University Daily Kanean, April 30, 1982
Page 11
MAD cartoonist wouldn't have it any other way
Tax receipts and other papers were piled in front of the closet. Unopened Christmas presents were stacked on a newspaper on a chair against the wall.
"I think that one is a police scanner," Coker said. "Where would I put it if I opened it?"
COKER PULLED an issue of the New Yorker from under the pile of papers on the bed, removed the mailing wrapper and the date was June 4, 1979.
Amid the cluster, nationally known cartoonist Paul Coker, 2120 Terrace Road, sketches drawings for Hallmark cards, MAD magazine and other publications. He also drawn the characters, costumes and backgrounds for such seasonal television series as "Frosty the Snowman," "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town," "The Night Before Christmas" and "The Leprechaun's Christmas Gold."
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A cardboard box of markers at his feet, Coker said, "I usually work on my lan all huddled and cramped."
"I'm saving them for a long illness when I'll get to read them," he explained.
A large wooden desk is completely covered with drawings, magazines, cards and papers. A twin bed is barely discernible beneath a hounding mound of more drawings, papers and magazines, and in their brown mailing wrappers.
Coker, bearded and wearing jeans and a navy blue sweatshirt with a hole at the wrist, said that his working space contradicted the image many people had of cartoonists bent over nest drawing boards, but that it worked well
"I know where everything is this way," he said. "What I need is on top." Coker, 53, grew up in Lawrence and
By KIM NEWTON Staff Reporter
Coker spent 10 to 12 years in New York City and the contacts he established then have enabled him to free-lance from his home in Lawrence. He said people were already going should go to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles or Dallas.
"I was enormously ambitious. I had no sense of where I stood in talent and skill in relation to other cartoonists," he said. "I naively went around to see everyone and developed a lot of contacts."
"I didn't know home video games had control centers," he said, laughing. "The editor sent it back and sketched it in."
Coker said he recently did a rough drawing for MAD magazine of a man watching a video game on television.
"Nobody's going to use somebody in Lawrence when they can find someone closer in the city, especially when you are heading toward a light deadlines," he said.
graduated from Lawrence High School, where he drew the "Chester Lion" mascot. He received his bachelor's degree in drawing and painting from the University of Kansas in 1951. After a brief stint in the Navy, Coker worked for a Kansas City television station and later for Hallmark cards.
Coker said he also tried to avoid looking at the work of other cartoonists.
WHEN HE THOUGHT he had enough material, Coker said he put together a portfolio and went to New York City. Although he did not have a job awaiting payment, he was offered Hallmark cards, which would pay the rent while he was looking for work.
Coker said he also tried to avoid looking at the work of other cartoonists. "I try not to look at drawings by cartoonists I like whose style I am in some ways envious of and whom I know I can copy," he said.
"It's impossible not to be influenced, but I try not to be overly influenced. People send me books of drawings of animals, but I don't look at them. I can't."
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