The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
MAC O’MOODUS IS NOW MR. MAC
Comic creator reinvents his popular character for children
HADDAM >> It all began with an appeal from a “quirky little guy” who showed up to photograph an artist’s pastel drawings at an art show reception in 1998.
The genesis of the Mac O’Moodus one-panel comic, which features a red-bearded character through which creator Roger Straub channels play-on-words vignettes that elicit a chuckle from him every time he views them, was equally inspired by the former editor of The Trumpeter — and a mystery known as the Moodus Noises.
“Finally the reception ends and he’s the last one there,” Straub said of the now late Leland Morgan, who bought the twice-monthly newspaper The Trumpeter in 1985. “It’s time to clean up and
he is still shooting — click, click,” he said, making camera gestures with his hands.
The two struck up a conversation. “We just hit it off. I just liked this guy and I could tell he liked me.”
Their two-hour conversation that night led to a job — and a collaboration that changed Straub’s life.
“He asked me if I’d become his art editor. I was a triple threat — an artist, musician and writer,” said Straub, 62, who has a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the University of Bridgeport and a masters in art education from Southern Connecticut State University.
Straub began working for Morgan “and he’s having me do such weird stuff. I remember one time I had to go to Dodd Stadium and interview the alligator, the gator mascot for the Norwich Navigators baseball team,” he said. Another time, Straub went to a private party to interview the 1960s female pop group the Shangri-Las.
“So a year of all these shenanigans passes and I’m having a blast at this stuff because it was all fun,” Straub says. “It was just what Leland said, ‘this is not going to be the mayor’s meetings; it’s all going to be fun’ for me — and it was.”
A year later, Morgan asked Straub to develop a comic for The Trumpeter. “I said, ‘Let me think on that.’ I instantly wanted to do it. I loved this guy,” said Straub, who thought back to his illustration class in college and visited his mother’s house to pick up his college portfolio.
“Now I’ve got a character. I knew I could draw him. He was rusty but I knew I could do it again. There were no words back then, just an illustration.”
Straub set about reintroducing himself to Mac, who at that point was a character who didn’t have character.
“I don’t want to do word balloons because everybody does that and I want to make this a thinking person’s comic and I want to make Mac an observer,” explained Straub, a former Connecticut elementary art teacher.
“He doesn’t have to have a big political statement but he’s an onlooker and he has causes — like the environment, animal humor, animal rights, kindness, goodness, the welfare of other people — so he’s a wholesome role model.”
The illustrator, who was working at his cabin on the Moodus Reservoir, had one struggle, he said. “I had the comic but I didn’t have a name. For two weeks, I’m looking at him and I’m thinking, ‘what am I going to name this thing?’ One day I was in bed just stewing on this. Then it dawned on me — the Indian name for the territory is ‘Machimoodus’ and I just took that word and I said ‘Mac O’Moodus. Got it.’”
The Native American term Machimoodus, meaning “place of bad noises,” refers to the mysterious small earthquakes and accompanying “booms” that take place in the area.
Straub drew his first comic in 1999, “The Shad Been Had.” In it, Mac sits in a rowboat and, with his suddenly developed X-ray vision, is looking into the Connecticut River. “And all that’s biting the hooks is the skeletons of the fish,” Straub said. “(The comic) gains popularity and before I knew it, I was in 30 newspapers.”
Straub has his main studio in a sunlit alcove off his living room in the circa 1900 Higganum home where he has lived for 12 years with his wife of 30 years, Michelle, an interior designer; and three rescue dogs.
Straub’s comics begin with a simple phrase that he puts a twist on, like “Mile Stones,” “Depression Glass” or “Limited Addition.”
In “Yoga Bear,” for instance, a bear sits crosslegged as Mac walks by. In “The Almighty Dollar,” the hand of God, in a blue robe, stretches from above as Mac gets on his tippy toes to reach for it. One of Straub’s favorites is “Great Blues Heron,” in which a heron sits comfortably on a tree stump, strumming a guitar, as Mac accompanies his playing on a bugle. The comic gets a laugh out of him every time.
In “Sweet Cheeks,” poor Mac has sat on a sugar cone filled with strawberry ice cream. The treat drips out from the bench he’s seated on, as flies flit about.
For his children’s books, Straub has revisited his black-and-white Mac comics, breathing new life into them with Prismacolor pencils, which are beeswaxbased, very soft and have a lot of pigment.
Mac, of course, is Straub, who describes his character as a Scottish artist/environmentalist/playboy/wise man. “A lot of the things he does, I did.”
He plans to self-publish his first children’s book, “What Shall We Be, Mr. Mac?” this summer. The book is full of rhyming phrases and bright, bold illustrations.
“I’ve taken him out of Mac O’Moodus now. So he’s Mr. Mac because he’s a kids’ role model,” Straub explained.
“If you became a seamstress, you’d design a lot of clothes. A famous model always likes to strike a fancy pose,” Straub read in a voice that has a cadence perfectly suited for children’s stories.
Straub said the segue from an adult comic strip to children’s literature is smoother than one might think.
“If you think back to your childhood, all good comics, even go to cartoons, they’re not designed for children. Look at Rocky and Bullwinkle — that was not kids’ text. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, especially the Warner Bros. stuff — Foghorn Leghorn, all that stuff is adult text. Kids just happen to dig it,” Straub said.
“With Mac, a lot of these things, there’s really not much text at all: they’re one-liners, they’re tonguein-cheek, they’re double entendres. So Mac has sort of become a thinking person’s comic. Mac is merely a window, an observer into a world that needs help.”
“Teach us the Alphabet, Mr. Mac,” like the occupation book, is also in mockup stage.
Straub, who has big plans for Mac’s second act, sees “gigantic potential” in Mac’s popularity and dreams of some day hooking up with a sponsor or management team that could issue spin-offs such as coffee mugs, puzzles, dolls, T-shirts and more.
“I don’t want to do word balloons because everybody does that and I want to make this a thinking person’s comic and I want to make Mac an observer.” — Roger Straub, creator of Mac O’Moodus, a one-panel comic that features a red-bearded character