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Hitler may have had only one ball, but everyone who reads Sam Henderson is going to have a ball. That's because Henderson, who has drawn strips for Nickelodeon magazine and publishes his own randy digest, The Magic Whistle, is arguably the biggest gut-buster working on the funny pages. Buy The Magic Whistle at better comic-book shops or online at www.indyworld.com/whistle.
Shy and mild-mannered in public, this Superman of silly is able to leap tall buildings with the power of laughter when he puts pen to paper. His work has appeared in publications as varied as Screw and DC Comics, plus he was nominated for an Emmy for his work on SpongeBob SquarePants.
When he's not accepting accolades he's living quietly in Atlanta, Georgia, with his girlfriend. That's where Mr. Skin caught the funnyman with his baggy pants down and got him to talk about his love for teen sex comedies, why Screwballs is superior to Porky's, and why all animators have dirty minds.
Word on the street is that you're the funniest man in comics. So tell me, what is always funny?
It changes with the times. Once you've found out about something, it's already lame. Now everything's coming full circle, so baggy pants falling down for a laugh are funny again. Especially if someone's retarded or gets hurt. Or both.
Does any of your humor get "blue"?
I've done comics about finding an ass in a box, getting your ass caught in a door, guys with asses that give out money, etc. I actually haven't done anything about asses for years, but(t) I'm still ASSociated with them. I wish people would note I've done just as many comics about tits and penises and vaginas. I've done clean stuff too. I don't think in terms of what's acceptable by a certain set of standards, I just do what I find funny, and sometimes that needs to be categorized with ratings. This gives me the chance to be opportunistic and urge everyone to decide for themselves by buying The Magic Whistle.
Your work looks like those raunchy cartoons that appeared on '50s cocktail napkins. What are your influences?
You've kind of nailed it with '50s cocktail napkins, actually. I get that a lot but I've never seen such a thing and don't know if it ever existed. Maybe because people wiped their mouths with them and threw them away long before I was born. I know what you're talking about and I like that style. I consider myself a combination of Peanuts, Mad and its imitators, underground comics, Saturday morning cartoons, Sesame Street, B Kliban, Virgil Partch (VIP), Wacky Packages, my contemporaries, and everything ever broadcast on television between 1973 and 1983. I've accused others (and been accused) of ripping me off only to find they just have the same influences.
Has your work ever appeared in dirty magazines?
I've done a few covers for Screw; most venues had dried up by the time I became a working professional. I've known a lot of people who've worked for Al Goldstein [former publisher of Screw], and every one of them thinks he's a tyrant. Everyone I've met outside of pornography who's met him thinks he's a saint. Last I heard he was living on his parents-in-law's floor. Whatever is true about him, I appreciate that he--or at least those who make decisions he takes credit for--has helped out pretty much every cartoonist in existence at one time or another.
You have an encyclopedic knowledge of teen sex comedies that has filtered into your work. Tell us about your teen sex comedy screenplay.
My friend Mike Rex and I wrote a little pamphlet called "The Greatest Teen Movie Ever Made" with about 100 scenes like "Nerd gets erection during game of strip pinball which gets caught in coin-return slot of machine, setting off series of gongs and bells. Everybody parties." It was never written in any story form but contains all the archetypes like Beautiful Substitute Teacher, Horny Teen, Younger Brother, Nerd, and Stoner Teen.
More recently I've done a comic called Chugbot about a robot made from a keg, which a frat house steals from the nerds who invented it. There's a prophecy at the end so common to teen movies. The whole "nerd" archetype has always fascinated me. Is it that anyone who isn't part of an elite is automatically a nerd? Being smart or wearing glasses or collecting things must be traits to pick on someone for? Are the nerds all people who are just jealous that they're not jocks? Do they just want to reverse the roles and have the jocks be the nerds? Or is it just what stronger people disagree with?
Now that I'm twice the age I was when I lost my virginity, these movies all seem to be about little kids, and sometimes it scares me that these are supposedly minors fucking all the time.
Will you ever develop the screenplay and try to sell it?
I wish. In retrospect, almost no type of movie like we wrote ever existed. Most were dull except for a few brilliant moments, then they went back to their soap operas. Very few were raunchfests all the way through.
