Washington Square. On air is the audio town square for the Washington Square Review, Lansing Community College's literary journal. Writers, readers, scholars, publishing professionals, citizens of the world, gather here and chat about all things writing. Hey there. This is Melissa Ford Luckin, editor for the Washington Square Review. I'm here today with Jerico Woggon, who's the grandson of Bill Woggon. Bill Woggon was the creator of the Katy Keene comics, which was a branch of the Archie comics. Hey, Jerico.

Hello. Good morning.

Can you.

Hi. So I'm Jerico Woggon. My grandfather was Bill Woggon and he did Katy Keene comics starting in 1945. I've sort of like, guess you could say, inherited the archive for the moment to go through the archive. And that's why I'm here today to talk to you guys about my grandfather's archive and the work I've been doing.

All right, let's give people a little context for Katie Keene because some people may not be familiar with where she came from. So back us up about 70 years.

Yeah, exactly. So in 1945, I'll even go beyond that. In 1927, my grandfather was 16 years old and he got his first job at a department store working as a art director. So I guess he must have quit high school because in 1927, at age 16, he already got a full time job working at the department store as essentially art director, drawing everything from garbage cans to girdles and then so everything in between. So because of his brother, Elmer Woggon. Elmer was born in 1898, and Elmer was a what they call platinum age cartoonist. So he started pre golden age cartooning from a correspondence course. So that's how my grandfather, Bill Wagen got his start because he was inspired by his older brother Elmer. And so Katie Keene got started, I would say, for sure. She debuted in Wilburn number five in 1945, and that's a comic book called Wilbur. So it was published by Archie Comics. At the time it was called MLJ Comics. So that being said, in 1945, Katy Keene debuted and grandpa quickly got, you know, the comic going. She was just a, let's say like a three pager within other comic books like Wilbur and Archie. And then she got her own title shortly thereafter. So by like, let's say 1947, I'm just guessing, a couple years after she started in other comic books, she had her own title, Katy King Comics. And that began a incredible journey where grandpa did a thing where he would let kids draw fashions and designs for whatever they felt like Sending in. So he did a call out, essentially, in the old days in the comics, he would actually have them send in their designs to him and then write their addresses and all their information, their personal name and stuff. Cause he encouraged, like, fans to be friends with fans and form fan clubs and all that kind of stuff. So this is all, of course, pre Internet and pre telephone. Pre telephone, yeah. So he really got them going and got the kids inspired to create and create in a really dedicated fashion. Some of the kids would send in literally hundreds of designs, and some of them may or may not have made it into the final cut, but he would essentially have his team. He had a few people that work with him, assistants and whatnot to. One was Cassie, Bill and Hazel Martin, two ladies that worked my grandfather as well as Floyd Norman. And so it really just was a sort of a family business. I would say Grandpa kept it real simple and fun. And they moved to Santa Barbara in 1948. So that's kind of when Katie. Essentially, he moved Katie Keene, literally and figuratively, to Hollywood, California. That way she would have a Hollywood address. So he took. He took a mailing address, a Hollywood mailing address, which is really fun for the kids to send in a letter to Hollywood, to Katie Keene in Hollywood, California. So that's. That's the start.

So Katie Keene herself, as she shows up in the comics, is a model and an aspiring actress. So she does. She's very fashionable, and she wears a lot of different fashions, which makes sense that kids would want to draw the fashions and send them in. Yeah, And I think that's really amazing to think that this was. There probably were telephones, but it's not anything. Right. It's like. It's that long ago. So they would literally draw them on a sheet of paper, fold them up, put them in an envelope, and then dress it and send it. Which is just fascinating to think, because back then, kids weren't connected like they are to each other, to the world. And so the mailbox was really their only connection to communicate with other people.

You know, for sure.

And I think that's really fascinating. And so she, on the pages, would be wearing all these different outfits, and then would also have, like, the paper doll pages where she would show up with, you know, wearing, like, one cute outfit, and then there'd be a bunch of outfits around her that. The idea was that with the paper dolls, you could cut out the little outfits and then swap them out.

Exactly.

