Bibler celebrates 20 years of LMOC
"Little Man on Campus" is 20 years old this year.
The now widely circulated cartoon was started in the University Daily Kansan during the 1946-47 school year.
Its creator is Richard Bibler, who now is an art instructor at Monterey Pennsula College and the cartoon has become nationally syndicated.
BUT IT'S COME a long way since its humble beginning on the KU campus. Now it appears in some 350 university, college, junior college and even a few high school newspapers throughout the country.
"I was a freshman art major at the University of Kansas and the Daily Kansan ran a cartoon contest," Bibler said. "I stayed up all one night and drew about 25 of them and took them to the Kansan office the next morning."
"THAT'S FINE," they said. "You win the contest. Now do us five a week."
"Oh no." I said. "I've used up my last idea."
But Bibier solved that problem; he developed a bumbling student character; Worthal (as opposed to worthless) and dubbed the series "Little Man on Campus" at the suggestion of Gordon Sabine, faculty advisor to the Kansan.
BUT THE title, even shortened
to LMOC, started some trouble. Sabine had picked it up from an article which had appeared in another campus publication and the student who had written the article threatened to sue Bibler, Sabine, the Kansan and everyone in sight for "stealing the phrase."
"It didn't matter to me," Bibler said. "I could have called the strip something else. But there was quite a furor at the time."
Bibler received $4 per cartoon from the Daily Kansan. With these proceeds and with what he had made by painting an occasional portrait and "spending Saturdays at sorority houses in the spring doing caricatures of all the rushes, for which I got $25 a Saturday," he planned to work his way through college.
AS IT turned out, he had a further source of income in LMOC. By 1949 the universities of Oklahoma, Texas and Utah all asked if they could have mats made from the Daily Kansan's plates and run the cartoons in their campus newspapers.
"That surprised me. But I decided to write to 50 or 60 colleges and send LMOC to them. Two years later, by the time I graduated, I had 50 schools on my list.
"In 1951, when I was working on another degree at Colorado
State, there were over a hundred."
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
At that time one little known story came out. Professor Snarf, the infamous prof of the series was patterned originally after a KU professor.
instrumental in bringing LMOC back to the Kansan.
I BELIEVE IN BEING FAIR WITH MY STUDENTS—I GIVE A LOT OF TESTS IN THE BEGINNING IN ORDER TO GIVE THEM PLENTY OF OPPORTUNITY TO DROP MY COURSE."
Band Camp一
BIBLER HAD chosen Elmer Beth, professor of journalism, to pattern his own professor after. Or perhaps it was more the reputation of Beth, which is displayed in Professor Snarf.
Continued from page 1
Continued from page 1 the Marine School of Music, June 26-July 2.
Skitch Henderson, former conductor of the Tonight Show which features Johnny Carson, July 16-23. Tentative plans call for Henderson to play the piano as well as conduct the orchestra.
- Paul Salamunovich, associate conductor of the Wagner Choral and director of music at St. Mary's College in Los Angeles, Calif., July 10-16.
Harry John Brown, conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. July 10-16.
- Weston Noble, director of choral music at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, July 24-30.
Victor Alessandro, director of the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra, July 24-30.
One of his books contains the dedication "to my professors who put up with me as Worthal and now to my students who see me as Professor Snarf."
Today no particular university is used in finding the ideas for LMOC. Bibler has said basically the same things can be found on any campus, whether it be KU or Monterey. But still every once in a while shades of KU definitely can be seen.
BIBLER AND his wife Carolyn handle the syndication of the cartoon themselves. ("In the early days my mother did it.") and Bibler has published several collections of the cartoons in book form: "Little Man on Campus," "More Little Man on Campus," "Little Men, What Now?" and Prof. Snarf vs. LMOC.
Explorers end conclave
Bibler draws his yearly batch of 60 cartoons all summer and evenings and weekends until about January, when he sends them out and immediately starts working on ideas for the next batch.
DURING THE early 1850's Little Man on Campus was absent from the University Daily Kansan.
"TRAT'S THE hard part. It means listening to grips . . .
Two of the noted speakers included Cynthia Sue Huskisson, Miss Knoxville, Tenn., who was third runner-up in the Miss Teenage Pageant and H. Roe Bartle, Kansas City businessman who is a leader in the scouting program.
gripes by instructors about teachers, classes, girls — everything students gripe about. The best ideas are built around universal grips. I always throw in a couple about the student union food. No matter how good it is at any college — and sometimes it isn't bad — somebody will gripe."
But when Marvin Arth, a fellow-student of Bibler took over as Kansan advisor in 1965 he was
The Region VIII Explorer Delegates Conference concluded Saturday a four-day session at KU. The Explorers, aged 14-18, had vocational sessions, discussion groups and addresses by well known speakers.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
I WOULDN'T REPEAT LAST NITE'S PERFORMANCE AT THE DOOR WORTHAL - MY HOUSE MOTHER IS WATCHING YOU."
Two poets, novelists to lecture on Oread
Two poets and two novelists have accepted appointments to lecture part-time next year at the University of Kansas as part of the English department's writers-in-residence program.
Crittenden, a 1958 KU graduate from San Francisco, is author of the recently acclaimed novel. "Balloons Are Available." He also has published short stories in The New Yorker and Atlantic magazines.
They are poets William Stafford and Ed Dorn and novelists Joseph Heller and Jordan Crittenden. Stafford will be at KU for three weeks next March; Crittenden, three weeks in October; Heller, one week next fall; and Dorn, three weeks in March and April.
Stafford, born in Hutchinson, now teaches at Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Ore. He has published "Down in My Heart," 1948; "West of Your City," 1961; "The Rescued Year," 1966, and "Traveling Through the Dark" for which he received the National Book Award and the Shelley Memorial Award.
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Heller, author of "Catch-22," one of the most highly praised novels of the decade, also has written several stories and essays for Esquire and Holiday magazines. Educated at New York University, Columbia and Oxford, Heller has worked on numerous national magazines and has taught at Penn State University and the University of Pennsylvania.
Dorn is author of four volumes of poems: "The Newly Fallen," "From Gloucester Out," "Hands Up!" and "Idaho Out." He also has written several short stories and a novel, "The Rite of Passage." Educated at Black Mountain (N.C.) College, Dorn now teaches at the University of Essex, England.
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