Interview with Mark Arnold
Mark, tell everyone a little about yourself?
I was born in 1966. Although I grew up in Saratoga, California, officially I was born in San Jose, California. I have friends who say they were born in Saratoga, and they could have been if they were born at home. Otherwise, the closest hospital at the time was in San Jose.
I have always had comic books and records and toys around and that’s the stuff I have collected to this day.
I wasn’t planning to be a writer. Originally, I wanted to be a comic book or comic strip artist. Later, I wanted to become an animator. Finally, I decided to go to college for film and TV. I originally wanted to be a director, and then discovered that the really creative position was the writer.
I hated writing growing up, but later I realized why. I never have liked writing about things I don’t care about. I still don’t. I used to have to write book reports and papers about subjects I hated and didn’t think I even was a good writer. That all changed when I discovered that if I am writing on a subject I care about, be it fiction, non-fiction, scripts or any sort of writing, I really enjoyed it if I cared about what I was writing about.
When you were looking to write your first book, how did you settle on the subject and were there alternatives to it?
My very first book was The Best of The Harveyville Fun Times! which was a compilation of my long-running fanzine of the same name. It was an exercise to see if I could publish a book, since no other publishers were interested in publishing my work. Since I was already publishing a Harvey Comics fanzine, it seemed to be a natural progression.
What I really wanted to write was a complete Harvey Comics history, but no publisher seemed interested in publishing it until after I self-published this first book in 2006.
You also have the Fun Ideas Podcast. Who were some of your favorite guests to interview, and who were the more difficult ones you had on your show?
So many good guests. I liked interviewing actor Ronnie Schell, singer Melanie, and various comic book and humor magazine people such as Sam Viviano, B.K. Taylor, Stan Mack, Tom De Falco, Mike Carlin. I don’t really want to talk about the difficult ones, but I will say that they probably won’t be asked back to the show.
Your latest books are MAD Magazine part 1 and part B. What led you to write about the magazine and its creators?
My Harveyville book caught the attention of Ben Ohmart at BearManor Media. He also saw my article on TTV, the company that produced Underdog and Tennessee Tuxedo. He asked me if I could expand this interview into a book and I said yes.
After the TTV book was successful, I mentioned to Ben at some point that I owned every issue of Cracked magazine and he wanted to know if I could do a history of the magazine. I responded with “Does anyone even care?”
I went ahead and did the Cracked book, which is the two-volume If You’re Cracked, You’re Happy. Afterwards, Ben kept bugging me to do a MAD book and I kept putting him off, knowing that a MAD book, if done correctly, would take me quite a long time to research and write.
You have written quite a lot of articles on comic books and Animation. Have you had an interest in a subject, started the article, and had to abandon it because of lack of information or lost interest?
The only times I have had to “abandon” a project was usually due to one of two things. One, there was no interest by a publisher, which is why I never got a John Sutherland book published after I got an article published by “Hogan’s Alley” magazine. The other reason was that someone else was doing a similar book to my own and I felt they were doing it better than what I was doing. That happened with a National Lampoon book I was contemplating and also with a book about the origins of the comic bookstore. This latter subject also proved to be too complicated for me to research and also had too many egos involved who would be out to stop me along the way.
What is it about Humor Magazines that you keep writing books about? You’ve covered nearly all of the mid twentieth century humor mags.
I have always loved humor magazines ever since I started reading MAD at the age of 7 in 1974. I soon discovered Cracked and Crazy by 1975, and National Lampoon by 1976. I was aware of Sick and Plop! and a few others and eventually discovered older ones that were before my time like Help!, Snafu, Wild, Bughouse, Madhouse, etc.
Most comic book history is centered on superheroes especially those published by the big two, Marvel and DC. I have taken it upon myself to try to cover the more neglected stuff like Harvey, Archie, Dennis the Menace, the humor magazines, and most any other obscure stuff. People seem to like my focus as not everyone is a superhero fan.
You’ve also written quite a few books on music. The Monkees, the Turtles. Are you mainly a 60’s Rock ‘N’ Roll fan?
