someday get paid by MAD magazine to draw the same stuff he liked when he was a kid? Does it get any cooler than that? It does if you are living the life of Ray Alma !

This is a story of a dream that literally became a reality. Ray Alma was born with the innate ability to draw. He kept his classmates amused by his humorous cartoons all the way through school. Alma ended up continuing his career as a cartoonist when he entered The New York School of Visual Arts. Once there he was fortunate enough to have the amazing oportunity to actually learn under such legendary masters as the likes of Harvey Kurtzman and Will Eisner! He was a student of Sam Viviano who taught there as well. In this interview you will learn more about Ray’s fascinating story in to the Mad, Mad world of cartooning.– MD  

Part One - Ray Alma takes some time out of his busy schedule to chat with our own Adam Cooke “(a.k.a. Canucklehead)  

ADAM: When did you first realize that you had the ability to draw?

RAY: Well, I always drew in school as I was growing up, and it was a situation where I was seen as the best artist in the class, but for me, it was always a goof - it was just a way to make people in class laugh, and a way to get people to like me, just to be a little more popular. It never occured to me, as I was growing up, that this was something I could do professionally.

ADAM: So what were you drawing in your school days?

RAY: The earliest things I remember drawing were astronauts. Right around the time of one of the last moon landings, there were lots of pictures of astronauts in the newspapers, and I liked the way they looked, so I was drawing that. Astronauts and dinosaurs - and, of course, after Planet Of The Apes came out, I was drawing Planet Of The Apes characters.

ADAM:It's interesting that you were so fixated on astronauts, because one of your most memorable MAD jobs was the artwork for Jeff Kruse's article "Ways NASA Can Appeal To The 18-34 Male Demographic" (MAD #415, March '02), and that brought you full-circle back to those early days.

RAY: You know, whenever I've had a chance to stuff that relates to what initially amused me, I'm always kind of amazed to be doing that. Drawing astronauts again - for MAD Magazine, which I loved as a kid - and getting paid for it...and there was the whole thrill about drawing a Planet Of The Apes satire for MAD Magazine as well. It's always like, "Wow - I can't believe that little snot-nosed kid living in a house in Queens is getting paid to do this years later!" (click on thumbnails to view full size images)

ADAM: Of course, we'll talk about that "Planet Of The Remakes" spoof soon enough...But let's return to your childhood for a moment, or more specifically, your high school years - with the exception of that infamous aptitude test which originally had you pegged as a glorified farmer, all signs seemed to be pointing to a career in art, right?

RAY: Yeah, as I got into high school, it became a little more serious - I got into some serious art classes, and I was being recognized as one of the better artists, and this was something that I liked. But, again, it wasnever something where I was thinking I should do this for a living. I never knew what I wanted to do in high school - until the time I got into my senior year, with those career tests, and it kind of opened my eyes and made me say, 'Why don't I consider this for a career?' I had a good art teacher when I was in high school, and he really pushed me, saying, 'You know, you should really consider doing this professionally - you should go to the School of Visual Arts, because you're interested in cartooning, and they offer majors in cartooning, and it's a good school in general.'

ADAM: Before we leave high school, I'd like to ask a question submitted by one of our contributors to this interview. He wanted to know if you learned how to draw hands by studying Brother Beckett!

RAY: (Laughs) Who submitted that one, Desmond Devlin?

ADAM: I'm not permitted to reveal my sources... (COUGH) Des Devlin (COUGH).

RAY: What a small world - I was on the St. Francis High School football team with Desmond's brother! Desmond himself didn't go to St. Francis, but his brother did, so he knew that Brother was one of the teachers there.

ADAM: A teacher without a thumb, I understand!

RAY:(Laughs) Yeah, as a matter of fact, he was thumbless. But he was a nice guy, although if I had learned my hand-drawing from him as a model, I might have been in trouble!

ADAM: You might actually be a farmer by now!

RAY: Or an animator, where they always draw four fingers anyway!

ADAM: Fortunately, they taught you better than that over at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. What was it like when you started your training there?

RAY: It's interesting, because at the end of high school I had this focus now that I should try to concentrate on cartooning as a profession. That's all well and good, but when you get to college you find out that cartooning isn't just one thing - you can go in a lot of different directions within the realm of cartooning. So at the beginning of my college years, I was a little lost, because I didn't know where to focus - there's editorial cartooning, comic-books, animation, and it's a little intimidating to begin with, because you don't know where your strengths are. So I was a little nervous going through college because it seemed like everyone else had a focus - everyone else knew what they wanted to do. But the odd thing about those people is that not a lot of them ended up doing anything - I think they may have been too focused, too early. They had a very fixed style right off the bat, but when you're learning how to create art, you learn how to have your style evolve and change. So I think they were a little too focused.

ADAM: So you think it was actually to your advantage for you to be without a specific direction at this point?

