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KING OF CARTOONS
03/03/03 16:45:54 PST
by-Dave Wallace

Pete Millar's Half-Century Of Satire, Humor & Flies

Referring to Pete Millar as a cartoonist is like calling Von Dutch a pinstriper, or Sam Barris a body man, or Wally Parks a former dry-lakes racer. While Millar (pronounced "Muh-Lar") is unarguably the greatest drag-racing cartoonist of all time, the perfect strokes laid down by his ancient, crow-quill pens are merely the visible tip of his talent. Beneath every image lies a depth of observation and humor that has never been approached by any of the competitors who has come and gone since 1953, when Pete penned what would become his first published hot-rod cartoon.

"I was an engineer in San Diego, and moved up to L.A.," he said of his professional breakthrough. "I went to Hot Rod magazine to show my drawings -- which were very crude, by today's standards -- to Tom Medley, who was listed in the masthead as cartoon editor. He said, 'No, we're not buying cartoons,' and suggested that I shouldn't quit my fulltime job. So I went down the street to Rod & Custom, which was still being published by Quinn Publications. Spencer Murray was the editor, and he bought my cartoons immediately. I guess he wanted some competition for Medley's Stroker McGurk in Hot Rod. Spence suggested a cartoon character called Arin Cee, after the alphabet letters, 'R and C'.

"When Petersen bought Quinn, they asked if I would also do the illustrations for the tech letters in Hot Rod. That was when Wally Parks was the editor and Barbara [the future Mrs. Parks -- Ed.] was his secretary. I was still working as an engineer and doing this stuff at night. What I wanted was to quit my engineering job and become a fulltime cartoon-book editor; that had been my dream from a little kid.

"Then I had the idea of doing a complete cartoon book on cars. So I got ahold of Carl Kohler, an extremely-talented writer and cartoonist. We dreamed up a magazine. We were gonna call it CAR'toons. Carl had known Robert Petersen personally, so we got an appointment to meet him. We made the presentation, and he said, 'OK, I like it; we'll give it a try.' He gave us a contract, which I still have. He would pay us 2500 bucks to produce a book in the small size -- the old Rod & Custom size -- with 64 pages; no ads.

"Like most cartoonists, Kohler always needed money. I still had my job to support my family. He had a wife, four kids. Plus, we had to take that $2500 and split it among the other cartoonists that we'd hired to come in and help us put the book together. When the money didn't arrive properly, Kohler called the head of some division at Petersen, Ken Bayless, and demanded that the check be sent over immediately, by special messenger. Bayless refused; Kohler said there would be no book, then called me. I couldn't believe it! I called the guy and told him that Kohler was not speaking for me. Bayless told me to come in, and gave me the contract. So I did four small ones, then went up into the larger CAR'toons ‹ all done at home. When Petersen took it in-house, I was hoping to become the fulltime editor, but Dick Day got the job. I told Bayless what he could do with CAR'toons.

"I got a mortgage on the house and I told [wife] Orah Mae, 'Well, I'm gonna do a book.' That was the beginning of Drag Cartoons. Lou Kimzey set me up with Kabel News, a major distributor. He said they'd give me an editorial advance and pay for all the shipping, plus a portion of the printing bill; all I'd have to worry about was editorial costs. Lou set me up with a printer. First issue, I get a call from the printer, saying, 'I think you better come down and get your books. They're all done -- and some federal agency is coming to close up Lou's "T-and-A" books.' So I rented a U-Haul trailer and I loaded 100,000 of those magazines, myself. I also got the mailing labels that Kabel had sent for the boxes, postage prepaid. I spent that night reading the instructions about how many to send where. Then I had to find another printer, in Texas.

"I was finally up and running when Ed Roth comes to me and says that Petersen wants to do a Roth comic book, with backing from Revell. Revell was gonna buy advertising and put a subscription form in every one of the models that went out; millions of them! So we met with the Revell people, who were sure that other Roth licensees, like Testor Paint, would also buy ads. So I produced the issue. No ads came in. Revell backed out. I went into four issues of Roth before I learned that the first one had died. As you know, in the publishing business, you're into the fourth edition before you start getting the returns in for the first issue. It died in the Bible Belt. People would look at this and say, Œ"Big Daddy Roth"? Who's he?' So I ate up all those issues.

"At the same time, I also did Wonder Wart-Hog: two issues, as a cartoon book. That also got bad distribution, and died. Drag Cartoons was the only thing making money."

That Drag Cartoons succeeded is not surprising, considering the lack of credible competition on the nation's newsstands. Readers under 50 might find it hard to imagine the media world as it existed in the 1950s and '60s. There was virtually no drag-racing coverage (unless someone died) in daily newspapers, nor on the radio, nor on black-and-white TV. Instead, racers and fans waited to receive their drag news from a handful of tabloid "drag rags" (principally Drag News and NHRA's National Dragster, in that order) and, months late, from slick magazines produced by Petersen Publishing Company -- which employed moonlighting NHRA president Wally Parks as its all-powerful editorial director until 1963.

"This was when NHRA was just beginning to get is roots," recalled Millar. "Drag racing in those days had a bad connotation: It was the street racing, the squirrelly guys. Wally was always trying to upgrade the image of hot rodders, and he had final approval over everything that we did [in CAR'toons], cartoonwise. We'd have to take the complete book in there and Wally would go through it; not for humor content, primarily, but for subject matter and the attire of the hot rodders.

