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FALL
2005—SPRING 2006
PLUS
‘SEPT’ 2020 BY THE FACEBOOK GPK MISFITS GROUP FURTHER BELOW!
1.
What Topps projects are you currently working on?
Right
now, I am working on… or at least, I should be working on the Garbage
Pail Kids All-New Series 5. These days, I am a bit slow due to the chemotherapy
and its unpleasant side effects. For the last Wacky Package series I didn’t get
to do any work for the same reasons. I was slow and weak, and when I could have
started, the whole thing was already over and done with.
2.
How many pieces of art, per project, do you hope to have completed for the release(s)?
I hope to paint at least 4-5 pieces, depending on the
deadline. As usual, I have many different jobs and things going on at the same
time, though Topps is one of my priorities. Jeff Zapata (art director at Topps)
is very understanding of my situation and gives me a lot of leeway… but deadlines
are deadlines. I hope I can do more paintings than mentioned above.
ANS5 – B14 PETE HEAT3.
What did you think of the Sketch cards commemorating the 20th GPK anniversary
for the All-New Series 4 set? That’s twenty sets in twenty years you’ve worked
on for Topps.
The sketch cards were a nice
idea for the fans, so they could get their greedy, collector fingers on some original
art. It was also good for Topps to sell more boxes, but for me, it was additional
work (for minimal compensation), and because it was shortly after my surgery,
radiation, and chemo, I had a really hard time even climbing up the stairs to
my studio and holding a pencil. That’s why I did only some cards, I don’t even
know how many I did. The remaining blank sketch cards I had to send back for somebody
else to do their sketches. The 20 years commemorating part didn’t really enter
my mind very much at the time, but now I do think more about time flying away
rapidly, and my mind with it!
4.
How does working on Garbage Pail Kids now differ from twenty years ago?
Twenty years ago, it was much more exciting to work
on the GPK. I had a studio in Brooklyn, not far from Topps. They were in an industrial
part of Brooklyn, near the port, a very romantic area… it looked like some great
background for Mafia movies, where they get rid of their victims by putting them
into cement blocks and dumping them into the water. Well, I went there once or
twice a week to meet Art Spiegelman and Mark Newgarden (and other nice people
who were involved, like Len Brown and Stan Hart). With the 3rd Series GPK, I started
to work on the fronts, but I also did a lot of work on the backs… partly complete
series and partly with other artists. I was actually so busy and stressed-out
that I didn’t realize that the GPK had become a phenomenal rage all over the globe.
I remember Art asking me whether I knew that I was involved in something really
big… I didn’t, but then I started to see all of the newspaper articles about
the GPKs crazy fame, and everywhere I went I saw GPK wrappers on the floor, on
the streets, and in the subways. I was excited… thrilled… and amazed!
Today,
things are just different – calmer, and more professional. In the beginning, I
was still learning how to render the work realistically with Acrylic and airbrush.
Though it’s not as exciting and nerve-wrecking because I am technically more experienced
and I feel more experienced, and I feel more confident. But now I do enjoy it
very much in another way, for example, I am now getting recognition for the work
I do and did for the GPK (and many of the other Topps projects I did). The collectors
are now more knowledgeable about the artists behind the stickers, thanks to the
fabulous people like you Aaron, who kept the GPK flame on the front burner all
of these years – I wasn’t even aware of it until Jay Lynch told me about two years
ago to check the internet in this regard. Well, in the 80’s, the fans were little
kids, there was no internet and typically, kids don’t really care very much who
does what, as long as it’s really disgusting – and the most important thing was
that their parents and teachers and other grown-ups hated them nasty, naughty
stickers.
The other very nice side of the development now-a-days is that
because of the increased interest in the art itself, I am starting to sell my
sketches and roughs to collectors and fans. Fortunately, I have kept all of my
sketches (not because I thought I would sell them one day, but because I can’t
throw anything out!). Now I’m glad I stuffed every piece of paper into my drawer
and left it there all of these years.
5.
What is/were your favorite Garbage Pail Kids that you drew in the Eighties?
My favorites are still the first ones: #89 (Hurt CURT/PAT
Splat), #91 (BLAKE Flake/Hippie SKIPPY), #95 (Grim JIM/BETH Death), #115 (Warmin’
NORMAN/Well Done SHELDON), especially #178 (EARL Painting/Blue Boy GEORGE), #263
(VINCENT Van Gone/Modern ART) and many others. Because they are all somehow like
my children, it’s hard to choose just one favorite – actually, I wouldn’t like
to have the GPK as my own children, they would totally destroy my already unstable
state of mind! – but I still love them.
6.
Do you have a favorite Garbage Pail Kids for the All-New Series releases?