RAY:Yeah, I think so - I was very open to anything that was going to come to me. Initially I was very interested in editorial and "gag" cartooning, and I just loved it. But when I started to do it, I realized that I didn't know how to write - and more than the art, that seems to be the key to being a great gag cartoonist: You have to be a great writer, you have to be funny in print, and I could never make that transition. Everything I tried was just the lamest possible cartoons you could ever imagine.

ADAM: Any examples that you'd care to share? Any of those gags still simmering just below the surface of your subconcious?

RAY: Not really...I submitted to magazines really early on, even when I was still in high school. I tried to submit some ideas to Playboy, because I found out that they were a major magazine that used a lot of gag cartoons and paid very well. And all my stuff was just so sophomoric, the lowest common denominator of humour. It was just horrible. I wish I could remember some specific stuff - I must have blocked it out, because it was so terrible. One of the things I learned in college was that there's always a place for sophomoric humour and bathroom gags, but you're always better off aiming for a higher level of humour. You can always fall back on the other stuff, because there's always somebody who's gonna laugh at a fart joke. But you should always aspire to a higher level if you want to do better work.

ADAM: That's interesting to hear, because it reminds me of one of your other MAD jobs - "Panic Ruined," the parody of the Jodie Foster movie Panic Room (#419, July '02). Remember the rather scatalogical sight gag on the bottom of the third page, where one of the villains has a tube attached to his gluteus maximus to "gas up" the panic room? I remember thinking, "Ray doesn't usually draw these kinds of jokes - this is really bizarre!" (click on thumbnail to view full size image)

RAY: You know, I really don't know what inspired me to go in that direction. I remember thinking at the time that the panel needed more of a visual punch to it, so that's what I came up with. But when I showed them the sketches, the MAD people reacted to it like, "Oh my God! I can't believe you did that!" And I couldn't believe they'd be shocked by ANYTHING, with all the stuff they've seen and created over the years. There was even a question as to whether they should even run it, but then they decided it didn't matter.

ADAM: After all, it's a little side of Ray Alma that we don't see all that often!

RAY: Exactly. Every once in a while, I'll go in the direction of the poopy joke - you know, you just "GOTTA".

ADAM: Hey, even Gary Larsen did it a couple of times. It happens. Anyway, let's go back to SVA and talk about some of the people who were instructors over there, including a couple of legends, Harvey Kurtzman and Will Eisner - what impressions did you have of them?

RAY: I have to confess: Going into college, I was a big comic-book fan - I was big on Marvel Comics, and MAD of course - but I wasn't really versed in comic-book or cartoon history. So when I started college, I didn't know who Harvey Kurtzman was, or who Will Eisner was, or who most anybody was. I was this formless cartoon amoeba who knew nothing. So I learned all this when I got to SVA, and I looked around at my classmates, who were like "OH MY GOD, I'M GOING TO BE IN A CLASS WITH HARVEY KURTZMAN!" And I'm like, "Oh. Okay." (Laughs)

ADAM: (Laughs) " Harvey who?"

RAY:Exactly. He seemed like a nice guy, but I went into the class not having that sense of hero worship. After I found out, of course, I thought it was really cool. But even though Harvey was a sweet, sweet guy, part of the problem when I had him was that he was really sick at that point - he had Parkinson's Disease, I believe - so physically he was very, very slow, and he talked in a very low voice, very slowly. And I had trouble making the connection between the Harvey of the '80s and the early MAD stuff that I had been exposed to: "This is the guy? This is the same guy who did all this crazy stuff?" And because he was so sick, he shared the class with another teacher, so I only got to see him every other week. It was the same with Will Eisner - he also split the class with another teacher. So every other week I was getting a really great lesson. The other people weren't bad either, don't get me wrong, but it just wasn't the level of Harvey and Will.

ADAM: What do you think were some of the most important lessons you learned from these legends?

RAY: Well, Will Eisner had such a sense of storytelling in sequential art - that knowledge is invaluable. Now, it doesn't come into play as often in a MAD Magazine piece, even in a movie parody where you *are* dealing with sequential art, because you're very limited in what you can do visually and sequentially. It's not like a comic book where you have more freedom to control the panel. But, still, the knowledge that someone like Eisner could give you - to keep a sense of continuity from panel to panel, and to change the view to make it continually interesting - those were the kind of things that I ended up coming away with, and hopefully these were the kinds of things that I was able to incorporate in the sequential pieces that I did for MAD. Even when I was limited with what I could do with the script, I always tried to make it as visually interesting as possible.

ADAM: Let's look at another SVA instructor who wound up being instrumental in giving you a place in MAD Magazine - art director Sam Viviano. What were his classes like?

