- Jay Lynch
Jay Lynch, born
January 7 ,1945 inOrange, New Jersey , is an American cartoonist who played a key role in theunderground comix movement with his "Bijou Funnies" and other titles. His work is sometimes signed Jayzey Lynch.Ben Schwartz, writing in the alternative weekly "
Chicago Reader ", traced Lynch's early years:"Phoebe and the Pigeon People"
Lynch's best known comic book stories involve the human-cat duo, Nard n' Pat. the featured characters in "Bijou Funnies". For 17 years, the comic strip "Phoebe and the Pigeon People" by Lynch and Gary Whitney, ran in "Chicago Reader", through the 1970s and 1980s, and Lynch has scans of more than 500 of those strips ready for any publisher who sees the potential of a "Phoebe and the Pigeon People" book. [http://www.wackypackages.org/press/chicago_reader_text.html Schwartz, Ben. "Culture Jamming," "Chicago Reader", June 25, 2004.] ] ["Bijou Funnies"]
Topps
Beginning in 1968, Lynch became a major contributor to
Topps ' "Wacky Packages " and "Garbage Pail Kids ", plus other Topps humor products. In 2002, he recalled his creative working methods and procedures with Len Brown and others at the Topps' Product Development Department::I would get a phone call from Len Brown or Art Spiegelman telling me it was time for me to do some roughs for a new series of Wacky Packages. I would usually submit a dozen roughs at a time. Len would tell me, usually on the phone, which food conglomerates I could not parody, based on cease and desist letters from prior series. I had a master list of taboo companies -- and this would be added to, by phone, until a new master list would be compiled and sent to me. In those days I had a pretty good working knowledge of who made what, though. So I would give Len a verbal list of maybe 20 or so products, of which he would pick a dozen. Sometimes he would suggest products, sometimes he would come up with the gag title on the phone, and I would add to it on the rough. Sometimes Spiegelman, orBhob Stewart , orWoody Gelman would phone the assignment to me. In the 80s,Mark Newgarden would phone the assignment to me. In the 90s Ira Friedman would phone the assignment to me. But mostly it would be Len. I think in the 60s I got $8 a rough. By the 70s it had gone up to $20 a rough. By the 80s it was $125 a rough, and so on. What I got for a rough always remained the same amount in actual buying power. It has gone up with inflation, though. One rough pays about the same as a week's worth of groceries. Always has -- and always will. Anyway -- after I had some idea of the initial dozen products that I would parody, I would go to the supermarket and buy these products. Sometimes I would get ideas for additional products as well -- and Topps would reimburse me for this cost of the actual products when I would send them the receipt along with my bill, which I would enclose with each batch of roughs. These roughs were done in India ink and colored with magic markers. I would just send them in by regular mail, and I didn't bother to retain xerox copies of them until the mid-1970s when the drugstore down the block from my house installed a payXerox machine. I was living in Chicago then. I would only go to Brooklyn to meet with the Topps guys once every six months or so. Usually this was to work on a vast variety of other Topps and Bazooka projects. Wacky Packages was just one of the countless series in development then, only one in ten of which would ever see the light of day. [ [http://www.wackypackages.org/history/production.html Lynch, Jay. "How a Wacky Package series was put together (from my point of view at least)," August, 2002.] ] [ [http://www.wacky-packages.net/topps/topps-sets.htm Topps Production Codes] ] [ [http://www.thetoppsvault.com/pages_priceguide/pgwackyArtOrig.htm The Topps Vault] ]"Mad" and books
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