Wildcat Anarchist Comics

Donald Rooum

Description

Wildcat Anarchist Comics collects the drawings of Donald Rooum, mostly (but by no means entirely) from the long-running “Wildcat” cartoon series that has been published in Freedom newspaper since 1980. Rooum does not just purvey jokes but makes the drawings comical in themselves, “getting the humour in the line,” provoking laughter even in those who do not read the captions or speech balloons.

The chief characters in the strip are the Revolting Pussycat, a short-fused anarchist who is furious and shouty; and the Free-Range Egghead, an intellectual who would like anarchism to be respectable but sometimes appears foolish. Governments, bosses, and authoritarians are presented as buffoons, and quite often so are anarchists. This thoughtful and delightful collection includes strips from The Skeptic and many more, all beautifully colored for the first time by Jayne Clementson.

The book also includes a lively autobiographical introduction that discusses Rooum’s role in the 1963 “Challenor case,” in which a corrupt police officer planted a weapon on Rooum at a demonstration, ultimately resulting in Rooum’s acquittal.

Sujets

• Political satire
• Sequential art
• Socialism
• Black Cat
• Caricature

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 15 août 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781629632629
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

PRAISE
Wildcat Anarchist Comics is not only a work of genius, but of great originality, using outrageous knockabout comedy to convey serious ideas . This strangely effective technique of using utter farce to get below intellectual defences is successful in getting us to face challenges that no mere political pamphleteering could do. And we anarchists, with our eyes open, must accept that we too can be ridiculous in the passionate pursuit of our ideals.
True satire makes us both laugh and weep, and carry away a lingering sense of unease at the purity of our own motives, and those of the causes we espouse. The Wildcat is anti-authoritarian, yet put in certain situations it becomes a nasty little tyrant-just like you and me.
These cartoons could only have been devised by someone who has been through the mill of the anarchist movement; known all its splendours and miseries, its petty squabbles, its misdirected enthusiasms, its ennobling moments. None of the political movements-Trots, Commies, etc.-could have produced such cartoons, for such movements are designed to preserve the illusions they foster, and they attack only targets outside themselves. Anarchism is quite different. Wildcat says, having thrown a bomb, Who said anything about anybody listening? All I said was I would attract attention .
The Free-Range Egghead is a marvellous character; he and the Wildcat have maintained the anarchist movement ever since it has been in existence, and I am sure that they were prominent in the Diggers movement and among the Levellers. As with the pig who rides upon a sheep, with Rooum s animals there is quite a cosy, British relationship.
I urge you to buy this book, but do not imagine that it will give you a nice, smug glow to see all your favourite Aunt Sallies mocked at. A hearty laugh at first reading, but at the second or perhaps the third, you will appreciate that there is more being mocked than perhaps you bargained for. It will certainly be read in Britain and abroad far more widely than in the tiny anarchist movement, and will attain an international reputation.
-Tony Gibson, Freedom

Wildcat Anarchist Comics
Donald Rooum
ISBN: 978-1-62963-1-271
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016930965
Donald Rooum
This edition copyright 2016 PM Press
All Rights Reserved
Cover by John Yates/stealworks.com
Layout by Jonathan Rowland
PM Press
PO Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan.
www.thomsonshore.com
CONTENTS
Foreword by Jay Kinney
Introduction
The Comics
An Anarchist Alphabet
Spartapuss
Challenor
The Strips
Gandaft the Famous Wizard
Gandaft s Garden
Sprite
The Tale of the Straw Boggart
FOREWORD
I F YOU ARE ALREADY FAMILIAR WITH THE ANARCHIST CART oons of Donald Rooum, then you have a strong inkling of the treat in store for you in this full-color collection of his work. If you ve not previously run across Rooum s work, it s high time that you do, as I can t think of a better introduction to his art than this book before you.
Donald Rooum was born in 1928 in Bradford, England, which means that by the time you read these words, he ll be 88 and likely still cartooning away. For decades, his comic strip Wildcat appeared like clockwork in Freedom, the British anarchist magazine that sustained publication for 128 years before finally folding up its printed version in 2014.

From my considerable distance, thousands of miles away in San Francisco, Rooum s tidy art, his quiet humor, and his dedicated political beliefs have always struck me as quintessentially British. Perhaps I am employing hoary stereotypes, but my impression of the Brits is that there is such an ingrained respect for tradition that even British anarchists seem dug in for the long haul.
I ve always been in awe of people who take up a cause or a particular ideal when young and just stick with it for the rest of their lives. As Donald s autobiographical introduction suggests, he seems to be one of those people. (By way of contrast, my own inclination appears to be to take a stance, live with it for a few years, and if things seem to be going nowhere, look around for a more suitable one. No one has ever accused me of consistency.)


