Ron Cobb and Australia
Ron Cobb was the greatest political cartoonist of the twentieth century (Watson 2005)
Ron Cobb, American cartoon and graphic artist, film production designer and one-time director, died in Sydney, Australia, on 21 September 2020. The 83 year old was survived by his wife Robin Love and their son Nicky (Wikipedia 2020). Cobb had been born in Los Angeles on 21 September 1937. He revealed an early aptitude for drawing and interest in science fiction and fantasy. Upon leaving school he worked as an artist for Walt Disney during the late 1950s, followed by a stint in the army between 1960-3, and a period therein stationed in Vietnam. Upon completing his military service, Cobb returned to civilian life and joined the editorial staff of the radial, countercultural Los Angeles Free Press newspaper / magazine, where he worked from 1965 through to the early 1970s, with a brief respite during the middle of the decade. As the Freep was part of the international Underground Press Syndicate, Cobb's cartoons appeared in countercultural publications around the globe, including London OZ magazine, edited by Australian Richard Neville.
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| Ron Cobb, US flag alight from the flames of a burning Vietnamese, OZ, London, August 1967. |
From the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s Cobb also produced various posters, magazine covers and commercial art, including the covers for Jefferson Airplane's 1967 LP After Bathing at Baxter's and Earl Doud presents Spiro T. Agnew is a Riot from 1970 (Discogs 2020).
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| Ron Cobb, After Bathing at Baxter's, gouache, oil, pen and ink on board, 12 x 24 inches. Source: Bonhams, Los Angeles, 16 June 2018. |
Cobb's cartoon art at the time was distinguished by precise and heavily detailed penmanship, usually in simple black and white, with strong edge definition, subtle shading providing an almost 3D effect, and dystopian or futuristic landscapes. The latter reflected his contemporaneous work in the science fiction realm. The subjects of Cobb's cartoons were commentaries on everyday life and politics in America, though they were not always overtly political. For example, in 1969 he designed an ecology symbol and associated flag, reflecting an area of increasing personal interest and commitment. His by then well-known cartoons presented universal commentaries on Western civilisation, and were widely syndicated, both in the US and overseas. His reputation as one of the major commentators on the burgeoning Sixties counterculture grew, such that by the end of the decade a profile appeared in Playboy magazine, marking the height of his fame in this genre.
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Ron Cobb visions of apocalypse
{Playboy, September 1969}
Though his black-humor cartoon cartoons have appeared weekly for the past five years in the underground Los Angeles Free Press, Ron Cobb has transcended its subterranean confines: His work is now carried in over 60 college newspapers and a number of establishment dailies as well. Divorcing himself from specific political personalities and issues, Cobb creates apocalyptic pictorial parables - timeless commentaries on our most pressing contemporary crises. He sketches a hirsute Samson, chained to the temple, suffering the insults of the rabble. "Fag! Long-hair freak!" they shout, failing to see that this archetypal rebel is about to pull down the most stable of their institutions. In one of his most bitterly cynical anti-war cartoons, an American flag is catching fire from the flaming corpse of a Vietnamese. Influenced by Dore and Goya, Cobb began seriously to explore this prophetic medium in 1964, during his "late beatnik, early hippie" phase, employing the artistic skills he'd nurtured through his introverted, misanthropic high school days in Burbank. Following graduation, he helped animate Sleeping Beauty for Walt Disney, served three years in the Army and then, after a success showing of his paintings and drawings at the Encore Theatre in Los Angeles, began his weekly contributions to the Free Press. Now, a t 32, Cobb has collected two anthologies of his anti-political cartoons - RCD-25 and Mah Fellow Americans - and is preparing a third, Raw Sewerage, to deal with the pollution of our environment. His myriad plans range from film making and play writing to illustrating a guidebook that will indicate points of historical interest in the post-nuclear rubble of Los Angeles. "I try to come up with things that don't exist yet," Cobb explains. With both feet planed firmly in the future, it's likely that he'll continue to do so (Playboy 1969).
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Unfortunately, Cobb found it difficult to make a living in the counterculture's copyright-exempt environment, supplemented by only occasional spec work on magazine covers, such as for Forest J. Ackerman's Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. This precarious financial position was not unique to Cobb - it was also experienced by, for example, the famous San Francisco group of concert poster artists and their work for the Fillmore and Avalon ballrooms. Cobb therefore began to look for opportunities in more commercial areas, whilst still engaging with his Freep colleagues and community. His love of music was one area to which he cast his professional eye, as was the nearby Hollywood film industry. Arising out of this was the development of a friendship with radical singer-song writer and a trip to Australia. The latter comprised a "hectic six-week tour (eventually spanning a year) of tertiary campuses in June - July 1972 with the late radical singer-songwriter Phil Ochs (b.1940 - d.1976) and a then official of the Australian Union of Students, now his wife, Robin Love" (Gang Gang 1981). Also on the tour was feminist Molly Manno. The bearded Cobb, pipe-smoking Ochs, and curly-locked Manno, arrived in Sydney on Tuesday, 13 June, following a delay in obtaining visas from the Australian authorities and the conservative government then in power, led by Prime Minister William "Billy" McMahon.
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| Ron Cobb, Mollie Manno and Phil Ochs, Sydney airport, 13 June 1972. Source: Fairfax Archive. |
The tour was extensive, with dates at the majority of Australia's universities:
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| Source: Private collection, Sydney |
- Saturday 10 June, Clancy Auditorium, University of New South Wales. [Postponed due to visa problems]
- Tuesday 13 June - Wallace Theatre, University of Sydney. Supported by Captain Matchbox
Whoopee Band. [Postponed due to visa problems] - Friday 23 June - Union Hall, University of Adelaide
- Sunday 25 June - Union Hall, University of Adelaide
- Monday 26 June - Matthew Flinders Theatre, Flinders University, Adelaide
- Thursday 29 June - University of Western Australia, Perth
- Friday 30 June - University of Western Australia, Perth
- Saturday 1 July - University of Melbourne, Melbourne
- Tuesday 4 July - Dallas Brooks Hall, Melbourne
- Wednesday 5 July - Tasmania
- Thursday 6 July - Tasmania
- Saturday 8 July - Childers Street Hall, Australian National University, Canberra
- Monday 10 July - Science Theatre, University of New South Wales. Supported by Jeannie Lewis, Al Head and mime Julian
- Tuesday 11 July - Wallace Theatre, University of Sydney. [See original poster on the right]
- ? [date unknown] - Macquarie University, Sydney.
- ? [Date unknown] - University of New England, Armidale. Support by Rod Noble and Alan Oshlack. Noble noted (2010) that "Ochs was very drunk before the show, but pulled off a great performance."
- Thursday 13 July - Brisbane
- Friday 14 July - Townsville
- Wednesday 19 July - Union Hall, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
- Thursday 20 July, Cafeteria, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Reports of the tour, including a brief visit to Wellington and Auckland, New Zealand, are to be found in a number Australasian university student newspapers, some of which are reproduced below. They reveal Cobb's abiding philosophy at the time in regard to his art, and his somewhat ambivalent views on politics and the environment. From these we can see that Cobb was rather apolitical, being more of an observer and recording of what he saw around him, rather than actively engaging with the political debate of the time, though it could be said that his cartoons were powerful elements of that debate.