RAY:Sam taught a specific class, which was caricature, and he treated it very much like a traditional studio class where he had models coming in. And I remember the models were always so confused, because they were used to coming into classes and stripping naked and standing there, and they'd start taking off their clothes and Sam would be like, "No, no, no, keep your clothes on, we just want you to sit here!" And we'd always get really close to the models, because we were supposed to caricature their faces. And the models got very uncomfortable, because they weren't used to the artists being so close, and not being naked - the models always had a hard time.

ADAM: Did Sam's students have a hard time, too?

RAY: The best thing about Sam as a teacher was that he tried to treat the students as professionally as possible, and making them think they were actually out there in the real world. So you'd have to finish your homework on time, just as you would deliver a real piece on a deadline. And he was the hardest teacher we had - he didn't pull any punches, he was brutal, but we needed that. A lot of people didn't like him, because he was too honest and he treated the class too seriously. But when you're in college and you're getting to be more of a professional, you really need people who are going to bust your balls, or you won't get any better. And Sam was like that, so it was a huge value for me to have him get on my case - it just made me try harder. Some people grumbled amongst themselves or even dropped out of the class, because they resented his toughness. But it was a huge help to me. One of the highlights for me in college was dealing with Sam criticizing my work, week in and week out, until finally I delivered one piece that was a "wall piece" - we had all of these put up on the wall, and Sam would go through each piece, critiquing it in front of the whole class - picking it apart, basically. And finally he gets to my piece, which was a Bruce Springsteen caricature. I don't know what happened, but everything clicked with that piece - he said, "I don't have anything to say. I don't have any comment. This looks like a professional piece, and it works on every level." And the other students in the class spontaneously applauded me for the piece. And that's when everything started coming into focus - caricature was always something that I could do, but I realized it was something I could do professionally.

ADAM: Another of your SVA instructors, Joe Orlando, was on the MAD staff when you made your 1996 debut in the magazine. What did you think of him as a teacher?

RAY: Joe Orlando had just started teaching at SVA, and we were probably the very first class he had. And he was so freakin' enthusiastic about it! It was funny - Joe was kind of a heavy guy at the time, and the class started in September but it was still pretty warm, almost summer-like, and I don't think the classrooms had air-conditioning. But he was so enthusiastic, and he was running back and forth in front of the board, and drawing, and he worked up such a sweat, so for years we teased him about being this heavy, sweaty guy in front of the classroom. But it was this unbridled enthusiasm to be there in front of the class and to be teaching students, and he has this wealth of drawing knowledge that he was able to impart to us as the cartoon-drawing teacher. He was great at that. As a teacher, he was very tough, but Joe saw something in my work early on that he felt could be developed into something very professional. And he got me my very first paying art job, while I was still in my junior year of SVA.

ADAM: What was that first job?

RAY: Well, Joe was a vice-president of DC Comics, and they had a newsletter which they sent to comic-book stores called "DC Releases." On the back page they decided to run these profiles of DC staff members, and they wanted caricatures of the staff members. Joe had another student who was better than me, and he set up an interview with that other student with DC Comics, but he missed the interview - he totally flaked on Joe. So Joe came to me and said, "Are you interested?" I knew I was his second choice, but I also knew he thought I could do the job, too. So he brings me up to DC Comics to meet with the person who's running the newsletter, and I have an art portfolio that's got rock-band stickers all over it. And Joe says, "Okay, this is good enough for now, but in the future this just isn't going to cut it - you need a professional portfolio. You need to show that you care about your work, and this doesn't show that." But they overlooked my raggedy portfolio, and then he told me we were going to go to lunch, and I was kind of confused at the time - I thought, since I was vying for the job, that I was gonna buy them lunch, and I figure we're going to go down the block to a diner and I could afford to buy each of them a burger. But ,DC Comics was located at 666 6th Avenue at the time, and at the top of the building was this restaurant called Top Of The Sixes, and we get in the elevator and we don't go down, we go up - and Joe says, "This is where we're going to have lunch." And I PANICKED! I broke out into a cold sweat, and the whole time I'm wondering how I can explain how I can't afford this. I got the cheapest thing on the menu - a glass of water and a turkey open-faced sandwich. And then the sandwich comes, and I'm also intimidated because they had regular dishes that they're eating with knives and forks, so I decide to cut the sandwich and use a knife and fork. And as I just start to cut this sandwich, the knife slips out of my hand and falls on the floor, and now I'm even afraid to pick up the knife, even though they didn't notice it. So I didn't eat at all - the whole time, I was just terrified. And, of course, at the end of the thing, Joe whips out his DC Comics Account Credit Card and pays for the whole thing, which is a huge relief.

ADAM: So Ray starts breathing again, and the colour returns to his face...

