One of the Few

"I'm really ashamed of editorial cartooning in America." says Paul Conrad. "There are over 150 cartoonists, but you can count the good ones on the fingers of one hand."

On anyone's hand Paul Conrad, 35, editorial cartoonist of the Denver Post, counts as one of the fingered few, and is probably the nation's hottest new cartooning property. He has already been given a semiofficial anointment as the heir apparent to the Washington Post and Times Herald's brilliant and club-wielding Herbert Block ("Herblock"). Since January, a Conrad cartoon has gone out each week, together with five Herblocks, to the 200 newspapers in Herblock's syndication.

No Talking Balloons. But Conrad is far different from Herblock. His cartoons are no fast-swept, brutal assaults. Conrad combines meticulous attention to detail with the powerful punch of simplicity. Hours of painstaking research go into a Conrad cartoon, with the result that a Conrad locomotive, for example, really looks like a locomotive--and could pass the technical muster of any engineer. A Conrad cartoon is readily digested at a glance. That glance, he feels certain, is all the reader will give it: "I figure eight seconds is the absolute maximum time anyone should have." Talking balloons almost never drift above the heads of his characters, who are generally so identifiable that they need no name tags; his captions are either commendably short or absent altogether.

Although he was born and raised a Republican, Conrad's personal enthusiasms are presently those of an Adlai Stevenson Democrat. He voted for Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, has since made Ike appear as a progressively older and near-senile sort. Admonished by his editors, Conrad replies: "I consulted a doctor. He said that it's perfectly logical for a man's appearance to change that way as he grows older." Besides, says Conrad, "the way I draw him, he is perfectly recognizable." Conrad can make Republican Richard Nixon look ridiculous without making him a Herblock subspecies. Similarly, he can show his own favorite, Stevenson, as a hilarious Mona Lisa.

"Stay Mad." Says the Post's Managing Editor Robert Lucas of Conrad: "Paul's always been admonished to be fair in what he says, and not to get typed as hard left or hard right." Within that limitation, Conrad does pretty much as he pleases, and does not care for cartoon suggestions from his bosses.

Conrad's success is in no small part due to his own carefully considered ideas about his techniques--and the limitations of his craft. Says he: "You should always determine first what you want to say. It's a bad situation for a cartoonist to think of his pictures first." He also says: "A cartoonist should get out of bed mad and stay mad. The cartoonist's function is essentially a negative one, and the cartoon that advocates something usually says nothing."

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