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Folk - Politics
{Tharunka, University of New South Wales, 30 May 1972}
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Phil Ochs concert
{Tharunka, University of New South Wales, 13 June 1972}
The Phil Ochs concert which was to have been held in the Clancy Auditorium on Saturday 10th [June] had to be cancelled at very short notice. The Commonwealth Department of Immigration procrastinated for over 2 weeks before it finally decided to let these politically contentious people into the country. Too late, unfortunately, for the Clancy concert. Ochs, Ron Cobb and Molly Manno will do a show here at the end of their national tour, sometime around July 7. Details will be available from the Students' Union. Apologies to all those who were inconvenienced by the sudden change. Do write to your local left-loving Member about it — the embarrassing tendency to attempt to exclude people purely because of their political persuasions is both ridiculous and unnecessary.
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Phil Ochs and Ron Cobb [Poster]
Union Hall, University of Adelaide, Friday June 23, Sunday 25; Matthew
Flinders Theatre, Flinders University of South Australia, Monday 26 June
[1972], 35.5 x 50.5 cm. Collection: State Library of South Australia, Adelaide, ZPS 1587. The poster includes an illustration by Ron Cobb.
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ochs and cobb
{Woroni, Australian National University, 28 June 1972}
Aquarius will present American left folk artist Phil Ochs and cartoonist Ron Cobb in Canberra on Saturday 8th July. Ochs will sing and Cobb will speak on ecology and the environment. Phil Ochs has made six LP's, the first three were generally protest, the fourth an excursion into poetry and away from polemics, the fifth an impressive blending of the two. Of the most recent, 'Rehearsals for Retirement', he says that 'the idea behind it is the death of the old concept of America. The songs generally relate to that. The final death agony of the liberal electoral myth of politics. 'The album runs a kind of cycle: like, things are getting worse and worse, we get engulfed in paranoia, we turn to drugs or mysticism or meditation, and in that state the cops come in like a huge shock wave.' The depression was mainly a result of the Chicago Democratic convention. Ochs arrived in Australia immediately after the Californian primaries. He has been working with numerous other American artists performing benefits to help raise $1,000,000 for McGovern's election campaign. Like the rest of the left, Ochs has been through a lot of changes but he still thinks America can be redeemed. 'Leave the old and dying America and use your creative energies to help form a new America, which would be demilitarized, more humanistic, where the police are less hostile and closer to the community, where the wealthy are not given unleashed power for the exploitation of the people. And mostly, because it's now a matter of life and death, re-assert an ecological balance with the environment'. Thus, he thinks a whole series of NLF's throughout the Western countries would be a healthy development', and shows his move from the conservative part of the radical movement, the Yippie, 'The Pig and everything else'! Totally broad-based, the National Liberation Front, 'whose purpose is to liberate America ... could take into its ranks the Kennedy people and the McCarthy people, and the dissatisfied street people.' His songs are partially a reflection of all this. He has a song called 'All Quiet on the Western Front', and which is 'a little song about how there's a strange stillness and an upheaval about to occur.' Ron Cobb is a cartoonist for whom ideas are more important. From being regarded as a professional artist, his overriding concern is with the environment, with ecology. He is 'fascinated with man and his relationship to reality.' Reality, to him, is 'what is... a word you can't define by other words; it's on the edge of our language system.' Thus he tries to visualise, and then present, 'man as he is as opposed to man as he thinks he is. I'm more interested in thought that is modified by experience than thought that is modified by more thought.' His cartoons depict potent, dramatic situations, bringing people up to the edge of extreme occurrences. Though described by some as an extremist, he disclaims that 'what I draw is going to happen. Everything I do is just ink on paper; its not reality.' Cobb sees ecology as 'a dynamic realization, an awakening to processes older than reason. It's a sort of 'state of mind', a recognition of the inter-relatedness of all things.' To him, nature and man are co-extensive: 'we are nature, nature is in our bodies, it's in our bones. And sure enough, as we destroy nature, we are destroying our bodies. But, unlike many ecologists, he is no pessimist: 'man is a success. He can prevail. He can do practically anything he wants to. But this eating up the earth as though it's the yolk of an egg, you know — it definitely has its limits!' Ochs and Cobb have commenced their tour of most Australian campuses and will also be giving a benefit in Melbourne. They will be appearing in Canberra for one concert only, jointly organized by the ANUSA and CCAESA.
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Canberra concert
{Woroni, Australian National University, 7 July 1972}
Aquarius Foundation and ANU Student's Association presents outstanding folk blues artist PHIL OCHS with cartoonist and environment publicist RON COBB. One night only. Childers Street Hall [Canberra], Saturday, July 8, 8 p.m. Admission $1.
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Sydney concert
{Sydney Morning Herald, 9 July 1972}
Phil Ochs, who rivaled Dylan in the mid-sixties as a poet / singer / composer / commentator / satirist, will be giving a concert in the Science Theatre, University of NSW, tomorrow night. Ochs' recent albums have not been released in Australia, but from overseas reports he is just as relevant as ever. Ochs will be supported by Jeannie Lewis, Al Head and the Melbourne mime Julian. Ron Cobb, a satirical cartoonist, will also be on hand to combine his drawings with Ochs' songs. The concert starts at 8 o'clock.
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Ron Cobb
{Salient, Victoria University of Wellington, July 1972}
Ron Cobb - Wednesday 19th July Union Hall 8 p.m.
Ron Cobb: I take great delight in creating enormous confusion and uncertainty. I like to think I leave a trail of very perplexed people with the potential - in a sort of older, biblical sense - to be humbled by reality. They might not be so cocksure about things. To me, that is the beginning of functional organizations, functional values. When someone says "political cartoons" my mind conjures up images of someone very much involved in the body politic; constantly commenting on political issues, political personalities, political situations. I think that most editorial and political cartooning operates within the assumed values of our culture. We have a whole net of definitions as to what is bad, what must be avoided, what must be sought, and cartoonists consistently take one side or another, commenting on this aspect or that, endlessly reflecting the traditional aspirations and warnings of man. I feel a sense of frustration in these areas, constantly dwelling in the realm of one political position against another, one political attitude against another. All these things are too cut and dried. Political cartoonists are playing with blocks and I have a feeling I want to break it, I want to break it all and say "Look at what is! Look at that hard void!"
Eric Matlen: What are you doing ... why do you draw?
RC: First and foremost, I enjoy it. As to why, deeper down, I feel the need to do this, I'm not really sure. I've always been uncomfortable around people who are very certain about their world and their values, no matter how defined; left, right, in the middle, religious, irreligious, etc. So I find security in pointing out any valid example of contradiction or paradox within their framework of personality, orientation or belief. The only thing I accept about the organisation of thought, which is just really nerve impulses, into what we might call perception or conception, is that it be an extension of the functional needs of the animal. I think man must temporarily organise his behaviour and focus his thoughts, relying on some expedient folk-tale about the true nature of the world, to get things done. I have nothing against that. What I object to is when people begin to feel that these temporary organisations of thought, which facilitate action, are reality itself. They begin to think that the world is that way; Is this or that system. I don't accept the idea that any of these organisations can have any value other than that they function. And that's almost always temporary.