Yeah. So that was really unique. One of the things I'VE wondered about. And I know we're going to talk about the actual archive that you inherited. Do you know how it is that your grandfather was able to get his own kind of imprint? Because that was fairly unusual. Because usually back then there would be a comic like Archie Comics or Superman, and there would be multiple people and different artists and different writers that would on the storylines. But Katy Keene was really his vision and his comic. So do you know how that happened?

Well, I'm assuming he did work for Archie Comics prior to Katy Keene. There's a comic called Dotto and Diddy or Diddy and Dotto. And then he did Millie the Monster and a few other characters prior to Katy Keene. So he was a part of, like, I would say, the company in a sense. Like, he was in Ohio. Toledo, Ohio was his home base. And he worked from, I'm guessing from home, because they would send things to New York for the publisher to deal with, you know, the process of making the comic book. But once he got the popularity up for Katie, because it was that kind of thing where the reality hit with to Archie when they were receiving so much fan mail. Cause Grandpa was doing that, you know, submission, send out, send me drawings for Katie. The company said, how about you just take the fan mail and you deal with the fan mail as well as dealing with the paper dolls. So he was able to essentially set up what they call nowadays a side hust, which is basically the paper doll mail order business he set up. And it was like, send 25 cents, even 10 cents for a paper doll. And then he would send them back, really nice piece of paper with Katie Keen on it that you could cut that out and that could become like, essentially like your paper version of like a Barbie doll. And then you could use the fashions that were in the comp book to cut them out and put them on, like you said, the paper doll thing. So it just became so successful that Archie was like, you do the paper dolls, you take care of the fan club. It's your baby. And of course, once the title had established itself, it was definitely like the American dream completely unfolding before my grandfather's eyes. And then, of course, moving to Santa Barbara, which is an hour and a half from Hollywood, and he got Wagging Wheels Ranch. He bought a small piece of property in Santa Barbara. But at the time, it was like, you know, just the dream kind of a deal. And so that's. That's that part of it. So the success, I think, drove it to become something that of Course, also him, essentially. Also Pionee hearing, working remotely because he wasn't saddled up in New York next to the publisher or something, you know, so that would. That. I think there probably was for sure some artists I'd have to research, like Dan DeCarlo and a few other artists who work for Archie, whereabouts they lived in their life. I imagine there was a few by choice that live close to the publisher. I mean, how convenient would that be to just literally walk your work to work or something after you. After you finished it, you know, so. Yeah, so that's my theory.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

I think it's notable when you look at the Katy Keene comics, you can tell the distinct style carries through consistently.

For sure.

I think that's one of the things that appeals to readers. I have talked to a lot of mostly women that read them as a kid, and they talk about always just hanging onto them. Like other comics, they would trade and share, but their Katy Kane ones, they would, like, hide them in their closet or on their bookshelf, and they wouldn't let anyone else touch them or, you know, even look at them. Yeah.

Wow.

It's very sweet.

And so, yeah, for sure.

They have a lot of good and unique memories with the Katie Kane ones.

Definitely. Definitely.

All right, so you inherited a unorganized archive. Tell us about that. How did that happen?

Yeah, well, basically, whenever I went to Grandpa's house, you know, he would always encourage me, of course, as a young artist, like, how's your art going? Are you collecting a file? You know, things like that. But I. To me, it was like, he definitely left me with his morgue file, which is a artist's essentially, like, three filing cabinets full of imagery that he collected specifically for subject matter. Like if it was a giraffe, a cat, a dog, a love scene, New York, Any. Any subject that you would think of, essentially, it would nowadays Google it. I kind of call it like Grandpa's Internet. So I first got his morgue file. Like I said, the three filing cabinets full of imagery. I occasionally went in there to the file to, you know, maybe make a love letter or whatever for a girl or something, draw a cute card for Christmas or something for my mom or whatever. So using it as that reference file. And then I get a call from my cousin Nancy, and that's Sis, the candy kid in the comic book, which is Katie Keene's sister. Because it's just Katie and Sis are pretty much the two characters. So Susie, my aunt, was getting ready to move to assisted living. My Cousin called me and said, hey, we're down here at Susie's house. We're cleaning some things up. We found these films and there's a bunch of stuff, of course. And I'm like, I'll be. So more or less I went down there. In short order, it became apparent that my cousin Nancy was going to go back east and go with her husband, you know, back home. And what was left was my aunt by herself at home with literally like a lifetime of paperwork that had she. Thankfully, my aunt had the wherewithal and the foresight to gather the archive, bring it to her home. She did sort of establish an office, I want to say, for grandpa's stuff, like all in one room. Thankfully they had a five bedroom house. So I then went down to my aunt's house almost like religiously, if you will, to separate and extract Grandpa. Like an archaeological dig. Digging for artifacts, literally like through, you know, because the people that were pre Internet had a lot of paperwork essentially. So whether it was like a Time magazine from the 70s, or whether it's a piece of mail from last week or piece of mail from 1927, it was literally like that kind of a situation. So I, I got everything separated. I made a box for each family member, especially boxing up Grandpa got him separated. I did move the entire archive to Los Angeles to my art studio at the time.