Rooum s puckish take on the anarchist movement is both didactic (his cartoons usually make a political point) and self-deprecating (he laughs at the foibles of his comrades and himself). These impulses are embodied in his two main characters: the professorial stork, a rather long-suffering anarchist ideologue; and Wildcat, a punkish anarchista much given to spontaneous outbursts and direct actions, many of them counterproductive. These are, I suspect, battling aspects of Rooum s own psychology, yet they perfectly capture tensions within the anarchist movement as a whole.
In assessing a cartoonist s work, his or her style is a major consideration. Is the line-work flashy or sedate? Scratchy or smooth? Does the draftsmanship tend toward realism or exaggeration? All of these characteristics contribute to the art s impact, to the feel it imparts.
To my eye, Rooum s cartoons work so well because his style goes against the anarchist grain. I m reminded of the streamlined style of longtime Punch cartoonist H.M. Bateman or of Hergé, the Belgian creator of Tintin. The style implies that everything is under control, while the content suggests that it is not. The kindly stork lays out a utopian plan, which Wildcat promptly derails with an ill-considered bomb. Rooum was of course a regular cartoonist for the pacifist magazine Peace News but not for the more combative Class War. That is hardly surprising.
In his Introduction, Donald details at length his fifteen minutes of fame, which turns out to be his ultimately successful legal battle against an unjust police frame-up for violence at a protest demonstration in London in 1963. It is well worth reading as a case study of how prejudiced police officers falsely accused political dissidents of crimes they did not commit. The happy ending, in this case, is that Rooum and his barristers not only got his case dismissed, but that of other demonstrators who were similarly framed. The bittersweet aspect to the happy ending is that very few heard of the legal victory. It came about on the same day as the Great Train Robbery and the explosion of the Christine Keeler-John Profumo scandal. Rooum didn t even get his allotted fifteen minutes of fame. Such is life.
I pray-to which deity I do not know-that Donald Rooum is still with us and going strong as this book is published. For fifty years or more, he has been a voice of quiet sanity and reason on the left, poking fun at the right, the center, and his own anarchist comrades. When he finally departs for parts unknown, it will be the end of an era, akin to Freedom s end.


Until that moment comes, I urge us all to let Donald know that his work has enriched our lives and our political understanding. Whether we identify with the professorial stork or Wildcat (or both!), Donald Rooum has created characters whose relevance will outlive him. That s a legacy that surely beats out his fifteen minutes of fame in 1963.
Jay Kinney
J AY K INNEY WAS FOUNDER AND editor of Anarchy Comics, most recently reprinted in Anarchy Comics: The Complete Collection (PM Press, 2013).
INTRODUCTION

Heading for book reviews page, The Skeptic, 1988.
How and why I became an anarchist
I T IS SAID THAT A PERSON S EARLIEST MEMORY MAY GIVE SOME INDICATION of the adult person s attitude to life. My earliest memory dates from the time I was staying with my mother s sister, Aunty Emily, when my mother was in a maternity home giving birth to my twin sisters. I was one year and eight months old, sharing a bath with my cousin David. I noticed that Aunty Emily had perched the baby bath on top of a four-legged buffet. Later I was told that this was a misperception. Aunty Emily s baby bath had four legs of its own-but the fact that I remembered that detail showed that it was a real memory and not a confabulation.
Ask a little boy what he wants to be and he may well talk of an adult occupation, such as an astronaut or a bus conductor (said to be the earliest ambition of Ed Miliband), but the real ambition of every little boy is to be a Big Boy. I was sharing the bath with my cousin David, who was a Big Boy aged three. He was messing about, laughing and refusing to get into the bath, and I thought he was wonderful. So as an adult, it may seem possible that I admire people who stand up to authority.
I used to be quite good at memorising stuff, so I did quite well at primary school, and at the age of eleven I was awarded a scholarship by the local education authority and sent to Bradford Grammar School. This is a public school in the British sense of the term, not public in the sense of open to all, but a fee-paying school of the premier league, a member of the Headmaster s Conference. In those days, before the Common Entrance Examination was invented, the only qualification for entry to a fee-paying school, however prestigious, was for the fees to be paid. A few boys like me, whose parents could not have afforded the fees, were judged bright enough to have their fees paid by Bradford ratepayers, and not only fees but also maintenance grants and the cost of school uniforms.

Barbara Smoker, Humanism (4th edition), South Place Ethical Society, 2005.
My parents were Baptists. They first met when one was taking over from the other as Secretary of the Bradford Baptist Sunday Schools Union. My sisters and I were sent to a Metho