EM: People have said to me that your cartoons depict extreme positions and therefore aren't really relevant. What do you say to that?
RC: I like potent, dramatic situations. I like to bring people up to the edge of extreme occurrences. That doesn't make me an extremist. You see, I am in no way saying that what I draw is going to happen Everything I do is just ink on paper, it's not reality. It's just that when I create something on the page, I am utilising the illusion of reality for an effect. I'm fascinated with man in stress situations, I'm fascinated with man at a crisis. So I love to create artificial crises, because I think that rather than making a timid, harmless point with a cartoon I would much prefer to draw someone into a situation where they have to say . . . "Yeah! That could happen!" or "Yeah! . . . what would I say if that did happen?" — where they have to react.
EM: Why does a crisis situation attract you?
RC: It attracts me because man — certainly Western Industrial Man — has the ability to build walls between himself, nature and reality. We have developed the capacity to live on a chessboard where a lot of Illusory values can be maintained that seem to be real — where definitions reign supreme. Too often, the mere fact that man has words for things, the ability to label and categorise, begins to condition his children to view all reality, to reduce all that is true and real, to that which can be talked about, described and categorised. And that's a terrible limitation. But a crisis, one way or another, will bring man face-to-face with his maker, or will bring man face-to-face with his deeper nature. These moments inevitably short circuit the human nervous system, biologically too, in a way, and put man all together. The categories have to be put aside, and you just feel something . . . from top to bottom I. And these moments, these flashing moments when he's all put together (as Jung says) are the only times when he's really sane. It may be traumatic, but in the long run I would like to see people put together more often. It's unfortunate that it takes disasters and hideous reversals of life's symmetry and order to do this: but these moments, like sexual orgasm, the threat of death, disaster, extreme fear or sadness, or just intellectual contradiction, leave man face-to-face with the void. At that moment man is at his highest potential, because he's integrated. So I love to create the Intellectual contradiction. I love to expose paradox. You see, the nature of a paradox is that it exists within a system of beliefs. It isn't like taking an outside counter-Idea, or belief, and playing one against the other; it's taking two elements of a belief and putting them side by side. And they don't fit. This is Intriguing to me.
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Cobb, Ochs - Arts Festival prelude
{Craccum, University of Auckland, 22 July 1972}
About 300 people fronted at the cafeteria on Saturday night to hear / see Ron Cobb and Phil Ochs. Cartoonist Cobb threatened to show 50 slides of Ayers Rock, but didn't. We liked them both.
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| Ron Cobb and Phil Ochs at the University of Auckland, 22 July 1972. Source: Craccum. |
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Whilst in Australasia, Cobb began a relationship with Love and remained in Australia when Ochs returned home at the end of July. In order to earn some money, he produced politically astute cartoons for the alternative magazine The Digger, edited by Phillip Frazer, a noted figure in the local counterculture (Frazer 2020). As founding editor of Go-Set in 1965 and Revolution in 1970, he was aware of Cobb's work and had, for example, reproduced a Cobb cartoon - US Marshall - Drop It! in his magazine High Times during November 1971. Some 15 of Cobb's Australian cartoons featured in The Digger between September 1972 and April 1975. The first - known as Road Kill - presented the confronting image of an Aboriginal man and a large kangaroo lying dead and bloodied by the side of a road in outback Australia. Trucks drive by, ignoring the bodies amongst the refuse of food containers and an empty beer can. Cobb's observation - gained from first hand experience during a visit to Ayers Rock - points to the racially discriminating treatment of Indigenous Australians, and their placement within Australian society on the same level as animals. As the truck heads off into the distance, it leaves behind a blood stained tarmac beside the two magnificently drawn, and tragically rotting, carcasses.
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| Tribune, 28 November 1972. |
The sixteen Cobb cartoons published in The Digger included:
1) Road Kill, No.2, September 1972. This was cited as Cobb's first cartoon in two years. It was almost immediately reproduced in the Communist Party of Australia newspaper Tribune issue of 28 November 1972.
2) Ballistic Missile, Central Australia, No.3, September-October 1973. A reference to the use of Australia by America as a ballistic missile base, with an example stored in an outback location.
3) Imperialism's Best Friend, No.4, October 1972.
4) Lunar Station No.1, No.5, October - November 1972. A humour look at the future, with a drawing of a colony of Australian merino sheep on a moon base.
5) Trespassing, No.6, November 1972. This is a comment on the European invasion of 1770 / 1788 and the subsequent denial of rights to the Indigenous population by the non-Indigenous rulers, through their imposition of a British-based parliamentary democracy. Indigenous law, lore and millennia old cultural practice was - and remains - outlawed.
6) Exams, No.7, December 1972.
7) That's All Folks, No.8, December 1972.
8) Ho Ho Ho, No.9, December 1972.
[Cobb travelled to Indonesia with Love to make a film dubbed Horizon during the Christmas / New Year period 1972-3, for the Australian Union of Students]
9) Vietnam Phase II, No.14, March 1973.
10) Sex Education 1A, No.14, March 1975
11) I Don't Think Kids Should Be Told About Sex..., No.15 April 1973. Coloured cover.
12) Mentally Ill / Civilization, No.16, May 1973.
13) The New Australian Film Industry, No.17, June 1973. Coloured cover.
14) Nixon On the Beach, No.37, October 1974.
15) Please Stand By, No.42, March 1975.
16) Destabilization, No.43, April 1975.
Cobb and Love married in 1973 and returned to Los Angeles to settled to seek a more financial sound future, though they would regularly visit Australia and the artist eventually acquire Australian citizenship. Cobb continued to produced political cartoons through to 1977, but increasingly found work in the American film industry as an art director or set designer. His love of science fiction and futuristic technology saw him work on some of the classic films of the era, including Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien and Back to the Future. In closing off his political cartooning work, Cobb published three "best of" collections with Sydney-based Wild & Woolley. These comprised The Cobb Book (1975), Cobb Again (1976) and Colorvision (1981), with the latter including a wider range of graphic material apart from political cartoons. Like his previous, late 1960s, US publications, many of these compilations were reprinted in Europe during the following decades as his fame spread. In association with the publications of his Australian compilations, Cobb carried out brief speaking tours in 1975, 1976-7 and 1981.
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US cartoonist airs his views
{Sydney Morning Herald, 24 February 1975}
A well-known American civil rights and ecology action cartoonist, whose stark drawings appear each week in the Los Angeles Free Press newspaper, will be interviewed on radio this morning. Ron Cobb, a former member of the Walt Disney animation team, is visiting Australia in connection with the publication of The Cobb Book, his latest, and to lecture on environmental problems. Ecology Action adopted his graphic, one of the most familiar today - the elipse enclosing E for ecology - to symbolise man's concern for this environment.