How big was it though? How many boxes?

We're talking like, basically I would say a regular Chevy van or Ford van, whatever, full of banker boxes. So you have to have a van for sure. Because in a truck it would literally be, it's, it's high. So I would say if you put it on pallets, it would probably be like three pallets stacked of boxes. So it's, it's no joke, like the volume. I did rent a small moving truck, like a small budget or rider truck to bring the archive to Colorado. It also contains three drawing boards, the original drawing boards that they used, essentially like a drafting table. So three drafting tables and a couple chairs. There are little wood chairs that you sit in while you're drawing. So like the kit, so to speak. So, yeah, so it's, it's a volume of stuff. So at one point, my cousin had established a new relationship and the timing was perfect. I essentially pitched the idea like, hey, I'm kind of in a position where I'm ready to take over the archive and get to work on it. And he's like, you know, that's a great idea. Literally, I think the day after I moved out and got the office empty in California. My cousin's new fiance was able to establish her office in that room. So, you know, it's like. It's like timing was perfect. So I brought it out to Colorado, and I literally called a landlord here in Colorado in Pagosa Springs. I got a lease on an office space. I moved it from directly from the moving truck up to the office. Probably took me five or six hours to bring all the boxes upstairs, blah, blah, blah. Got it all set. It was nice to be in a single room with the project finally, you know, after years, because this has been going on since 2018, so that's how long I've been involved in it. You know, the COVID thing was like a sort of. It did break me off the project, unfortunately. So this is like, after Covid.

Okay, before you go on, let me ask you this. What was it about the project that seemed most important to you? Like, why did you feel it needed to be done?

Well, Grandpa's dedication to the kids, the fans. And he also is a Will Eisner Award recipient, which is the comic book equivalent of an Oscar. And so I knew that if it was me as an artist, because myself being an artist, if I. If I had left my work behind, I would want someone to, essentially, because once you achieve a certain level within art, in the art world, let's say, you are a part of a special group of people that do get taken care of, essentially, your work gets preserved and then move forward to museums. And that's what. That's my goal is to get the work probably to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Art Museum in Ohio. That's one. Perhaps something in Santa Barbara. I'm not sure yet. There's definitely. George Lucas has a museum in Los Angeles, so there's a few potential. There's also a museum in San Francisco, Cartoon Art Museum, that has some of his work already. So he. Before his passing, my grandfather had established contacts with museums because he was essentially already doing it. So I'm just taking over where he left off to get the archive, move forward into the museums. So that's my goal.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

That matches up with what I was thinking earlier, as I was saying with the Katy Keene comic, it is so distinctly his. How you know, when you compare it to the Archies, they have different artists, they have different writers, so those are all blended together. But when you look at the Katy Keenes, you're really getting one artist's vision more so than with the other one.

Definitely.

So that's. Yeah, that Makes it really unique and a different kind of comic to be able to study, I think.

