GORDO LOPEZ CONCEIVED TO BRING LAUGHTER

Laughable, lazy Gordo Lopez, who frolics through the comic strip frames in 53 newspapers, was conceived as a “funny character in the funnies.”

Now at home in a white-walled studio in the new La Jolla home of his creator, Gordo is growing steadily under the pen of gus Arriola, 30, cartoonist.

Arriola, of Mexican-spanish extraction, brought Gordo to comic strip life because he

TOYED LONG WITH IDEA

Arriola “fooled around” with the Gordo idea for about a year before he settled on the culinary artist whose “beans weeth cheese” recipe has been sent to tens of thousands of readers. From his home at 626 Rosemont Ave., La Jolla, the cartoonist himself has mailed 18,000 copies, many to those who follow the strip in The Union.

And someday, Gordo might release his secret recipes for tacos and other Mexican dishes, Arriola said. “He’s good at anything he does, particularly in escaping hard labor — and he has to be good to get out of that.”

The artist spends at least 1 1/2 days “sweating out the material for 6 days’ strips of three or four frames each.” Then come the characterization — the part that he really likes — and Arriola can draw and ink in about six daily strips in 36 hours.

SON ‘PLAYS PEPITO’

During this time, the artist’s son, Carlin,

who this week celebrated his second birthday, often perches on the back of his father’s drawing board, decked out in a gay bandanna, to “play Pepito.” Carlin’s brown eyes sparkle as he watches the characters come to life and, in a language all his own, comments on arms, buttons and hair, as his father draws.

When the strip idea has fully jelled, the third member of the family Arriola’s wife, Frances, leaves the kitchen — where she often prepares Gordo’s beans, and becomes a one-woman test laboratory, if she doesn’t laugh, the idea is abandoned.

In addition to his daily strip, Arriola does a Sunday color page, which requires about 2 day’s work. too often, he admits, he is up until 2 or 3 a.m.

DIALECT DEVELOPED

When Arriola got the idea of a Mexican strip, “there were a lot of overplayed comments being used in the movies. These contained none of the charm of the true broken speech,” he said, and he set about developing a dialect which now has become almost a type of its own.

Born in Florence, Ariz., the cartoonist has made numerous trips to Mexico, but still dreams of a tour of the interior to “study the people first hand.” But, he stressed, Gordo does not portray the Mexican people. “He’s just like the others —for few of our American strips depict life in the United States. He’s just an amiable fat man — with a name that matches — and his main purpose is to make people laugh.”

had always wanted to draw a strip, because he knew something about Mexico, and because he wanted to make people laugh.