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| Ron Cobb, Ecology, Los Angeles Free Press, December 1969. |
He has won two Hugo awards for covers of the US magazine Fantasy and Science Fiction, and his cartoons are syndicated in many countries. His last visit to Australia was in 1972 when he made the film Horizons, about Indonesia, for the Australian Union of Students. Mr Cobb is married to an Australian and will spend part of his three week tour with her family. The Cobb Book's local content (it is a collection of his work selected by the publishers Wild and Woolley, of Balmain) was described by The Sun on Thursday as "grim satire on Australia." The cartoonist will be interviewed at 9.30 this morning by John West and Gillian Waite, on 2FC.
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Sixties trip over for Cobb and Co - now they count their failures
by Lenore Nicklin
{Sydney Morning Herald, 26 February 1975}
Cobb's back in town. Cobb the underground cartoonist. Cobb, the toughest pen in the West. Here to see old friends and to help launch Wild and Woolley's book of Cobb cartoons. How's the underground, Cobb? Well, says Cobb, the fact is the underground's gone a bit quiet. There are all these people like Jerry Rubin sitting back in Los Angeles waiting for a Sixties revival. The energy of the Sixties has evaporated. Today there's a sense of pensiveness, a waiting for some direction to come out of the morass. There's a lot of resentment that what happened in the Sixties didn't fit the rhetoric. There's disappointment, bitterness, a sense of defeat. A lot of people in the Sixties got hurt. They had a lot of things tail on them. Like what, Cobb? Well, the New Left rather romantically set out to overthrow the Government and they couldn't seem to make it happen. And there was a kind of nature-worshipping collective cultural renaissance that was supposed to transform the world. Well, that failed through lack of conviction. All the nature-worshippers are out buying houses. Cobb is 37, a graduate of Burbank High, a child of the American West Coast, a veteran of Vietnam, and just possibly the most plagiarised cartoonist of our times. Cobb cartoons in their thousands appeared on posters, book jackets, demonstration placards and magazines all over the world. Amsterdam, London, Durban. Tokyo — anywhere there were young people who worried about ecology, racism, law 'n' order, religion, drugs or what was happening in outer space. Cobb didn't start off as a cartoonist. He started off as an "in-betweener" with Walt Disney. An "in-betweener" is the artist who does every other drawing in an animated scene. It took him two years to get Sleeping Beauty through the forest and to pick up all her berries. He figured there had to be more creative things to do. Ron Cobb looks like all the figures in his cartoons. He is square and rock solid. Even his checks are square. His blue eyes tend to disappear when he smiles, which he does quite often. For someone who takes such a pessimistic view of the world, he is remarkably cheerful. We drank our coffee in an Italian espresso bar in William Street reasonably untroubled by exhaust fumes or the CIA. "I've gone back to painting, which is my first love," he told me. "I paint and sell privately and do science fiction illustrations and record album covers. But an old friend has been made editor of the Los Angeles Free Press - the biggest and oldest underground newspaper in the US - so I'm also cartooning again." Many of the underground writers and cartoonists of the Sixties, he said, were now with established newspapers. "They accomplished to a large extent what they set out to do," he said. "They made it tolerable to speak of certain subjects. And once this happened the older, established newspapers came round and drained off all the underground talent." He used to receive $25 for his cartoons. It didn't worry him that they were universally pinched. "I was thrilled to death," he said. "It was the best form of distribution. If I had policed my copyright it is quite possible none of those papers would have picked them up because they couldn't afford to. When the cartoons started appearing all over the world it was extremely gratifying. I wouldn't let a living stand in my way." He now gets $50 a cartoon and syndication rights are being negotiated. But he still feels that, once a cartoon has been published and he has received his first publication charges, then the cartoon belongs to the public domain. Creatively angry. Cobb was last in Australia in 1972. He was brought here for a university campus tour with the folk singer Phil Ochs, and stayed to marry his tour manager, Robin Love. Miss Love is from Melbourne and a former project officer with the Australian Film and Television School. Today they live m West Los Angeles, where Mrs Cobb has bought and runs a small Italian restaurant. Down the road Tom Harden and Jane Fonda run the Indo-China Peace Campaign. Cobb reckons Los Angeles is a good place for a cartoonist to live. "It always keeps me creatively angry," he said. "Los Angeles is always on the edge of an abyss - anything that's going to go wrong will go wrong their first." He returns there this week. He has a deadline to meet, and Mrs Cobb needs to check that they are still using fresh garlic - not powdered - in the restaurant.
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New Cobb cartoon book is a must
{Tribune, Sydney, 15 April 1975}
The Cobb Book, cartoons by Ron Cobb. Wild and Woolley, Sydney, $4.95.
Ron Cobb is one of the best known cartoonists on the left and a definitive collection of his work is long overdue. Cobb spans the whole spectrum of concern to the left. An early personal experience In Vietnam (he was there In 1960 and 1961) led to a series of quite horrific images on that topic. Cobb succeeds In Isolating and graphically portraying the elements that make an Imperialist war, a feat few others have achieved. When his work began appearing in the Los Angeles Free Press in 1966 the ecological crisis dominated his attention. Other cartoons on racism, drugs and law 'n' order have their inspiration in the grass-roots experiences of the movement In the U.S. Ron Cobb came to Australia in 1 972 on a tour sponsored by the Australian Union of Students. He stayed in the country for some time and produced a series of cartoons for The Digger, all of which are included in this collection. Cobb remains a superb cartoonist and draughts person. This collection Is a must for all fans new and old.
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Cobb Again was launched on Friday, 2 November 1976, at the Left-wing Sydney Intervention Bookshop. The Communist Party of Australia newspaper Tribune referred to the book in the following terms: More brilliant cartoons by the cartoonist whose every cartoon is a blow against oppressors everywhere. On 5 January 1977 Cobb launched Cobb Again at Daltons Bookshop, Garema Place, Canberra.
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Chunky heroes with expressive teeth fill his world
by Ian Warden
{The Canberra Times, 7 January 1977}
The word "cartoon" just does not do justice to the works of Ron Cobb. He is a kind of profound Larry Pickering, and his drawings, like Pickering's, are fine art in their own right. I shall call them illustrations. Ron Cobb was in Canberra this week. He is in Australia to promote his latest book, 'Cobb Again', and to meet some of the friends he made on previous visits. His home is in Los Angeles. Cobb's illustrations are above all, memorable. The heroes and villains are squat, chunky people with expressive teeth. They are people to populate nightmares. They move through a world of fantastic holocausts and brutal machinery, and across devastated landscapes littered with skulls and debris. A Cobb illustration brands itself on the memory.