ANS1 – # 18 (Rodent ROB), #23 (Sushi SUSIE) and #28
(Duped DAVID). [editor’s note: also from the unpublished 16th series set]
ANS2 – #5 (Fat CHANCE) and #16 (Dandruff DAN).
ANS3 – #14 (BOB Gnarly), #10
(Astro NAT) and # 31 (Poopdeck PETE).
ANS4 – #12 (Brainwashed BRIAN) and #30
(Turdking TRAVIS).
7.
With the Care Bears being popular again, any hopes that Topps will come out with
a card release for the Gross Bears buttons you worked on in the 80’s?
I don’t know anything about Topps’ plans in this regard,
but I’ll ask Jeff Zapata. It would be about time to take on these cute bears and
tear them apart!
#1 FLARE BEAR
8.
How was it working on the Gross Bears set?
When
I got the job in June of 1985 to create a complete Barf Bears series (that’s what
they were called then), I thought, “Oh, my – that’s going to be a major headache!”.
It was the same time that John Pound was already working on the Garbage Pail Kids,
and Topps, Art Spiegelman, and Mark Newgarden had me already drawing the cartoons
for the reverse side of the complete 1st and 2nd GPK sticker sets. And,
on top of it all, my first child was just about to be born. My wife and I lived
in a one room apartment in Manhattan, and I had to do the airbrushing (it’s kind
of toxic) in our tiny, windowless bathroom! Also, I didn’t know anything
about airbrushing and had to teach it to myself the nerve-wrecking way! So I had
to find a studio somewhere else where I would have the space, the peace, and the
light for the work… which happened to be in Brooklyn at my inlaws house not
far from Topps. There I completed in September, the whole Gross Bears Buttons
series, including the box artwork, “wrappers”, and lettering… warts
and all!
Unfortunately,
the Bears didn’t have much of a chance to get very far, because the GPK craze
took all of the attention away from Topps, the candy store sellers, the american
youth, and the nation in general. Then immediately after I finished the Bears,
I started to work on the Garbage Pail Kids, this time not only continuing to do
work on the backs, but now also on the fronts (starting with the 3rd series).
Because the GPK rage started to really take off and we had to produce sets fast
and furious, soon James Warhola joined the crazy club with his art. It became
a very stressful time for me for a couple of years (without getting even one additional
penny from the multi-million dollar profit Topps ended up making – we didn’t even
get the originals back – Topps later sold these in auctions making even more profit
without giving the artists any compensation as recognition of their contribution
— which I thought really sucked). After that, Art Spiegelman left Topps and made
comic history by finishing his Maus books.
9.
Where else can we find Bunk art? And what other personal projects have you recently
been working on?
I have worked quite
regularly for MAD magazine since 1990, and I’m doing a lot of other jobs for children
books, science magazines, and illustrations for high school textbooks (physics,
chemistry, earth science, etc.). I’m just now having an art exhibition in the
Hall of Science in Queens, NY where almost 60 of my metaphysical illustrations
for Quantum, a science magaizine, are being shown. There is also a wonderful book,
called Quantoons, with all of the illustrations that is published by NSTA.
When I have some time inbetween, and I wish I had more, I work for my own plain
pleasure on larger size oil paintings. That’s what I really would like to do in
the future, whatever future there is in store for me. But to survive, I have to
do all of these jobs, after all, somebody has to put the tofu on the table! I
actually love to do them, too.
10.
What other Topps projects, other then Garbage Pail Kids and Gross Bears, have
you worked on?
There
were jobs to do all of the time besides GPK that Topps wanted me to do. I worked
on complete projects (with wrapper and box art, etc.) like Stupid Smiles Stickers
or Pick’N Chews Bubble Gum. I illustrated two, very funny, little books called
The Nursery Crimes (parody of Nursery Rhymes) and My Pal the Pit Bull,
both have been finished but they never made it to the stores. I also created art
for a whole bunch of boxes: Dino (toys with candy eggs), Wacky Packages (1985),
Mutant Eggs, Funny Farm (my first job in 1984), Cheap Toys (GPK toy figurines),
T-Shirt Factory, Thumb Sucker, et cetera.
I also worked on various projects
like Toxic High, Gruesome Greeting Cards, Iron-Ons, Wacky Packs, Trash Can Trolls,
Bathroom Buddies, and there were projects that were created, worked on, but never
finished or published – like the Loco Motion cards, with crazy images of x-treme
sports, like skating, snow boarding, dirtbiking, surfing, etc. There were also
projects that were started, and I don’t even remember what they were about! I
did practically all the odds and ends stuff that needed to be done at Topps, and
I was always around. It seems I was Topps’ multi-talented, all-around, resident
artist… and when I look back, I wonder how I even had the time to take a breath,
let alone live!
BUNK AND MARK NEWGARDEN; CIRCA 1987
THANKS
BUNK!
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