One movie that delivers is called Screwballs, which is basically what people think Porky's was like. Porky's showed a few scenes with trying to get laid, innuendos, and peeking into shower rooms (Picture: 1 - 2), but not beginning to end. There's a whole preachy subplot about anti-Semitism that would fit in any after-school special.
Screwballs, on the other hand, doesn't even try to be respectable or true-to-life in any way. The entire movie is about how five guys who meet in detention come up with ways they can expose a girl named Purity Busch (Picture: 1 - 2), and one of the guys is named Melvin Jerkovski. How's that for subtlety?
My favorite part of the movie is the logic. One of the students sees that the school is giving mandatory breast exams (from a poster on the wall with the O's shaped like breasts), so he dresses in drag to disguise himself as the nurse (Picture: 1). The girls all believe he actually is the nurse. The characters all have sex throughout the movie, even if through contrived means, all the while complaining to each other that they never get laid.
Speaking of movies, do you recall the first time you saw a sex scene in a mainstream movie when you were growing up?
I can't say there was any one film that stood out. It seems gratuitous nudity was the norm for the longest time and I never noticed until it went away. I think some of this may have to do with actresses having more of a say contractually.
Many a Friday or Saturday evening in my elementary-school days was spent watching Showtime's "After Hours" films like H.O.T.S. or The Cheerleaders. It's nice to know they're still showing all these movies years later.
There was also some other movie channel we didn't get which was nicknamed "Wavy Blue Tits". The cable company would scramble the channel to households that didn't subscribe, but kids watched it anyway since there would often be a glimpse of nudity, often coinciding with the moment or so of still picture. Of course, these were all fare like The Working Girls or Candy Stripe Nurses.
Are there any sex scenes that stand out in your mind's collection of turn-ons? What about actresses, what type gets you hot? Let's hear some actresses past and present that make you want to stick your quill in the ink.
One image I remember from my youth was [Mad cartoonist] Mort Drucker's caricature of Jacqueline Bisset in their parody of The Deep (Picture: 1 - 2). Ironically the drawings of her in a wet T-shirt with her nipples jutting out were meant to parody the way the movie exploited her that way, but it only contributed to it. I've seen the movie since and don't remember a thing about it. I think the reason the parody stays with me is because I saw it at just the right time.
The late '70s were actually a pretty good time to see TA in pretty much any forum, no matter how innocuous. Shows like Three's Company and Charlie's Angels had premises but were really fronts to show actresses wearing as little as they could on prime-time network television.
Most egregious of all was The Battle of the Network Stars, which had the conceit of being an athletic competition but was really a way for networks to showcase actresses getting wet. I don't think the dunking stool is in the Olympics, but Charlene Tilton being dunked was analyzed and replayed in slow-motion as if it was. It did show me, though, that Jan Smithers [WKRP in Cincinnati] (Picture: 1) is much better and natural-looking than [co-star] Loni Anderson.
You have had some mainstream success writing for the popular Nickelodeon series SpongeBob SquarePants. How'd you hook up with that team?
I picked up the phone one day and Derek Drymon, creative director, called me. We sort of knew each other in college and he'd been following my work all along. The show is kind of written like a comic, they needed more talent, and he had the opportunity to bring cartoonists he liked on board. Kaz was hired around the same time.
I guess the lesson for students is that if you don't pick on someone in school they might hire you a decade later.
Any uncensored SpongeBob animated scenes floating around?
Unfortunately no. That would mean we had extra money lying around. However, I can confirm that all animators draw dirty versions of the characters they work on. During our last week at SB, I put together a scrapbook of all the dirty drawings everyone had in their studio. Starfish-shaped anuses, dicks with tentacles, just about any hole-entry gag you could imagine. Sorry to say that these will never, ever be seen by anyone ever.
I understand you've moved down south to be with your lady love, a nurse. A naughty nurse?
For all intents and purposes, yes. She has medical knowledge but is a psych nurse by profession, making her more like a naughty librarian. That's how she'd want it put.
Illustrator Danny Hellman was recently interviewed by Mr. Skin and, when asked about your strip featuring his cartoon likeness called Dirty Danny, called you a dirty fucker. How do you respond to that?
It was never my intention to "out" him in the way I did. Had he never made a big stink about it, he would have stayed anonymous just like all my other in-joke characters. In the long run, my likeness of him has actually benefited him, helping him raise money in legal bills and whatnot. To prank other cartoonists (which I actually find very funny) is to open yourself up to the same kind of behavior. If that makes me a dirty fucker, then dirty fucker I shall be.