Right. For sure. And he was like, kind of like the ultimate boss man. Yeah, they actually called him Boss Man. Boss Man Bill Woggon. You know, the whole thing was sort of a joke. He was very. He had a good sense of humor. But with Cassie, Bill, Hazel Martin, these two incredible women worked with my grandfather as his assistants. And they also, I believe Cassie, Bill, if not Hazel Martin or both of them were incredible illustrators in their own right. And one of them actually came from the fashion industry herself. So their, like, their line work, their attention to detail on the lace and the fabrics and all those beautiful things that make Katy Keene so special. It was like it was drawn with, I would say, a woman's perspective, a woman's sense of style and unique nature. And my grandfather was definitely like art director and of course, illustrator as well. Like, he would ink everything, I guess, for the most part. I mean, so that's. That's what I know in terms of how it was created. It was all pen and ink, essentially pencil drawn first and then inked after. And then after it was inked, it was essentially mailed to New York and then grandpa would go to, you know, favorite restaurant and have a cocktail after or something. You know, definitely like the Mad Men era. Pre Mad Men, it was like, this is what these guys did. So.

Yeah, yeah. I was thinking about what you were saying with that. That had a woman's perspective with the, you know, the fashions and the. Just the. The details and the touches. And that is also something that's distinct when you compare it to many of the other comics didn't have that kind of woman input, perspective.

Right. Yeah. And later on, what was so amazing is that Mary Elise Flusser, she actually worked for Saks Fifth Avenue in 1978. She was going to like, little, like flea markets and swaps and stuff and reminiscing about her childhood because then at that time she was probably 20 something. And so she. She was like, God, I wonder what happened to all the fans from Katy Keene. So she actually wrote 500 letters to old addresses that were in the comics from the early 40s, 50s, 60s. She wrote sort of a chain letter. She just made one Xerox it and sent it to 500 addresses. And she got a tremendous response, which then she found John Lucas, who was a contributing artist back then, and Craig Levitt was also a contributing artist. So now these young people that were teens and tweens in the 40s and 50s and 60s were now full fledged professional young artists working in different industries. And so they, with the help of Craig Levitt and John Lucas and Barbara Rauch, the fans from the day with Mary Elise's sort of get after it, get it done. Mary Elise was also a writer. She wrote kind of a tell all in The Soho Weekly 1978 and for new York and everything about Katy Keene and interviewed a bunch of people like Betsy Johnson. I don't think she got Calvin Klein, but she did get Antonio. So prominent fashion designers of the day to get on record saying that Katy Keene was their inspiration for their beginning of their careers essentially. And what they also reflected back to in their current designs and things like that. So really special in terms of the tie into history and the timing. So there's that.

A very long lasting community of artistic creators.

Yeah, dedicated for sure. And so they're just total dedication to inspiration from the past. And thankfully they were of age to be like again that those professional positions. And Mary Elise had the every intention of writing a book. And that's another thing. What she did by getting the Soho Weekly article published, that really cemented in the who's who of the early era and got their words done. And then that got Grandpa. Like the phone started ringing again after it hadn't rang for 20 years, perhaps because Katy Keene stopped when kids started to watch television. Unfortunately, the comic book era kind of faded a bit for a second. So they actually canceled Katie in like 1962 or something like that. But then by 78, that leads into Katy Keene's comeback, which is the early 80s Katy Keene comeback. And that was brought on by the fans and then especially John Lucas as an illustrator. I think my grandfather was a part of the beginning where they would reissue old comics again and that got the fans back. And essentially Katy Keene had like a tremendous comeback then. And then Grandpa got the inkpot Award in 1981. And then comic Con really kicked on because I think Comic Con really turned on in the 70s and by the 80s it was fully going. And now it's in the 90s. It's just growing and growing. The San Diego Comic Con. So now, now it's like a whole. It's like a lifestyle for people, you know.

Yeah.

With cosplay. Yeah, so.

Yeah, for sure. All right, so let's go. Let's go back to the boxes. Yeah, yeah, you get all the boxes. They're in a room. What do you do first?