Mushroom cloud - In one personal favourite, to make a grim use of the word "favourite", a school of dolphins frolics in the foreground while a mushroom cloud forms over the distant mainland. The caption reads "Blessed are the meek, for they shall, inherit the earth." In another, a faceless CIA agent tips a Chilean peasant into the gaping jaws of a Chilean general who has a body and head like a human bulldog and who wears a "Junta" armband. Cobb's grim subject matter, nuclear war, the arms race, the rape of the earth, the CIA, and the assorted unacceptable faces of capitalism, condition one to expect him to be a gloomy, aging radical. He is nothing of the soil, which may come as something of a surprise and a disappointment to people who look upon him with nostalgia as one of the heroes of their fleeting radicalhood, particularly if their radical phase coincided , with the Vietnam War. There was many a Cobb pasted to campus walls and carried as a banner in those halcyon days. To my deep personal shame I had expected Ron Cobb to be a kind of touring Bill Haley of radicalism. In fact, his detachment from the moral and ideological causes and consequences of the awful things he depicts is quite remarkable My in-depth questions were made obsolete in a trice. "I was never that radical", he said. "I was often morbidly amused and attracted by the clear absurdities of the war, but I was not as committed as some might think." These days, as was apparently ever the case, he is "faintly Left." "I harmonise and I assist", he says with a shrug, but he almost never formally joins a cause. One suspects that he has too many doubts to be able to dovetail neatly into groups and movements who believe they can perceive absolute right and wrong. "I'm more confused than anything else", he says, and he goes on to explain that a lot of his work is merely the result of his thinking aloud with his pen. He is skeptical about the political powers that cartoonists wield. He doubts that he ever changes any one's opinions, "but it is enormously satisfying to have some effect, to disturb, and to haunt, to disrupt people's established ideas". Cobb is infinitely more mellow than his works. He talks about "the scheme of things" in connection with some of his more ghastly pictures. His depletion of an exploding power station surrounded with corpses, for example, turns out to be much more than a straight condemnation of the use of nuclear power. Cobb uses the word "fun" a lot, and he loves illustrating technology and fantasising about the good and the evil which it can cause. He also says that much of his life, and his work, is devoted to a flight from boredom, and that some of his more spectacular holocausts are drawn to excite himself. It would be fraudulent to pretend that I could adequately portray and convey Ron Cobb. He came and left within an hour, leaving behind an impression of a bundle of intellectual energy and curiosity wrapped in denim. He was horribly tired, but as he spoke his arms whirled in emphasis. Cobb, a man easily bored, remember, says he lives in Los Angeles because "Los Angeles is always on the edge of an abyss; it keeps me creatively angry". I was sorry to see him leave and yet I hoped for his sake that he would get out of Canberra fast. In Canberra the tedium might kill him.
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Cobb's biographical book of cartoons, drawings and photographs Colorvision was published in Australia at the end of 1980. He toured the following year to support its release.
Ron Cobb: through anger to the fantastic worlds
by Geoff Pryor
{The Canberra Times, 9 August 1981}
In the 60s, Ron Cobb became a cult figure for his lacerating antiwar and anti-establishment cartoons. Now, a decade later, he has mellowed, and moved in new directions. . .
"I grew up in the 50s and all I was aware of through that period was this oppressive banality in America, this tremendous fear of dialogue", said. "It was no longer possible to talk about so many things. There was so much fear, such an enforced quiet that it generated in me such an incredible rage and frustration and anger and desire to shock". During the torrid anti-establishment days of the 60s Cobb expressed his rage through bitterly incisive cartoon comments about everything from racism, religion and drugs to ecology and the Vietnam war. During this period he became a cult figure on university campuses around the world (a sort of Bob Dylan with a felt-point pen) and his cartoons appeared on everything from car stickers to T-shirts, posters and even demonstration banner. The Cobb of the 80s is much more mellow. Aren't we all? He is now one of the highest-paid film designers in Hollywood. His credits include major design work for the highly acclaimed movie 'Alien' as well as many of the creatures which populated 'Star Wars' and ''Close Encounters of the Third Kind'. He is currently in Australia to promote his latest book, 'Colorvision', a loosely woven collection of many of his better-known paintings, cartoons and' design drawings. I stumbled across Cobb's cartoons relatively late in the piece, but they made an immediate impression. In fact, not long after I joined The Canberra Times in 1979, when I was frantically scrabbling about trying to evolve a style of my own, I confess to having plagiarised one or two of his drawings' - an enterprise I soon abandoned, to my everlasting relief. It was with some interest and not a little trepidation, therefore, that I responded to my editor's suggestion to fly to Sydney and interview the man himself. So at noon on Friday, in the heart of terraced Glebe, I found myself face-to-face with a bedenimed, broadly smiling, slightly rotund figure who looked for all the world like an American anthropologist on academic loan to the ANU. Ron Cobb was born in Los Angeles in 1938 and for someone who was to make a career out of fantasy he could not have had a more auspicious beginning. "My father (himself a sign writer) was something of an eccentric. He had this dream about starting a family circus. He had us kids training on a high wire in the backyard and was going to call the circus after me, as the oldest kid, the 'Ronald Brothers'. He even had circus vans built". For a youngster with a head crammed with fantastic images and ideas, Cobb found the bland, boring Eisenhower years stifling in the extreme. "I kept the powerful inner fantasy life to myself and the only let-out that I had was that I'd draw". The floodgates for Cobb opened with the Chesley Donovan Science Fantasy Foundation, a deliberately pompous title for an odd collection of high school misfits who were drawn together by a mutual fascination, for science, astronomy and philosophy. "It was very strange part of my child hood", recalls Cobb. "I suddenly discovered an audience when I found similar students who were very introverted and in some cases very brilliant. We would draw each other out arid entertain' each other with our ideas. It was a life saver for me". In fact this mutual fascination was to persist until many of them were in their early 20s. How did Cobb break into cartooning? "Painting was always my first love", he recalls. "I got into cartooning by accident". In 1966 he joined the Free Press, a radical underground newspaper. Cobb never really became a part of the organised radical political movement. He confesses to having no great, deep left-wing conviction. "At the time I was mildly left, or new left, or whatever you want to call it". What sort of experience was it? "In the States the underground press were very much categorised in a little ghetto of their own and not always taken that seriously, not as seriously as they were in Australia. We had our own understanding that anybody could lift a cartoon from each other's newspapers .... "In the beginning I didn't get paid and at the height of being syndicated in some 90 underground newspapers, I would still get about $45 a week". During this period, Cobb made ends meet by doing the covers on monster magazines. At the end of the 60s, Cobb experienced a slump. "I felt I was becoming stale. I could do cartons for 30 years if I had to, but after about four or five years of hard drawing, I was starting to repeat myself'. In mid-1972 Cobb visited Australia for what was to be- a six-week tour of the university campuses, but which in fact became a year's stay. During this period, he found another burst of creative energy and drew a series of cartoons for The Digger. "It was a great experience for me. I always found everything closer to the surface (in Australia), more realistic. There was a vitality". And as for the political rhetoric, "as idiotic as a lot of it was,, it was tremendous in its pretensions to being articulate. And of