When I originally became a music fan outside of children’s records, I tended to like only ‘60s groups and songs. By the early 1980s, I became hooked on New Wave, so I said for years that I loved ‘60s and ‘80s music. As time has gone on, I have developed an appreciation for all genres of music, even country and jazz and classical.
At the heart of it all, I still like ‘60s rock and ‘80s New Wave best.
I also have an extensive humor and children’s record collection.
Would you ever consider writing a book about bands that were fictional? Like the Archives? Or Spinal Tap?
Certainly. I have already written books about The Archies and Alvin and The Chipmunks, so….
Who is your favorite band?
The Beatles.
Who do you think is the worst popular music or Rock ‘N’ Roll band?
I tend to not care for much of today’s music when it is (usually) a female singer surrounded by a bunch of dancers and none of them are playing any instruments and the singer’s voice is not distinctive or ruined by Auto-Tune.
Traditionally, I have not cared for raspy voices like Rod Stewart or Kim Carnes and also don’t care much for really heavy heavy metal like death metal, but I’ve had my moments. My tastes also change over the years. For instance, I never liked Disco when it was popular or groups like Black Sabbath, but now I can comfortably say that I like both. Age and wisdom have broadened my tastes.
What is your favorite TV Cartoon and what is your favorite TV show of all time? And why?
“The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle” (although officially that is two series: “The Adventures of Rocky and his Friends” and “The Bullwinkle Show”) is definitely #1 for me. High up there are things like “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “The Bob Newhart Show,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “The Brady Bunch,” “SCTV” and the first five seasons of “Saturday Night Live.”
I love humor and I love good writing. I also love semi-cheesy sci-fi like “Lost in Space,” “Star Trek,” and “Batman.”
Ben Ohmart has published many of your books. Tell me three truthful things about Ben and three untruths about him.
Egad. Truthful: He has been a great help to me and my published book life. He has taken on books that other publishers have said no to. He always tries to fix issues and problems with my books or royalties.
Untruths: He has a third nipple. He’s moving back to the United States. He hates my books.
If Hollywood was to make a movie featuring the four humor book mascots, Obonoxio (Crazy Magazine), Sylvester (Cracked magazine), Alfred E. Neuman (MAD Magazine), The Nebbish (Crazy Magazine). Who would be cast in the film?
Obnoxio – Bobcat Goldthwaite
Sylvester – Owen Wilson
Neuman – Traditionally, Ted Koppel or David Letterman, but these days, maybe Jimmy Fallon?
Nebbish – Steve Carell
Give us a rundown of the weirdest cartoons to appear on TV.
The Brothers Grunt
Rubik, the Amazing Cube
Spunky and Tadpole
Jot
Look them up on Wikipedia.
Have you had anyone look at you weird because you started telling them about something not general knowledge?
All the time. That’s what being a nerd is all about.
I recently interviewed Frank Santopadre, and he said people are always looking at him strangely because he knows some kind of information that most people don’t. He watched the credits. Were you like that?
Were you the kind of kid who watched everything, made lists, and needed to know more about what you watched?
Of course I was. I didn’t always read ALL credits. I wanted to know actors, animators, directors and didn’t care too much about other roles.
In the pre-Internet days, I made lists all the time of things as most books with information were out of date, or missing information or it was generally incorrect.
How do you feel about censorship?
I don’t like anything censored, but realize that some people are more sensitive than others about such stuff and they need those disclaimers and such in order to get through life.
I did a three-issue fanzine about censorship called “Censorshi*” back in the ‘90s. It stopped because it got to be too difficult to do, but I did an issue about The Smothers Brothers, an issue about The Comics Code Authority and an issue about Beavis & Butthead.
I hate it when things get censored and banned to where NO ONE can reference it, even for scholarly research.
What projects do you have in the works?
Crazy: The Magazine That Dared to be Dumb
TV Cartoons That Time Forgot
A book on Plop!
And maybe, the long-awaited Warren Kremer book….