RAY: Yeah! But then I'm thinking, "Damn! I should have went for that huge steak!" (Laughs) But even with that early success, by my last year of SVA, I was gravitating more towards illustration and feeling less like a cartoonist, because at the time cartooning was just gag cartooning and comic-book art. And as much as I loved superheroes, I wasn't that good at drawing superheroes - everything I did had a goofy bent to it. But in the SVA library, I came across Nick Meglin's book The Art Of Humourous Illustration, and that set off a little lightbulb in my head, even from the title - I felt more like an illustrator that was humourous, rather than a cartoonist. And there was one illustration class in particular, taught by Bradford Brown, and he had professional art directors coming in to critique the students' artwork. So he had the art director from Field & Stream come in, and he saw my work, and it was similar to that day in Sam's class - he felt my piece was very professional-looking. And a week later I got a call from him, so before I even graduated I had my first major illustration assignment.

ADAM: What exactly was that Field & Stream piece?

RAY: It was a quarter-page illustration to go with an article about a hunter's wife who's pissed off that he went hunting. She's standing at the bottom of a tree, threatening him with a chainsaw, or something bizarre like that. The main memory I have of that is taking the photo-reference of the piece - it takes place in the winter, so the woman with the chainsaw is in a winter overcoat. And I had my mother pose for it, but we're doing the art in the middle of June, so my mother's in the backyard wearing this heavy winter overcoat for this picture.

ADAM: And Mrs. Alma is thinking, "I shouldn't have encouraged the boy!"

RAY:(Laughs) God bless her, she was a trooper that day. So that's what led me into humourous illustration, which to this day I'm still doing, and which I really love a lot.

ADAM:What works for you about editorial illustration, Ray?

RAY: There's a lot of creative freedom, and a lot of opportunities to express yourselves creatively. Sometimes the art director will have a very specific idea as to what they want to go along with the article, or a lot of times they'll give me the article and say, "You come up with the concept." And that makes it a little harder, but it's more challenging and, ultimately, a lot more satisfying if you come up with a good idea - and it's all you. I also like the challenge of being able to tell the story in one image, without any text; it has to be completely visual, and you have to get the point across in one image that'll hopefully be funny and give you a hint about what the story's about. So it's a very focused sense of storytelling.

ADAM:Were you doing much of that in the late '80s and early '90s?

RAY: It was semi-steady - I was doing it, and it was going OK. For a couple of years I was working part-time at the Society of Illustrators - which is kind of like a museum and social club here in New York for professional illustrators - and I was working there in an administrative position. It got to a point where the people who worked there said, "We need to make your position full-time, but that's probably going to interfere with your illustration work, and we think you're pretty good. So if you're serious about being an illustrator, you should do that full-time." So they gave me this ultimatum, and I was nervous about not having a steady paycheck - I was still living at my mother's house at the time. But I figured that this was probably the best time to make this leap and see what happens, so I did it, and I was very lucky that I was able to live off this freelance stuff. So since 1991 I've been completely freelance, and to be completely honest, it was going great, up until 2001 when things just took a nosedive, and things have been incredibly tough for the last four years.

ADAM: Really? Any particular reason for these tough times, Ray?

RAY: I have my own theory on it. I think what ended up happening was that, post-9/11, the economy suffered and businesses are suffering, so they're not taking advertising out in magazines. So the magazines then can't afford the budget to commission illustration, so they go without the illustration. And what I think has also happened is that, even though the economy has improved since then, the magazines are looking around and saying, "Hey, we haven't been running illustration for the last few years, but we're still here, and we're not the worse off for it - I don't think we need to go back." So when I talk to other editorial illustrators, they're experiencing the same downturn, and hundreds of magazines are no longer using commissioned illustration anymore. And not only have the rates not gone up for the kind of work I did for my first job for Field & Stream back in 1987, they've actually gone down for the same size piece. So it's kind of insane to do this as a living - the cost of living goes up, but there's no leverage to get the cost of the commission to go up. It's a very tough area to work in.

ADAM: And yet you've soldiered on - do you still think it was worth the gamble you took in those early years?

RAY: Oh, definitely. Because I was still having a lot of fun at my job. I remember doing a bunch of illustrations for sports blooper-video covers - that was kind of cool, walking into a Suncoast Video Store and saying, "Hey, wow, I'm on a video cover!" One of the great things about being a freelancer is that you never know what you're going to be working for. You could be doing stuff for a fishing magazine, so you have to research fishing. And I've never fished before, and I've never hunted before, but I had to research this stuff, because even though it's humourous, you've got to get the details right. That was also fascinating, because you're learning things as you go.

COMING UP NEXT... Ray Alma joins the Usual Gang Of Idiots! But it's a rocky beginning... Read all about his troubled MAD debut, the articles that helped him turn the corner, and his favourite MAD moments and art assignments!

IT'S AN " ALMA ALL-ACCESS PASS" - COMING THE THIRD WEEK OF JULY TO MAD MUMBLINGS! - Stay Tuned in to Mad Mumblings all week as we celebrate this festive event of the Summer - MD

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