course the Whitlam years were about to begin, which was intoxicating". Back in California, Cobb began to move away from cartooning altogether to concentrate on painting; mainly private commissions as well as for science fiction magazines and record album covers. How did he make the transition to film designing? "For me there was actually no transition. It was very smooth. Fans of my cartoons are now making films. They simply asked me to design films for them. It was effortless". One such friend was Dan O'Bannon, who wrote the screenplay for 'Alien'. "I had not worked on a film before but he (O'Bannon) said 'I want Cobb to design a picture'. (Twentieth Century) Fox said 'We can't have this guy. He has no experience' ". But O'Bannon persisted and the studio very reluctantly gave Cobb the go-ahead. Cobb is one of these rare and enviable people who look upon their work as total self-indulgence. The highly motivating part of his work is applying quasi-engineering solutions to problems in designs. "I can design some very impressive and incredibly sophisticated form of machinery that in a movie will work. However I never test it. If I design an aircraft, it doesn't really have to fly. It just has to look like it will fly. It's a. wonderful fantasy". How does he conceive a design? "It grows on the page. I have a feedback system. I never have a clear image in my head. I have to draw them out of me line by line. I compose as I go". This informal methodology is a basic part of Cobb's approach to his art. One of the most outstanding features of his painting is his remarkable control over the use of light and shade as a means of establishing perspective. Cobb does not believe in models. "From my mind I work out my light source and angles and think it through. If you really analyse it, it may not be accurate,-but I like the challenge of trying to do it. In itself it's an exercise to see if I can. I could spend a great deal of time simply painting mountain ranges trying to arrange the realistic shapes. That fascinates me. I love to do it". Cobb's genius as a designer was very recently put to a stern test in his work for the just-completed movie 'Conan' (the very same) which is soon due for release as another offering in the burgeoning "myths and' legends" line of cult films which is starting to appear in the cinemas. "The challenge to me as a designer was. to design an ancient world which is totally original.... Budget allowing, architecture and costumes have to .be made to look realistic and that appeals to the applied anthropologist.in me". (Success hath its stings however, not the least of which is that he is becoming more remote from the nuts and bolts of designing as his role becomes more-important. "I spend half my time supervising the construction and co-ordination and making sure everything is done. That's a lot of time to spend away from the drawing board". After the turbulent years of the 60s and the Nixonian 70s, does Cobb feel any urge to return to cartooning? "I don't see the need", he says. "The political situation in the States is a living cartoon. Even the people backing Reagan can see the strangeness of it all. So many dramatic things have been happening and breaking through. People no longer have the kind of complacency they used to. A lot of what I was trying to do with the cartoons has been accomplished by assassination attempts, Three-Mile Island and the like".
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Rebel mellows in a fantasy celluloid world
by Susan Molloy
{Sydney Morning Herald, 10 August 1981}
Ron Cobb's cartoons of the 60s were coolly anti-establishment; they were vicious black-and-white criticisms of capitalism, consumerism, war and racism. Nearly 20 years later, the political cartoonist of the underground press now slaps strident colour across illustrated visions of a science fiction-style world and works as a designer for such films as Hollywood's Star Wars, Alien and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. "I have reverted," he said yesterday. "I am not inclined to do political cartoons any more. The political situation in the States is a living cartoon anyway." An American enfant terrible in his youth, he lambasted Australia's nuclear policies in the alternative newspaper, The Digger, on his first visit here in 1972. Now he looks with some detachment on the 60s and early 70s. "In the 60s I was excited by the dynamism of the protests, but I found much of it ineffectual," he said. "There was a need for shock after the experience of the 50s - that mute society which drove me nuts. I was never a part of the 60s. I enjoyed the 60s and used the 60s but I had the same cynical detachment as I have about everything else. The 60s were a lancing of the boil of the 50s. But a lot of its disappointment was that it did not live up to its rhetoric. The friends I knew then, well, a few are dead, one is an alcoholic, one is insane, another is a vice-president of a big corporation in New York, another is a satanist who also runs an Egyptian church, some became writers and artists, and four became homosexual." Now firmly entrenched in Hollywood movie-making, Mr Cobb is in Australia to promote his "fantastic art" book. Colorvision. At 44 years of age, he is now working with a director, John Milius, who wrote the screenplay for Apocalypse Now. They are working on the film Conan, described as a stone-age 'Star Wars. The $17 million epic is being produced by Dino de Laurenttis, who recently made King Kong. The star of Conan is Arnold Schwarzenegger, a former Mr Universe. Conan will include 300 handmade costumes and one single scene which needs $80,000 worth of marble flakes intended to resemble a snow-covered landscape. For a man who once penned a cartoon of an Uncle Sam with a gaping mouth swallowing container ships and called it Consumer, Ron Cobb appears to have reneged on his former Left-wing principles. "I haven't changed," he said. "As banal and as irrelevant as many of the science fiction films are, I am attracted to them. I would like to help make fantasy movies more realistic. Science fiction is a relevant mythology for our times. I would like to see them more responsible."
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Ron Cobb's versatile nature
by Gang Gang
{The Canberra Times, 13 August 1981}
One of Ron Cobb's many ambitions is to do some paintings of the Australian landscape. It may be a far cry from his biting political cartooning for the under ground press in California during the late 1960s, or even recently designing elaborate sets and machines for Hollywood blockbusters. But then, Australia holds a special fascination and affection for Mr Cobb. It is his love of Australia which makes him want to try representational art here. His first visit was a hectic six-week tour (eventually spanning a year) of tertiary campuses in mid-1972 with the late radical singer-songwriter Phil Ochs and a then official of the Australian Union of Students, now his wife, Robin Love. He has lost none of the interest in religion, politics and ecology which inspired his cartoons, but says that it is "just not in his nature" to do anything for a long time. He was never ideologically committed to the Left, as was Mr Ochs, who killed himself several years ago. Mr Cobb speaks of the, manic-depressive Mr Ochs with affection as a true romantic who was even more talented as a wit and a poet than as songwriter, which was his public image. Mr Cobb has returned to Australia several times since that first year-long visit and is now on a hectic "belated launching" of the latest book of his work - 'Colorvision' - basically a retrospective of his paintings and drawings rather than cartoons. 'Colorvision' is only now about to go on sale in the United States, after having been printed and available in Australia for about two months. The US launching was delayed because of his work in Spain on the film 'Conan', where, with the production's second unit, he managed to get a taste of one of his other ambitions - film directing. "I'm really looking for another out let", he says. "I don't have the discipline to stick with one thing". Mr Cobb says his paintings, often of grotesque animals and fantastic machines, lie between art and science. An early ambition was to be a text book illustrator, and he was fascinated by art in science, such as artists' impressions of extinct animals and moonscapes.
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'No corn on me' says Cobb
by Eric Campbell
{Tharunka, University of New South Wales, 15 September1981}
How did a one time guru of underground satire become the designer for the most expensive and least revolutionary films in the world today? Tharunka recently spoke to RON COBB to find out.
