Marfa cartoonist wields wry, wicked pen
MARFA — Over more than three decades as an outspoken editorial cartoonist in the Big Bend, Gary Oliver has fought many a good fight using wit, ink and paper.
Some battles were environmental, such as community resistance to the low-level nuclear waste dump once planned for Sierra Blanca.
More recently, he opined against the Trans-Pecos Pipeline that was built through the region to deliver natural gas to Mexico, despite fervent local opposition.
In one cartoon, published two decades ago during the Sierra Blanca protest, two devilish figures standing in hell anxiously contemplate a noxious drip from above.
“Well, it can’t be coming from the nuclear waste dump! The engineers’ calculations clearly showed that wouldn’t happen for thousands of years, yet,” remarked one.
There have been wrenching local dramas, including the arrest in 1991 of Rick Thompson, Presidio County’s drug-smuggling sheriff. And there have been border issues, such as the tragic death in 1997 of Esequiel Hernández, a Redford teenager shot to death by a U.S. Marine while herding goats.
Despite his often serious subject matter, “Golliver,” his pen name, often finds a way to elicit at least a wry smile.
“I try to use humor to get to the heart of something, usually something political,” he said.
Appearing weekly in the Big Bend Sentinel since 1983, and at times in other regional newspapers, Oliver has been a strong liberal voice and champion of the little guy in a fairly conservative part of the world.
And then came the 2016 election that put Donald Trump in the White House, confronting the cartoonist with an entirely new challenge.
“It’s surreal. The nature of humor, as I see it, is to take a situation that is over the top and ratchet it up,” he said. “But Trump can make it hard to do that, because he’s so in your face with his unconstitutional and corrupt behavior.”
These days, much of Oliver’s critical work focuses on the president and political dysfunction in the nation’s capital.
Despite his partisan tilt, he said, he’s really concerned about much bigger problems.
“We used to pride ourselves as being the beacon of democracy, but no one points to us now as how to run a democracy,” he said. “We have one scandal after another: gerrymandering, the Electoral College, voter suppression, and money in politics. We’re a textbook case on how to mess up a democracy.”
Robert Halpern, publisher and co-owner of the Big Bend Sentinel, said that when he arrived in 1988, Oliver’s work already was appearing in the paper.
“He’s an incredible political cartoonist,” Halpern said. “He’s always been left of center and our politics have been left of center, so it’s worked out. Which is not to say that when I see people at the post office, they don’t have some sort of comment about trying to rein him in.”
“I tell people to write a letter to the editor,” he added.
‘Community angel’
Legally blind from birth, Oliver arrived in Marfa in 1982 on a bicycle, and eventually bought an old adobe house in Sal Si Puedes.
The low-income settlement of mobile homes and modest dwellings lies east of town, and is dominated by the metal towers of an electrical substation.
Born in Beaumont in 1947, Oliver graduated from the University of Texas with an English degree and promptly became part-owner of the One Knite, a pioneering blues club in Austin where the Vaughan brothers, Jimmie and Stevie Ray, cut their teeth.
Later, he hitchhiked around Latin America for four years and took a 4,000-mile bicycle trip around the western United States.
Over the decades in Marfa, he’s become a respected member of the community, bringing weekly free movies to the local library since 2004. He also serves as library board chairman, takes in needy bicyclists and cares for stray animals.
And he plays the accordion with the band Hall’s Last Call in fundraisers for any good cause.
Until the Federal Communications Commission shut it down in 2010, he also was involved with “Radio Free Marfa,” providing an old chicken shack for a while to house the outlaw station.
“We consider him something of a community angel. He’s the guy who will help anyone at any time; he’s just so goodhearted,” said Robert Arber, owner of a local print shop. “He’s got a bread ministry. He has a policy of baking three loaves at a time and giving away two.”
But, Arber noted, Oliver’s kindness does not extend to errant politicians.
“He does not sugarcoat what he sees as a total jerk in the White House or any other politicians in any other office. He does not hold back,” he said.
Presidio County Justice of the Peace David Beebe is a another fan.
“He’s a great cartoonist, and he’s one of a dying breed. His cartoons are current and relevant the day they are published,” Beebe said.
But for some readers, Oliver regularly goes way too far.
“I have called Robert (Halpern) a good half-dozen times to complain about him,” said Lawrence Neu, owner of a local cable company. “Here’s the problem I have: He associates anyone with conservative values as a Nazi, a Klansman, just an all-in-all vile person.”
Although not a fan of Oliver’s politics, rancher Jim White, a former Presidio County commissioner, was philosophical about their differences.
“Everyone is entitled to their own damn opinion, and none of us are in a position to force our opinion on anyone else,” White said. “A good debate with decorum is the basis of our whole damn civilization. I may not alway agree with Mr. Oliver, but I respect his right to have an opinion.”
Oliver said that, while he has nothing against Republicans in general, the current lot in Washington leaves him little to cheer about.
“Most of our history has had a respectable class of Republicans. I’d like to think there are some left who are just lying low. You need a political spectrum. It’s not good when the fringes take power,” he said.
Admiring giants
When he draws in his sunny home studio in Sal Si Puedes, Oliver is surrounded by the works of the greats of cartooning, beginning with Walt Kelly, creator of “Pogo.”
“He wrote about Joe McCarthy and it got him banned from a lot of newspapers,” he said.
Another giant was Carl Barks, creator of “Scrooge McDuck,” among other characters.
“There was a whole generation of kids back in the 1950s who would go down to the newsstand to buy comics,” he recalled.
“There would be lots of Disney duck comics, but I could recognize right away which ones (Barks) had done. His art was better and his stories were better,” he said.
Oliver also reveres E.C. Segar, creator of “Popeye,” George Herriman, creator of “Krazy Kat,” and Quino, an Argentine who drew “Mafalda.”
“This little room is like a comic’s library,” he said as he pulled favorite volumes from the shelves.
With a connoisseur’s eye, he shares with a visitor the beauty and subtle wit of a seemingly childish art form.
Oliver, the half-blind, restless wanderer who once hoped to follow Walt Kelly, long ago found his place here in Marfa and on the pages of the Big Bend Sentinel.