Oh my God. Well, basically what I have come to terms with the reality of it is. And what my goal now. And I did get 103 ring binders. And so what I had a friend come to help me, and that really focused me to prepare for work in a very calculated way. And what I worked on with him primarily was the morgue file. So basically going into those files, which are literally like actual paper files and like manila folder full of a subject matter. And what we're doing is putting the. Let's say it's giraffes, just using that subject. All the pictures of giraffes go into the plastic sheet protectors. And whether there's two pictures or one picture to be determined, whatever. But you basically put it in the slip sleeve, put it into the three ring binder, label the front of the binder with what subjects are in that binder, and then move on to the next file. So when you. When you have Probably, I'm guessing, 200 pages in each three ring binder, you're getting somewhere. I have not yet finished the morgue file yet. But that's. That's a good goal to have the entire. Because it's sort of like an Encyclopedia Britannica, if you will, of the old days. Of every. Every subject under the sun. We're talking, you know, like I said, mentioned New York. Of course, there's like, definitely women's fashion, men's fashion, because this. He started this thing in pre1927. I imagine he came to work in 1927 at age 16, prepared to work, and then therein started to collect imagery. So back then it was. You had to cut each little image out and keep it in a file. So I think, I'm guessing when it's all said and done, I'll have 300 binders. Maybe it'll be 30,000 pages. I don't know. I mean, Athena, because I know I've spent. It's a personal passion project, if you will. I'm just going at it like, hey, I have to get this done. It is costing me to do the project, but it's worth it because it's all about the presentation. So when I'm ready to present it, I'll be presenting binders with labels on the front and it's all handwritten. I'm very analogous. At least it'll be. You can flip the pages. So that's kind of it. Look at a subject, pull a subject, flip the pages. Whether it's interviews, interviewees like us today, except back then, this interview would have been done and published in a Comic book paper, doll reader, or those type of things. So, thankfully, with the Internet, we can get on it. So I'd love to go live every day with the archive. And I did do a show for a second. We did 114 episodes. Coffee. The Summerland kids and I dressed this way and, you know, and talked about Grandpa as much as I could, add a picture of my grandfather behind me, and that's what we did. So I am the face of the project. So here I. Here I am. Yeah. Representing Bill Wagen. Yeah.

What kind of surprises did you find in the boxes?

Oh, there's. There's some incredible stuff. I mean, there's really. It's like, you know, there may be a few risque things in there, you know, definitely only very few. You know, of course, there's the history of cars. There's a history of, of course, fashion history. There's an incredible, like, Western, cowboys, cowgirls, Indians. It's. I sort of like the history of America, essentially, in a nutshell, I'd say, too. Which. Which is fascinating. So it's very. It's. You're learning, and that's one thing I've always kind of realized. It's like I'm learning and taking on this information whether I know I'm taking in or not. Because when you're holding something, looking at something, even if it's just for a brief moment, you're absorbing it. So as an artist, that's kind of it. I'm just exposing myself to the grandeur of what someone specifically kept for a purpose. So it's intense. Yeah.

What are your next steps?

I'm thinking, you know, something like 600 hours, perhaps if you condense it with two people, that'd be great. It's all about man hours. And of course. And I'm not the best at math, but I do know that when you have two people working on something at the same time, you kind of. You get it done faster.

You should. Yeah.

I mean, two humans in a room working together for three hours is six man hours. So I like those numbers. I like four hours. I could do four hours a day. I have a life. I want to live outside of this, too, because I'm anxious to get back to my work and complete. Finish Grandpa. To be able to present, like, for example, get you and my cousin and whoever. Let's preview the project or preview the. The archive prior to someone showing up to essentially say, oh, what's the value of this? You know, it's like having American pickers out, but having them out when they're able to. Yeah. When they can look at, look at binders of information versus a box of papers full of papers. You're going, what are these papers?

Right.

You know, hello. Well, so that's, that's, that's what I'm up against.

It has more of a scholarly value when it's all assembled.

When it's all assembled.

Yeah. So it's not really. Not even a market value, but more of like a value of a contribution to people that want to study art.

And that's exactly right. Yeah. Thank you for that. That's. And that's the most important thing for me. That's. That's my heart. My heart is then that in that, in those, those words that you just said. That is where my heart is in this whole thing. Yeah. It's all about academia, all about, all about learning and all about the, the future. Fans. The fans now to be able to, you know, research it like what you're doing when you go to the colleges or these, you know, pop culture institutions. That's what it's all about for me. So, you know, other aspects of the project. There, of course, there is a bottom line and there's a reality, and perhaps someone will pay for it because they want to be the person that holds the information. I mean, that's, that's a little bit beyond my scope, but I know that's a part of it, so. Yeah.

