Art: Nuts but Nice

Virgil Franklin Partch 2nd became a cartoonist because he wanted to make a living sitting down. Last week, 28-year-old Cartoonist Partch (pen name: VIP) was sitting pretty. He was a regular Collier’s contributor of two years’ standing, he had a fat commercial advertising contract, and his first book of comic drawings, It’s Hot in Here (McBride; $1) was selling fast in U.S. bookstores.

It’s Hot in Here is a thin (80-page), close-cropped (5-by-7-in.) book of ferocious, slapstick, sometimes disturbing gag-drawings plus a short introduction by Magazine Writer Kyle (Redder Than the Rose) Crichton. “Virgil Partch is nuts,” writes Crichton, “. . . but nuts in a nice American way.” Partch fans found little that was Nelly-nice, less that was especially American. But they did find a fresh-cartoon humor, based on a slambang, explosive brand of fantasy. Example:

“Boy! If looks could kill, eh, Steve?” (see cut)—a male citizen turning to look at a formidably unattractive woman who has passed him and his companion. He is unaware that friend Steve is already sprawling stark dead on the sidewalk.

Sometimes Partch succeeds with straight insanity: “Who the hell writes your stuff?” asks an eye doctor’s patient as he sits before a wall chart inscribed ELPQZVCRNIDTWU.

Reluctant Success. “You are sitting before a man who is utterly devoid of ambition,” Virgil Partch once told an admiring visitor. But three years ago,Hollywooder Partch found himself trying to support his wife and child on $18 weekly unemployment relief checks. He had taken part in a strike at the Walt Disney Studios. Eighteen-dollar boredom finally prompted Partch to send a batch of cartoons to Collier’s Cartoon Editor Gurney Williams.

Williams bought them. Since then, VIP cartoons have titillated Collier’s readers every week. Partch supplies his own gags, considers them the easiest part of his work. To the New Yorker he sells gags alone. He also sells cartoons to Manhattan’s PM, draws ads for Wheaties and for Squirt (a California-made drink mixer).