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Everett Comedy On Tap Salutes...
Everett Peck
Cartoonist, illustrator, writer, animator, and creator of the classic animated TV series, 'Duckman.'

By Jeff Hause

You probably wouldn't recognize Everett Peck in a supermarket, but I guarantee that you've seen his work. Just check the magazine rack.

Everett's distinctively hilarious ink lines have been in everything from The New Yorker to Playboy to Time, as well as on countless books, comix, and movie posters. He has had gallery shows in Tokyo, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington D.C. He's even written animated cartoons for Rugrats, The Critic, and a TV series based on one of his own cartoon characters, Duckman.

On top of that, just about every commercial illustrator working now was inspired by (ie: copies) Everett's style. But nobody can draw like Everett.

During the 1980's, Everett taught illustration and animation classes at a college in Southern California. I was not only lucky enough to have been there to take classes from one of the best illustrators of this generation, I also got to know him.

Everett not only taught me about illustration, he prepared me for all of my future work -- how to stay creative by keeping the mind constantly working. Everett was always drawing; on notepads, in sketchbooks, and even paper place mats in restaurants (left).

This particular drawing was done in order to teach me not to work on spec for Black Biker magazine, as well as not to hack out comics with stale, offensive scripts that I hated. This helped me in my later screenwriting work as well (until I temporarily forgot and wrote an Ernest screenplay for Disney).

Everett eventually gave up his teaching position to paint and do animation (if you've seen Duckman, you know he succeeded fairly spectacularly). But I hope he finds the time to teach again someday. As brilliant as he is at his art, he's even better at inspiring students, encouraging them, and making them feel special and talented.

After one of my last classes with him, he gave me a drawing that he'd done for a book on television:

It was called "Making Us Laugh." How could you not be inspired by that? There are plenty of great artists and writers that have inspired and influenced me, but only one of them ever became my friend.

Thanks, Everett.

INTERVIEW WITH EVERETT PECK

COT: How did you create Duckman?

PECK: My wife and I were on a train returning from New York city after my "Renegade Rabbit" character was taken away from me by an evil studio boss. I couldn't just tell my animation staff that we were out of business, so I doodled a little duck character. I showed my wife and asked, "What do you think of calling him 'Dickey Duck?'" She thought "Duckman" was a better-sounding name. Later in the dining car I was having a ham sandwich and thought, "How about a pig as a partner?"

COT: Do you prefer illustration or animation?

PECK: They're different. I like them both I different ways. Working in in illustration, you're on your own, there's nobody around to alter your vision. It's very contained and satisfying in that sense. But in animation you have to deal lots of other people. Including studio executives, who are a breed unto themselves. It takes a certain type of person to deal with studio people.For instance, if you are the kind of person who enjoys draining your pool and filling it with venomous snakes, then jumping in headfirst, you'll probably enjoy working in this business.

COT: Who are your favorite artists?

PECK: When I was a kid, Walt Disney was my favorite artist (and the only one I knew about). Later I found some 19th Century artists that were a big influence on my style: Mainly Sir John Tenniel (he was the illustrator of Alice in Wonderland), and Heinrich Kley--he had a lyrical quality to his lines, combined with odd imagery of dancing elephants, crocodiles and hippos (his work infuenced Disney's Fantasia). After high school I got interested in underground stuff like Zap Comix and Rat Fink, and artists like Robert Crumb.

COT: Who wins in a fight between Duckman, Daffy Duck, Donald Duck, and Quacky Doodle?

PECK: Quacky's the first to go down. Donald gets too mad, so he can be manipulated... Daffy is the challenge--he's a slick one. Sure Duckman has a gun, but Daffy's been shot many times--he just picks up his eyes and his bill and reattaches them. I have to give the edge to Daffy.

COT: When you create a comic like Duckman, do the images come first or the personalities?

PECK: Personalities. Duckman was actually based on a friend of mine and his relationship with his business partner. It all started with the idea of the abusive boss/employee relationship that I saw with my friend. The employee is actual the brains. I've always found the loud-mouthed know-it-all to be funny. Duckman's completely beat up by life's slings and arrows, with a crumby job, crumby family, crumby kids, but he remains optimistic. Then the detective aspect allows you to go everywhere with your storylines.

I also keep a sketchbook and the ideas for character designs and backgrounds are developed from that.

Park City Sketchbook: Everett is legendary for his personal sketchbooks. Xeroxes of the pages are secretly passed around Hollywood, and samples have been displayed in his gallery shows. Here are some samples from a sketchbook he created while in Utah.

PECK: I've always been a fan of classic cartoons, and the characters in those have always been based on animals instead of people. So we decided to build on that iconography. Of course in Duckman we also mixed in people, to really confuse things. But we always tried to instill them with realistic human feelings--they're people first--which is why it always used to make us mad when we read reviews like "it'll quack you up."

COT: So Duckman began as a comic book?

PECK: It started as a series of comic strips in college newspapers, then a one-page story in Darkhorse Comics, and then I did an entire comic as I developed the TV show at Klasky Csupo.

COT: What other shows have you worked on?

PECK: One of my favorites was Jumanji. I designed the look for the show. In the film the Jumanji game was seeping into the real world, so for the cartoon we went into the world of Jumanji, instead. It was a richer world to create. I was awarded the National Cartoonists Society's Award for the Best in Television Animation (which was a big honor, because you're being recognized by other cartoonists and animators). It was an adventure-oriented series, but instead of superheroes, our characters were more whimsical. My partner Richard Raynis and I also have a company called Dogwash, and we do projects for Sony, Hallmark and other companies. When we first started we thought the name "Peck/Raynis" wasn't too catchy, so we stuck our names into a xcomputer and tries some anagrams. The only one that made any sense at all was "Rover penis," so we opted for Dogwash, instead.

Duckman Interview: We caught up with Duckman at his office in Los Angeles, which looks remarkably like the set from his TV series (you can see episodes on Comedy Central). After we finally convinced him that we weren't prospective clients and wouldn't be offering any money, he grudgingly agreed to a short interview.
Mr. Man

COT: Does Duckman's family parallel your own?

PECK: Of course not. Well, maybe except for the yellow skin tone.

COT: Who can we contact to demand more Duckman?

PECK: Write to the good people at Comedy Central. I am actually considering either a reunion show or a new comic book, called The Morning After, which would cover the lives of all the characters since the show ended.

(If you'd like to see more of Everett's incredible drawings, paintings, and sketchbook art, click on his web site.)


Jeffrey C. Hause has been writing professionally (in a very amateur fashion) for fifteen years. He's written screenplays at film studios like Warner Brothers, Disney, Universal, Columbia, and Interscope; and for producers such as Ivan Reitman, Samuel Goldwyn Jr. and Ray Stark. Jeff has also written for comics and entertainers such as Rodney Dangerfield, Gabe Kaplan, Rick Dees, and Jay Leno.

Here's his résumé.