All illustrations by Sam Henderson courtesy of the Magic Whistle website.
Shy and mild-mannered in public, this Superman of silly is able to leap tall buildings with the power of laughter when he puts pen to paper. His work has appeared in publications as varied as Screw and DC Comics, plus he was nominated for an Emmy for his work on SpongeBob SquarePants.
When he's not accepting accolades he's living quietly in Atlanta, Georgia, with his girlfriend. That's where Mr. Skin caught the funnyman with his baggy pants down and got him to talk about his love for teen sex comedies, why Screwballs is superior to Porky's, and why all animators have dirty minds.
Word on the street is that you're the funniest man in comics. So tell me, what is always funny?
It changes with the times. Once you've found out about something, it's already lame. Now everything's coming full circle, so baggy pants falling down for a laugh are funny again. Especially if someone's retarded or gets hurt. Or both.
Does any of your humor get "blue"?
I've done comics about finding an ass in a box, getting your ass caught in a door, guys with asses that give out money, etc. I actually haven't done anything about asses for years, but(t) I'm still ASSociated with them. I wish people would note I've done just as many comics about tits and penises and vaginas. I've done clean stuff too. I don't think in terms of what's acceptable by a certain set of standards, I just do what I find funny, and sometimes that needs to be categorized with ratings. This gives me the chance to be opportunistic and urge everyone to decide for themselves by buying The Magic Whistle.
Your work looks like those raunchy cartoons that appeared on '50s cocktail napkins. What are your influences?
You've kind of nailed it with '50s cocktail napkins, actually. I get that a lot but I've never seen such a thing and don't know if it ever existed. Maybe because people wiped their mouths with them and threw them away long before I was born. I know what you're talking about and I like that style. I consider myself a combination of Peanuts, Mad and its imitators, underground comics, Saturday morning cartoons, Sesame Street, B Kliban, Virgil Partch (VIP), Wacky Packages, my contemporaries, and everything ever broadcast on television between 1973 and 1983. I've accused others (and been accused) of ripping me off only to find they just have the same influences.
Has your work ever appeared in dirty magazines?
I've done a few covers for Screw; most venues had dried up by the time I became a working professional. I've known a lot of people who've worked for Al Goldstein [former publisher of Screw], and every one of them thinks he's a tyrant. Everyone I've met outside of pornography who's met him thinks he's a saint. Last I heard he was living on his parents-in-law's floor. Whatever is true about him, I appreciate that he--or at least those who make decisions he takes credit for--has helped out pretty much every cartoonist in existence at one time or another.
You have an encyclopedic knowledge of teen sex comedies that has filtered into your work. Tell us about your teen sex comedy screenplay.
My friend Mike Rex and I wrote a little pamphlet called "The Greatest Teen Movie Ever Made" with about 100 scenes like "Nerd gets erection during game of strip pinball which gets caught in coin-return slot of machine, setting off series of gongs and bells. Everybody parties." It was never written in any story form but contains all the archetypes like Beautiful Substitute Teacher, Horny Teen, Younger Brother, Nerd, and Stoner Teen.
More recently I've done a comic called Chugbot about a robot made from a keg, which a frat house steals from the nerds who invented it. There's a prophecy at the end so common to teen movies. The whole "nerd" archetype has always fascinated me. Is it that anyone who isn't part of an elite is automatically a nerd? Being smart or wearing glasses or collecting things must be traits to pick on someone for? Are the nerds all people who are just jealous that they're not jocks? Do they just want to reverse the roles and have the jocks be the nerds? Or is it just what stronger people disagree with?
Now that I'm twice the age I was when I lost my virginity, these movies all seem to be about little kids, and sometimes it scares me that these are supposedly minors fucking all the time.
Will you ever develop the screenplay and try to sell it?
I wish. In retrospect, almost no type of movie like we wrote ever existed. Most were dull except for a few brilliant moments, then they went back to their soap operas. Very few were raunchfests all the way through.
One movie that delivers is called Screwballs, which is basically what people think Porky's was like. Porky's showed a few scenes with trying to get laid, innuendos, and peeking into shower rooms (Picture: 1 - 2), but not beginning to end. There's a whole preachy subplot about anti-Semitism that would fit in any after-school special.