"Well, having been a hot rodder with dirty Levis and T-shirts too short for me, my belly button always showing and the crack of my butt always exposed when I bent over for something, I never thought about it. I wanted my cartoons to be like I was. Well, it's difficult to show dirt in a cartoon, but flies are attracted by dirt, so I'd always have these flies buzzing around these pants. And Wally didn't like that, so I would erase a couple of flies. Then, when Wally was gone, I'd put the flies right back in. Barbara later told me that whenever she or Wally would swat a real fly, they'd say, ŒThere goes another Pete Millar!'"

Complicating the Petersen editorial process was the infamous Fuel Ban, enthusiastically enforced by NHRA and Parks from 1957 (inspired by Cook & Bedwell's record-smashing 167-mph pass) until 1963 (when nitro and alcohol were allowed back ‹ for the Winternationals only). Thus were some of the biggest drag races and racers of the day virtually ignored by Hot Rod, Car Craft, Rod & Custom, CAR'toons and National Dragster, all overseen by Wally himself. What news and articles did make it to print had been skillfully edited -- sterilized, some said -- to present and preserve an NHRA-approved image of a sport exploding in popularity. For example, their editors failed to cover the annual U.S. Fuel & Gas Championships, the world's premiere dragster show -- staged a mere two hours' drive from Petersen's and NHRA's headquarters.

Such ironies were not lost on Pete Millar, a serious southern California racer. Building, maintaining and driving a series of supercharged cars (the Intruder dragster; Fiat-bodied Chicken Coupe; nitro-burning Gangreen Willys; a Ranchero that ran at Bonneville) gave the artist unique insight into his subject matter. Moreover, Pete's formal experience as an aerospace engineer and technical illustrator included drawing "sequential events," such as step-by-step equipment explosions. "That's why when someone had an engine explosion in the drag comics, you saw exactly how this stuff blows up," Millar explained. "Guys would study the drawings, and learn from them."

More explosive to drag racing's establishment were the themes explored by Millar in the 48 issues of Drag Cartoons that he published from 1963 to 1968. Nothing was sacred, and no one: Sanctioning-body officials were skewered right along with major sponsors and hero racers. The personalities were instantly identifiable and deadly accurate, right down to individual speech mannerisms and sponsor shirts. These real-life cartoon characters simultaneously cringed and basked in the attention. Because Millar's opinions were both honest and well-researched, this cartoonist-satirist became one of the most-respected and most-powerful media figures in an era overflowing with journalistic talent. Then he vanished into thin air.

"I packed up my family and moved to Europe," he explained. "Towards the end, I was doing all of it myself. I just got tired, and my bills were catching up on me. I owed so much money to the printer on the Roth and the Wart-Hog books, I was paying him all my proceeds out of Drag Cartoons. Finally, I made a deal with the printer to give him the title if he'd just absolve my printing debts. They sold it to Adrian Lopez. By then, I had the press run up around 150,000, or close to it. Mike Doherty became the editor. Except for Tom Hunnicutt, who's one hell-of-a-talented guy, the cartoonists weren't that good, and they didn't know the subject matter. The magazine just fell apart. I went to Sweden."

Three years later, Pete, Orah Mae and their three young daughters returned to California. Millar went on to produce annual editions of a newspaper-sized, full-color Drag Comics on newsprint in 1971, '72 and '73, selling issues for 10 cents to assure distribution for his few advertisers. After hand-distributing the third issue, he dropped out of sight, again; this time, for more than two decades. Ironically, it was a one-time illustration job for an attorney representing Kenny Logan (the Top Fuel driver who lost both legs to Orange County International Raceway's guardrail) that would evolve into a lucrative new career creating "demonstrative evidence" for trial cases. This would be Pete's last racing-related endeavor until 1993, when he suddenly reappeared, at the second NHRA California Hot Rod Reunion.

Millar has since been spotted at drag strips, dry lakes, memorabilia shows, and NHRA Motorsports Museum events. Now 73, the youthful legend even maintains a busy booth at the annual Bakersfield Reunion, signing autographs and peddling an ever-growing line of cartoon collections in print and on CDs (also offered via www.laffyerasphalt.com).

"I think it was the nostalgia thing," he explained of this latest comeback. "I'd heard about the first Reunion, so I went up there, and I was so impressed. It's fun to run across old buddies after all these years, because I don't know if they're alive, and they don't know if I'm alive. A lot of people have favorite stories. They tell me they've been reading my cartoons all these years. That makes me feel good, because for all those years, I have sat in the studio, in a corner, and done the drawing. It makes me feel good that I've been able to touch somebody with some of the humor."

Most impressively, Millar continues to create contemporary cartoons. Among them is a much-anticipated, two-page contribution to the annually outstanding California Hot Rod Reunion program -- an NHRA-owned publication that lists Wally Parks on the second line of its corporate masthead. Though Mr. and Mrs. Parks are no longer credited with editorial titles, it's easy to imagine the two of them peering through magnifying glasses, determined to erase every belly button, butt crack and fly.

They might even succeed, but I wouldn't bet the pink slip on it.

NOTE: THIS ARTICLE APPEARS IN HOT ROD NOSTALGIA MAGALOG, VOLUME FIVE -- NOW AVAILABLE FROM hotrodnostalgia