'The Genius' (28 July 1974).
Dick Oldden was a U.S. magazine cartoonist, best known for his work in The New Yorker and Hugh Hefner's Playboy. Some of his cartoons had sequential narratives, for instance his newspaper gag comic, 'The Genius' (1973-1977), scripted by Sam Gross.
Life and career
Richard Oldden was born in 1931 in Indio, California. He was the son of a printer and an accountant. During his childhood, his family moved around a lot. Successively, they lived in San Francisco, Nevada, Catalina Island and on a houseboat in the Los Angeles harbor for a while. Oldden studied at Parsons School of Design at New York University and worked in advertising. During his military service, he painted murals for the army. Back in civilian life, he continued his studies in Japan, where he practiced the sport of kendo. Oldden was also a language teacher, specializing in German, Spanish and Japanese. In 1980, he moved to Laguna Beach, where he spent the rest of his life.
Cartoons
Richard Oldden's cartoons were published in National Lampoon, The New Yorker, The Saturday Evening Post and Hugh Hefner's Playboy. His earliest cartoon in The New Yorker saw print on 23 July 1966. Stylistically, his cartoons could be described as slightly surreal.
"The Supreme Court is still in session" (1960s).
The Genius
On 14 May 1973, Oldden and gag writer Sam Gross launched their daily newspaper comic 'The Genius' (1973-1977) through King Features Syndicate. On 20 May, the first Sunday page appeared. One of the papers that ran 'The Genius' was Chicago Today. 'The Genius' stars a bald, mad scientist with goggle glasses. Together with his assistants Mildred, Fritz and Jim, he does all kinds of daft experiments and churns out equally odd inventions. Some episodes are set in his lab, others feature him and his assistants traveling through space. While 'The Genius' ran for four years, it never really caught on. The humor may have been too quirky for average newspaper readers, while people familiar with Oldden's absurd cartoons in The New Yorker may ironically have found it a bit underwhelming. On 8 May 1977, 'The Genius' was discontinued. While Oldden never made another comic feature again, Sam Gross went on to script Tom Hachtman's 'Gertrude Follies' (1978-1982) in the Soho Weekly News and Randy Jones' 'Cigarman' (1997-1998) in Smoke magazine.
Death
On 16 February 1995, Dick Oldden had a cerebral hemorrhage and fell into a coma from which he never awoke. He died five days later, at age 63.
'Early Bird' cartoon.