Screwballs, on the other hand, doesn't even try to be respectable or true-to-life in any way. The entire movie is about how five guys who meet in detention come up with ways they can expose a girl named Purity Busch (Picture: 1 - 2), and one of the guys is named Melvin Jerkovski. How's that for subtlety?
My favorite part of the movie is the logic. One of the students sees that the school is giving mandatory breast exams (from a poster on the wall with the O's shaped like breasts), so he dresses in drag to disguise himself as the nurse (Picture: 1). The girls all believe he actually is the nurse. The characters all have sex throughout the movie, even if through contrived means, all the while complaining to each other that they never get laid.
Speaking of movies, do you recall the first time you saw a sex scene in a mainstream movie when you were growing up?
I can't say there was any one film that stood out. It seems gratuitous nudity was the norm for the longest time and I never noticed until it went away. I think some of this may have to do with actresses having more of a say contractually.
Many a Friday or Saturday evening in my elementary-school days was spent watching Showtime's "After Hours" films like H.O.T.S. or The Cheerleaders. It's nice to know they're still showing all these movies years later.
There was also some other movie channel we didn't get which was nicknamed "Wavy Blue Tits". The cable company would scramble the channel to households that didn't subscribe, but kids watched it anyway since there would often be a glimpse of nudity, often coinciding with the moment or so of still picture. Of course, these were all fare like The Working Girls or Candy Stripe Nurses.
Are there any sex scenes that stand out in your mind's collection of turn-ons? What about actresses, what type gets you hot? Let's hear some actresses past and present that make you want to stick your quill in the ink.
One image I remember from my youth was [Mad cartoonist] Mort Drucker's caricature of Jacqueline Bisset in their parody of The Deep (Picture: 1 - 2). Ironically the drawings of her in a wet T-shirt with her nipples jutting out were meant to parody the way the movie exploited her that way, but it only contributed to it. I've seen the movie since and don't remember a thing about it. I think the reason the parody stays with me is because I saw it at just the right time.
The late '70s were actually a pretty good time to see TA in pretty much any forum, no matter how innocuous. Shows like Three's Company and Charlie's Angels had premises but were really fronts to show actresses wearing as little as they could on prime-time network television.
Most egregious of all was The Battle of the Network Stars, which had the conceit of being an athletic competition but was really a way for networks to showcase actresses getting wet. I don't think the dunking stool is in the Olympics, but Charlene Tilton being dunked was analyzed and replayed in slow-motion as if it was. It did show me, though, that Jan Smithers [WKRP in Cincinnati] (Picture: 1) is much better and natural-looking than [co-star] Loni Anderson.
You have had some mainstream success writing for the popular Nickelodeon series SpongeBob SquarePants. How'd you hook up with that team?
I picked up the phone one day and Derek Drymon, creative director, called me. We sort of knew each other in college and he'd been following my work all along. The show is kind of written like a comic, they needed more talent, and he had the opportunity to bring cartoonists he liked on board. Kaz was hired around the same time.
I guess the lesson for students is that if you don't pick on someone in school they might hire you a decade later.
Any uncensored SpongeBob animated scenes floating around?
Unfortunately no. That would mean we had extra money lying around. However, I can confirm that all animators draw dirty versions of the characters they work on. During our last week at SB, I put together a scrapbook of all the dirty drawings everyone had in their studio. Starfish-shaped anuses, dicks with tentacles, just about any hole-entry gag you could imagine. Sorry to say that these will never, ever be seen by anyone ever.
I understand you've moved down south to be with your lady love, a nurse. A naughty nurse?
For all intents and purposes, yes. She has medical knowledge but is a psych nurse by profession, making her more like a naughty librarian. That's how she'd want it put.
Illustrator Danny Hellman was recently interviewed by Mr. Skin and, when asked about your strip featuring his cartoon likeness called Dirty Danny, called you a dirty fucker. How do you respond to that?
It was never my intention to "out" him in the way I did. Had he never made a big stink about it, he would have stayed anonymous just like all my other in-joke characters. In the long run, my likeness of him has actually benefited him, helping him raise money in legal bills and whatnot. To prank other cartoonists (which I actually find very funny) is to open yourself up to the same kind of behavior. If that makes me a dirty fucker, then dirty fucker I shall be.
All illustrations by Sam Henderson courtesy of the Magic Whistle website.