Few people have not, at one time or another, seen and laughed at the work of American cartoonist Ron Cobb. From the offices of the underground Los Angeles Free Press he provided the imagery for a decade of hippy and "New Left" protest — protest against sexism, racism, Neo-fascism, rampant technology, and so on. Now older, and more famous, his talents are put to use in a seemingly opposite forum — as designer for the most expensive pop films made in Hollywood today; films like Star Wars, Alien, Dark Star, and to the horror of many refugees of the '60's, Conan, one of the most unashamedly fascist films to have emerged in the last decade. Like Jerry Rubin, the one-time subversive Yippie leader who now sells shares for Wall Street, the progression would seem to have all the hallmarks of the classic sell-out, but talking to Ron Cobb one gets the opposite impression — that the times have changed, that the targets for satire have changed, and, most importantly, that the media that reach people have changed. Unlike many from the late '60's and early '70's who saw the role of satire as the application of "correct line" comment, Rob Cobb sees it as the creative use of cynicism. He sees the greatest danger in any society is people and movements, irrespective of whether they are on the left, or on the right, getting "locked in" — locked in to their ideology, complacent in their ideals, blinkered in their outlook. Cobb feels that the only improvement that can be achieved in society is when people are provoked out of their complacency and forced to use their human intelligence. It is for this reason that the former Left hero can find himself working quite contentedly on a film such as Conan, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Viking "Torkan" figure, which Cobb himself describes as a juvenile celebration of violence and sexism and a promotion of primitive fascism. Cobb sees the message of the film as being repugnant, doubts anyone will take the message seriously, but feels it is all important that the complacent liberal left are confronted with an alternative view. Cobb claims his concerns in his work today are consistent with what they were in the '50's, '60's and '70's. He says the outlets for cartoons don't exist anymore, and film is his new way of saying what he wants to say. "The concern and inspiration in my work has always been science and technology — how it affects us, what it can do for us, how we can sell our souls to our own cleverness". While his cartoons looked at the serious side (and managed to be funny at the same time), the films he is involved in today, like his pop art, have a romantic, escapist appeal. He has a great sympathy for genuinely popular things, and is impressed by the popularity of films such as Star Wars and the genuine interest in technology they indicate. Though he sees the '80's as essentially a quiet, boring decade in which everyone is running for cover, he is heartened by the increasing awareness of technology. In the technological, individualistic society in which we live, in which so many individuals are trapped and lonely, he feels people are gradually being left with the realisation that they are dissatisfied. And that, says Rob Cobb, is the basis of his optimism.
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During the 1980s Cobb was heavily involved in his film production design work, as the following list reveals:
Film work (movies, TV series, videos, video games)
1956 - inbetweener and breakdown art for Disney's Sleeping Beauty
1974 - concept artist for Dark Star
1975 - conceptual designer Jodorowsky's Dune [not produced]
1977 - art department for Star Wars (aliens in cantina scene)
1977 - art department for Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Cobb was also involved in development of the precursor for Spielberg's E.T. - refer 1982 below.
1978 - concept artist for Alien
1981 - production artist on Raiders of the Lost Ark
1982 - production designer for, and actor within, Conan the Barbarian
1982 - conceptual artist for Half the Sky [not produced]
1982 - director for Night Skies [not produced - became E.T.]
1982 - art director for Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy [not produced]
1982 - artwork for NASA
1982 - art director for first Digital Productions - photoreal digital simulations
1984 - production designer for The Last Starfighter
1985 - artwork for Back to the Future - Delorian time machine
1985 - artwork for My Science Project
1985 - artwork for Real Genius
1985 - art director for ZZ Tops video Rough Boys
1985-87 - artwork for TV series Amazing Stories
1986 - art department on Aliens
1987 - writer for episode of the TV series The Twilight Zone
1987 - artwork for China Marine [not produced]
1987 - artwork for The Running Man game show
1988 - artwork for Mars-1 [not produced]
1989 - production designer for Leviathan
1989 - art department on The Abyss
1989 - art department for Meet the Hollowheads
1989 - art department for Robot Joxs
1990 - artwork for PoV
1990 - art department for Total Recall
1990 - art department for The Rift
1991 - artwork for Rocketeer
1991 - artwork for Enertopia
1991 - director of Garbo
1992 - artwork for The Day the World Changed
1994 - artwork for True Lies
1994 - writer for Loadstar: The Legend of Tully Bodine
1996 - art department for Space Truckers
1997 - production designer for The Space Bar
1997 - art department for Titan A.E.
1998 - artwork for Timeline
1999 - support for The Alien Legacy documentary
1999 - art department for The 6th Day
2000 - artwork for Cats and Dogs
2002 - art department for Firefly
2005 - art department for Southland Tales
2009 - artwork for District 9
2012 - artwork for John Carter on Mars
2015 - artwork for Stray Shadows
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Due to the amount of work coming Cobb's way from the film industry, Robin Love took on the role of business manager, eventually branching out to work with other clients. The pair were mostly resident in the US during this period, eventually setting up a base in Australia during the latter part of the 1990s. Reference to this is found in an interview Love recorded with a Sydney newspaper during 1992.
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Robin's love on the rebound
by Elisabeth Wynhausen
{Sydney Morning Herald, 27 December 1992}
It was a version of the American Dream. In Los Angeles, Australian Robin Love lived a life that many people would envy. She and her husband Ron Cobb have a place in Santa Monica, one of the nicest districts. Cobb does design work on films, so they know Hollywood identities like Steven Spielberg. Back in the days when Harrison Ford was nowhere near as famous as he is now, Robin Love beat him at snooker at Spielberg's house, a story she will tell — laughing but looking a little embarrassed — if she is pressed to drop some names. The names bring back some mingled memories of course. In the year they lived in Spain, where Cobb worked as the production designer on the film Conan The Barbarian, they spent Christmas with Arnold Schwarzenegger — Conan the Barbarian himself - an experience that may sound better on paper than it was in actuality. At least they made enough money from that movie to buy the house in Santa Monica, a few blocks from the ocean. Much as she liked the neighbourhood, Love did not feel quite settled in Los Angeles. But it wasn't until the couple stayed in Melbourne for close to a year, as he directed one film and she wrote the screenplay of another, that she decided that life was better in Australia and it was time to come home. Love, 45, a jauntily determined woman with fair hair, rosy cheeks and bright blue eyes, grew up in Melbourne, went to university and then created the Aquarius Foundation. The foundation, very much a feature of campus life in the early 70s, ran arts festivals and arranged tours, like the one by two heroes of the student Left, folksinger Phil Ochs and Ron Cobb, a cartoonist whose work appeared in underground newspapers throughout the United States. "He was known in Australia because the student papers here had