By Carl Calendar
When Frank Caruso’s parents sent him to Father Weber to talk him out of a career in cartooning, the result was Frank’s drawings appearing in the weekly church newsletter. Thus began the publishing career of an artist who has spent three happy decades pen in hand.
His latest celebrity comes from his drawings in “Outlaw Pete,” a graphic novella using the lyrics of the Bruce Springsteen song of the same name. Caruso was listening to this first cut from Springsteen’s latest album Working on a Dream when he started doodling images of the baby outlaw.
“I loved drawing that baby!” Caruso told the Brookdale Community College audience recently late last month at the College Pen and Scroll Bookstore. His friend Dave Marsh, a music critic, liked the drawing too and showed it to his friend Bruce Springsteen. The collaboration on the book began.
Caruso is Vice President of Creative Services for King Features, a company where he went to work for one a one day trial that has stretched into 27 years. In that time he has won two Emmy’s for the children’s safety show SeeMore’s Playhouse. He has worked extensively with the cartoon characters Betty Boop and Popeye and his current assignment is the upcoming Popeye movie.
The song Outlaw Pete is a rock ballad similar to ones Springsteen heard as a child. It tells the story of a baby that starts robbing banks in his diapers, kills a bounty hunter, fathers a half-Navaho daughter and ends up disappearing, like the character in the novel Shane, into the vast spaces of the west. Dead or alive, his legend remains. “Ballads that tell a story are a perfect basis for a book.” Caruso observed.
The Boss and Caruso worked smoothly together as the artist filled in a colorful Western background behind Outlaw Pete. “I like to work quickly,” the cartoonist said, “and so does Bruce so the project was finished in six to seven months.”
An audience member asked Caruso if Outlaw Pete was the beginning of a new genre of rock song graphic novels. “I doubt it,” said the artist, “but there are lots of great classic rock songs that would make cool cartoon books. Like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds or Stairway to Heaven.
“Outlaw Pete” is not Caruso’s first book. As a strong supporter of ending violence against children, Caruso has published a graphic novel “Heart Transplant” which makes a plea against childhood bullying. Another past project was helping design the King Features cartoon characters area at Universal Studios in Florida.
Currently Caruso’s focus is on the King Features upcoming Popeye movie. When asked how the production would update the spinach gobbling sailor man, Caruso beamed and said. “It will be an ‘origins’ story starting with his childhood. Like the first two batman movies. He won’t even have a tattoo at the beginning. I love origin stories!”
When asked whether the movie would feature Bluto or Brutus, he hedged a little and responded: “I love Bluto!”
Carl Calendar, Ph.D., is a former Literature professor and now a Dean at Brookdale Community College. He can be reached at Specialcorrespondents@tworivertimes.com.
