The Wonderful World of Twimericks

Posted on | May 21, 2010 | No Comments

One of the sweet, simple joys of my childhood was reading the Sunday comics. Page after page of brightly colored, bite-size entertainment tidily placed in uniform little frames evoked pure delight. Several times I attempted to create a cast of characters for my own comic-strip but lost interest when I realized how much time, imagination and dedication it took.

Once Lou Brooks discovered his passion for the funnies, he never let it go. The illustrator/author/designer who considers himself the World’s Oldest Kid has shaped an incredible career with his outrageous creations. His illustrations have appeared in just about every publication you can think of, he redesigned the Monopoly guy in the ’80s, he has created artwork for tons of big-time clients, had his art animated for television, and written numerous books.

Lou has a masterful ability to keep the old-school comic style alive, while introducing it to new generations as the totally hip and modern medium that it is. His most recent book, a playful romp through the land of wordplay, called, Twimericks: The Book of Tongue-Twisting Limericks, has captured the attention of children and adults alike, with it’s lovingly juvenile subject matter, eye-catching images, and brain-stumbling stanzas that set any tongue a-twisting.

The National Cartoonists Society has taken notice too, and nominated Twimericks for a Reuben Award (named after and designed by cartoonist Rube Goldberg) for Best Illustrated Book of the year.

Lou was gracious enough to spend some time giving House of Cat the inside story of his formative years, his word-nerdiness and the creation of Twimericks.

Why Twimericks? Why now?
As far as me getting the idea… lightning hardly ever hits like in the movies (although I was in a movie theater once when lightning actually did hit). But there’s no Nutty Professor suddenly discovering a secret potion. The idea of Twimericks rattled around in my head along with a lot of other stuff for maybe five years. Then another couple years to work it out as a book. So, it’s come to me over a long time.

If you look in my brain with a flashlight through either of my ears (although my friends will tell you that you’re looking at the wrong end of me), you’ll see this enormous pile of junk: puns and poetry and puzzles and Lewis Carroll and Mad Magazine and Tex Avery and George Carlin and on and on. And every word of every “dirty” rhyme or song that I ever heard on the school playground is still strangely in there. That part fascinates my wife. But I’ve always been both a puzzle and a poetry addict. If people say, “He was here on earth to make sure tongue twisters and limericks got together,” that’s not so bad. I was best man at the wedding.

What makes a good Twimerick?
Well, just about anybody can write a plain limerick. Five lines based on the “hickory-dickory-dock” meter. It’s easy. That’s why there are so many of them. But a good twimerick can be very difficult to write. With each one, I sadistically intend to trick your mouth into trying something it would never do on its own. Like a word that’s almost the previous word, but spelled differently. Then here it comes again, backwards. Or maybe just part of it, and so forth. I’ll convince your eyes that they’re about to see a word next in a sentence, but it’s not going to be there, yet your mouth tries to say it anyway. Sometimes I intentionally change the meter into some clumsy rhythm, and there are suddenly too many words crammed in the line. Reading one of those can be like driving a car with a clutch for the first time. It’s funny, but a few weeks ago the book was reviewed in a magazine by a librarian: “…achieves some success, though many of the syllables disrupt the rhythm of the poems.” I figure her car’s an automatic.

What is your favorite Twimerick and why?
Hard to say. Maybe Is He Izzy, Ozzy? That one works perfectly on so many levels. Just the way the words work together, even the names: Izzy Oddley and Ozzy Iddley. And the “Izzy Oddley-Ozzy Iddley quiz line.” And “Izzy’s Ozzy and vice verse-a / And to make the matter worse-a” and all of that. It makes me swoon. Writing that one was like getting a gift.

I’m also partial to A Flatulent Platypus, and Frankly, Frank Fankley, which is about a man finding a snot-drenched hanky in his frankfurter bun. They’re the two grossest twimericks in the book. But the readers often seem to like those two the best also, which really pleases me. My readers and I seem to have the same tastes.

How many titles did you go through before you decided on Twimericks?
The word twimericks evolved through eons of pressure from the earth’s crust. At first, I proposed it to a sophisticated magazine as My Garden of Tongue-Listing Twimericks, but they turned it down as too juvenile. Soon after that, Monte Beauchamp published ten of them under that same title in Blab! Later on, I messed around with naming the book Frankly, Frank Fankley, after one of the limericks. My publisher bought it as My Garden, etc., but they thought it was too long, and we finally shortened it to just Twimericks.

What’s the most memorable thing you’ve heard about Twimericks?
That would be when my publisher said, “Here’s your contract and here’s your check!” I guess the other would be that it’s been nominated by The National Cartoonists Society for this year’s Reuben Award for Best Illustrated Book.

I’ve seen some of your unused illustrations from Twimericks. How do you go about creating image ideas and then deciding which ones to use?
I knew that the project was an opportunity to make some art in a different way. But I think the hardest thing for me from the very beginning was deciding who the Twimericks audience was going to be. So, I tried all kinds of things. A lot of them reflect me changing my mind week-to-week about that audience thing. Somehow, I finally convinced myself that it was for kids, even grown-up ones, so I tried to get a little more of that “pleasantness” into it, compared to my usual hard-line style. Although, I admit, though, I’m not a My Little Pony guy – not that there’s anything wrong with that! But a good friend of mine in LA recently told me on the phone: “I love your new book. It’s so cute.” It just about killed me, he was so sincere about it! I’ve tried so hard to get through my career without ever being called that.

On the bright side, since I started all this, I’ve learned a lot about kids as an audience, and I’m happy to say that, thanks to the world, kids are getting more cynical by the minute these days. So, there’s hope for me yet!

How did your life as (I’m assuming here) a word-nerd begin?
“Word-nerd” is an excellent way to describe me. My mother and aunt were astounded that I was reading by around age four. My mother got me a library card, and my aunt was always bringing books to me, great books… “Through the Looking Glass,” “Tom Swift,” The Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen. I still have them. But I really learned to read by looking at the newspaper comics every afternoon. Reading the Sundays was an all-day thing. All those characters and the words in big capital letters over their heads. That got me started. Of course, once I got my hands on comic books, that was the world to me.

Can you talk about the connection between your illustrations and your writing?
Once again, I give most all the credit (or blame!) to the comics. I grew up with my belly on the living room rug and the funnies in front of me, thinking that a truly great masterful artist could only be one who could both draw and write a story for the funnies every day. I mean, could Michelangelo do this? Or Rembrandt or Picasso? Well, let me tell you something, mister… Al Capp could do it! So could Chester Gould! And Charles Schulz and Jimmy Hatlo and Bob Kane and Roy Crane and Rube Goldberg and Walt Kelly and on and on and on.

Now that you’re totally into Lou Brooks and his work, be sure to check out LouBrooks.com, Twimericks.com, and Lou’s blog.

Category: Art, Culture, Design, Paper Art, Typography, Wordage
Tags: comics > funnies > illustration > Lou Brooks > Twimericks

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The Wonderful World of Twimericks

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