Well, let's talk for a couple minutes about you as an artist because tell us a little bit about the art that you do.

Well, one of the things I do is I. This is a funny little fashion thing, but I make these ties and I sign them on the back. This is in white, but nonetheless. So I get tires from cars and I roll over the ties with tires to create the print, essentially. So that's one little funny thing I came up with a while back. So I've always been interested in art, of course, and I started doing fabric painting in, I would say, the 90s. I worked on cars in high school. That kind of carried through as a career. I told a friend today I probably would have, if I was a little more straight laced in my early teens and tweens and twenties, I probably would have gone straight to art school. But I was trained, essentially formal training by the men I worked with at the. At a place called. One of them was the prototype source where they built cars of the future. We worked on. They did do a wind tunnel model for the Oscar Mayer Weenie Mobile, which is hilarious. And then they did the Hershey Kissmobile, the Planter's Peanut Hot Rod. They did a concept car for Volkswagen, the New Beetle. The Bug, essentially, as you see it today, okay, was essentially the prototype was completed at the company that I work for. So working with, working with clients like Pfizer, Hershey, Audi, Volkswagen, Chevy, Pontiac, you know, all those major companies. So essentially I worked at a company that was doing design work for them and creating prototypes. And so that was an amazing hands on activity. So I was very like blessed. So I took my own work to Los Angeles in 2004. I did Burning Man 2003 and then 04, I did Coachella Music Festival or 40506. And those years were very pivotal in the EDM electronic music world. There's a video, video with. That's when Daft Punk took their pyramid and took it to Coachella and did their thing in the Sahara tent. And it's like a notable moment and my work was outside. And that year Coachella asked me to make my work 400ft long. I thought that was completely crazy because previously it was 138ft long. So to grow it like triple the size overnight. So I did that on budget. They asked, they did give me a budget, thankfully to enlarge the work. And so by working with Coachella Music festival, music and art festival, that's how I kind of found them because they were advertising themselves as a music and art festival. So I'm like, what's up with that? And so I found them and they, they asked me, what's it going to take to make this happen? I said camping passes and event passes. And they said, I think we, I think we can do this. Because I didn't want to put any, anything in between me and making the project happen.

Maybe you should have asked for snacks too though. Snacks and water.

Yeah. Well, they did put us up in the artist camping area, which essentially is you put you pitch a tent on the grass. But nonetheless, I did get involved in the music industry. Music festival industry, I should say I did the Baltimore Virgin Music Festival. The Beastie Boys played, I think Sting played Amy Winehouse. So it was amazing to be essentially that year. Also the people at the Baltimore Virgin Music Festival had me bookend the stage left and right with my art. So it was really magical and special to be taken into essentially these festivals are like families of people building these festivals. So blessed in that way. And I always took a real professional kind of look and feel of my crew. I would make my own crew outfits and hats and T shirts and things to distinguish us as these guys are together. They're part of the crew kind of thing. So I just love to do it that way. And that helped. And then I went towards the art galleries and did at Burke Green Gallery, downtown Los Angeles, and also Mona Museum of Neon Art, because I've done a lot of my work. Most famous stuff is black light art installations. So I've definitely kind of have a multifaceted love for, you know, furniture design, of course, car stuff, but fashion art, installation work, which is a weird thing. Kind of like. Christo is known as an art installation, installation artist. He did the Gates in New York and an umbrella project in California as well. In Japan is the same time. So there's many different artists that inspire me, of course. So art and artists and art galleries and art lofts and just that life is. I pretty much dedicated myself to the artist's life. It's not always very. What would you say, financially beneficial?

Yes, as a writer, I hear that.

So that's the reality. But the heart, our heart is in it, and that's what matters. Right? So.

Yeah, right.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, totally.

All right.

Amazing to chat with you today.

Yeah. People want to find you online. Where they can they find you?

You can find me on Instagram. I'm Jerico101, also on Instagram at installation art Jerico. And then of course, on Facebook, just my name, Jerico Woggon.

All right, good deal. Thanks a lot for coming on and talking to me today.

Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah, cheers.

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