ripped off his work. He used to say the work was in the public domain once it was published. That was before he got me as a business manager," said Love, whose rapid-fire conversation is punctuated with gusts of laughter. They married and moved to Los Angeles in 1973. "I just fell hopelessly in love and said 'Yes, sure, I'd like to live in Los Angeles...' but it was a big struggle. We were desperately poor, at first Ron had stopped doing the cartoons and was painting, but you don't make a living painting." Love worked at a couple of public radio stations that had no money. Then a guy she knew asked if she wanted to manage his restaurant. "I hadn't been there a fortnight when he decided to sell it." She bought the establishment, The Little Spaghetti Factory, with a down-payment of about $1,000, borrowed from a friend. "I didn't take it into consideration that at the time I couldn't cook and knew nothing at all about running a business in America." But her daring was tempered by a level-headed practicality and the restaurant did well enough for them to pocket a big piece of change when it was sold again a few years later. It had been in her mind all along to move to New York. Before they left, however, Cobb was asked to do some of the designs for the film Star Wars and that was that. Robin Love reinvented herself as his business manager and before long was representing other people in the film industry. The life in LA could be diverting, of course, she said, with a big grin describing a dinner party given by a pal, a film director who had asked the producer of her last film and the network executive looking for directors to work on a certain television series. "That was the power end of the table." She was at the other end with actors Laura Dern and Kyle MacLachlan. But both ends of the table flagged a bit when the network executive left early with her young blond hulk, claiming she had a lot of scripts to read before the morning meeting. "I've always been amused by the excess but I've spent about half the past two years in Australia, going back and forth, and it's made me realise that life in Los Angeles is just not very satisfactory," she said. "Part of it is the increase in violence and that's because of the enormous problem with the homeless. The area where we live has been known for years as the People's Republic of Santa Monica. It's full of liberals and has had fairly left-wing councils. Instead of tipping the homeless out of the parks, they encouraged people to come in and set up feeding programs. Its all been fairly enlightened. But now the local people are feeling very torn because of all the violence. Everyone you talk to in Santa Monica has stories of being mugged while they were out jogging at six in the morning. People in expensive cars are followed back to their houses and robbed once they are inside and have turned off the alarm, because it saves the thieves the trouble of breaking in. I never felt this sort of fear before. I never thought about crime. It wasn't an issue any more than it is an issue for me in Sydney." Robin Love and her husband bought a terrace house in Sydney's inner-west some years ago and moved into it on returning from Los Angeles the other week. "But there is a real loony-tunes edge to Los Angeles that I will miss. When things got a bit quiet at that dinner party I mentioned, I asked the hostess's husband about his pet rat. It had just had surgery for cancer. He went and got it, and there we were, in the midst of this catered dinner, with all the family silver, and this very old, decrepit rat walking across the table ..." she burst out laughing, "... as people asked politely about its health."
------------------------------Cobb remained active until about 2015 - setting up a website, doing artwork and presenting talks. The slow onset of a dementia-related illness put a halt to his working life and his passed away in 2020 at the age of 83 and following a long and fruitful career.
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| Ron Cobb [cover], The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1959. |
References
Bartlett, Rhett and Parker, Ryan, Ron Cobb, Designer of the 'Alien' Ship and the 'Back to the Future' DeLorean, Dies at 83 [webpage], Hollywood Reporter, 21 September 2020.
Campbell, Eric, 'No corn on me' says Cobb, Tharunka, 15 September 1981.
Cobb, Ron, RCD-25: Cartoons, Sawyer Press, Los Angeles, 1967. [25 cartoons]
-----, Mah Fellow Americans - Editorial Cartoons by Ron Cobb, Sawyer Press, Los Angeles, 1968. [30 cartoons]
-----, Raw Sewage: Unprocessed Cartoons, Prince / Stern / Sloan, Los Angeles, 1970. [38 cartoons]
-----, My Fellow Americans - Patriotic Cartoons, Prince / Stern / Sloan, Los Angeles, 1971. [40 cartoons]
-----, Mah Fellow Americans - Editorial Cartoons by Ron Cobb from the Underground Press Syndicate, Real Free Press, Amsterdam, 1971.
-----, Free! Cartoons, Yookx, Germany, 1972.
-----, The Cobb Book, Wild & Woolley, Glebe, 1975. [112 cartoons]
-----, The Cobb Book, Big O Publishing, London, 1975.
-----, Cobb Again, Wild & Woolley, Glebe, 1976. [84 cartoons]
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-----, Neu Cartoons von Ron Cobb, Linen Volksverlag, Germany, 1977.
-----, Colorvision, Wild & Woolley, Glebe, 1980, 81p. [Download pdf 115MB]
-----, Y que es eco de la Ecologia? Los mejores dibujos de Ron Cobb, Integral, Barcelona, 1980, 140p.
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-----, Wollen vir das? Cartoon von Ron Cobb, Markt Erlbach, 1997, 84p.
-----, Ron Cobb [website], 2015. Available URL: http://roncobb.net/index.html.
Colldeweih, Jack H., Ron Cobb: A voice from the underground, Prospects, 2(1), October 1977, 69-76.
Countryman, Eli, Ron Cobb, 'Back to the Future' DeLorean designer, dies at 83, Variety, 21 September 2020.
Discogs, Ron Cobb, Discogs [website], 2020. Available URL: https://www.discogs.com/artist/2240306-Ron-Cobb-2.
Frazer, Phillip, Ron Cobb's cartoons on Australia, 1972 - all missing from the mainstream obituaries, Echo Daily, 2 October 2020.
Fortin, Jacey, Ron Cobb, a pioneer in science fiction design, dies at 83, New York Times, 23 September 2020.
Gang Gang, Ron Cobb's versatile nature, The Canberra Times, 13 August 1981.
Garrison, Peter, Remember the German airplane?, 143(4), Flying, April 2016, 88-89.
Heller, Steven, Ron Cobb, Sixties acerbic cartoon hero, dies, Print [webpage], 28 September 2020.
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King, Jonathan, The other side of the coin - A cartoon history of Australia, .....
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Lindorff, Dave, Political cartoonist Rob Cobb memorialized Phil Ochs in April 1967: Remembering a great and irreplaceable political troubadour, War is Crime [blog], 1 April 2019.
Loony cartoonist to visit campus, Tharunka, 11 August 1981.
Matlen, Eric, Ron Cobb, Salient, Victoria University of Wellington, July 1972. Available URL: http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Salient35161972-t1-body-d34.html.
Neal, Ron Cobb and the designing of the ecology symbol, The Endless Sixties [blog], 15 August 2018.
New Cobb cartoon book is a must, Tribune, 15 April 1975.
Pryor, Geoff, Ron Cobb: through anger to the fantastic worlds, The Canberra Times, 9 August 1981.
Quinn, Karl, Star Wars, Alien, Back to the Future designer Ron Cobb dies, Sydney Morning Herald, 22 September 2020.
Ringgenberg, Steven, Ron Cobb: 1937-2020, The Comics Journal [blog], 28 September 2020.
Ron Cobb - Visions of Apocalypse, Playboy, September 1969.
Saturday Classic: Ron Cobb, Cartoon of the Day.com [webpage], 9 October 2010.
SF Designer Ron Cobb: from "Dark Star" to "Conan", Starlog, 57, April 1982.
The hidden American film genius who calls Australia home [webpage], 9 News, Sydney, 2 December 2014.
Watson, Nick, The cartoons of Ron Cobb, Silber Galerie [blog], 2005.
Wikipedia, Ron Cobb, Wikipedia [webpage], 2020. Available URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Cobb.
Yoe, Craig, The great anti-war cartoons, Fantagraphics, Seattle, 2009.
Michael Organ
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