Ed
At some bespeak in my impressionable youth, I was exposed to certain "corrupting influences" that twisted my little brain into a fevered pop culture pretzel and made me not only want draw comics and cartoons, only draw outrageous and weird comics and cartoons.

One was my discovery of paperback reprints of Eastward.C. Mad comics from the 1950's with the hilariously subversive art of Wally Wood, Will Elderberry and Jack Davis, and another was the outlandishly exaggerated, lurid and over the top monster and hot rod car art of Ed "Big Daddy" Roth.

Roth was ane of the seminal figures in the "Kalifornia Kustom Kar Kulture" of the early 1960's. Roth was into the cosmos of hot rods and customized testify cars, peculiarly using the amazing new wonder material of fiberglass, that enabled him to design free form bodies for his cars instead of just cutting into existing metallic bodies.

To support the investment necessary for his obsession, Roth would use an airbrush to draw outrageous drawing monsters and grotesquely exaggerated cars on T-shirts at car shows and drag races. These were the drawings that turned my tender lilliputian 12 twelvemonth one-time brain into glowing orangish gook when I saw them.

Wonderfully grotesque monsters, extended tongues dripping saliva as they trailed in the wind, bloodshot eyes jutting from their distended craniums, usually with one ungainly arm extended to crank on an improbably long and weirdly curved gear shift lever, drove nitro-burning hot rods with gleaming chrome plated engines extending through their hoods, exhaust pipes spewing white hot flames and smoke pouring off of enormous tortured racing slicks as the cars lifted themselves in eternal wheelies, feverishly screaming down Hell's drag strip to some kind of dramatic reward or explosive oblivion. Wow.

It'due south difficult to overstate how bizarre and anti-establishment this kind of stuff was at the time Roth was working, because all of this lowbrow art, outragrously grotesque creatures and characters in films and concept art, cloak-and-dagger comics, 60's psychedelic art and album covers, MTV-style in-your-face Television receiver stone, grunge and punk culture, and general acceptance of wild, anti-authoritarian beliefs as acceptably rembunctious, that we accept for granted equally part of modern pop culture, didn't exist withal, with the exception of certain bastions of outrageous art similar the aforementioned 1950'south Mad comics and Eastward.C. horror comics, which were certainly an influence on Roth's cartoons. Most of the country was withal wrapped in the warm but rigidly controlled Leave it to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet delusions of the 1950's up until 1964 or and then, when "the 60's" started to shake things apart.

Roth's images became tremendously popular and one of his characters, the Rat Fink (image higher up, lower right), became a cultural icon. Roth was able to parlay his images into licensing deals for T-shirts and decals, forth with trade similar the Revell model kit versions of his prove cars. He became successful enough to utilise other artists, similar Ed Newton and Robert Williams, to produce art for him.

For a fascinating glimpse into this Kustom Kar Kulture of the early 1960's see Tom Wolfe'south wonderful essay The Kandy Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Babe. Though it features George Barris a scrap more prominently than Roth, in it, Wolfe makes the insightful ascertainment, with which I agree, that these custom cars were so radical and free grade in their curvulinear molded fiberglass bodies and half inch thick hand-rubbed layers of translucent lacquer, that they transcended mere automotive customizing and ascended into the realm of modern sculpture.

Roth'south cars went well beyond the "normal" (if such a word can apply to the custom car civilization at all) customs that had been hot rodded, painted and perhaps chopped and channeled (had their roof lines lowered and bodies set lower on their chassis). "Crackpot Brigand", for example, didn't mess around with a chopped summit or cut-out roof panels, but sported instead a bubble superlative, a transparent hemispherical dome that looked like information technology had been plucked off of a cartoon flight saucer, and featured a joy stick steering control. The bubble height was carried on to some of Roth's other Kustom Kreations, like the Mysterion, which looked similar it might have been jointly designed by Syd Mead and Richard Powers (image of the Revell model kit box encompass, illustrated past some other artist, to a higher place, lower left).

These fantastic sculptured cars past Roth, George Barris, Bill Cushenberry and Darryl Starbird, forth with the the pinstriping and auto body airbrush fine art of Von Dutch, and Roth's outrageous monster car T-shirt and decal art, were the beginnings of the mod lowbrow/outsider art phenomenon known equally "pop surrealism".

Roth is at present talked of as the Andy Warhol of lowbrow art/pop surrealism (though I prefer Wolfe'due south comparison to Dali), a imprint held high by Robert Williams, who, after working for Roth for some time, went on to be one of the more influential clandestine comix artists of the mid-sixties (and ane of my favorites), eventually founded Juxtapoz mag and became a central effigy in lowbrow art circles.

Along the way Roth's influence helped institute a need for car culture comics, notably CARtoons and Drag Cartoons from Peterson Publishing, in which Roth was occasionally a character, and which featured artists like Mark Millar, Gilbert Shelton, William Stout and Alex Toth (some of Toth'due south car civilization work is bachelor in a book called I for the Route from Auad Publishing). You can add these to the list of comics that helped distort the part of my brain that takes demented glee in outrageous comic art.

Ed Roth is currently in the spotlight in the form of an exhibit of 17 of his original pen and ink drawings (some of which expect like they have Williams' touch) for T-shirts and decals at the La Luz de Jusus Gallery in Los Angeles, which runs from at present to July ane, 2007. Juxtapoz has an article and photo essay on the evidence's opening.

Unfortunately the "official" Big Daddy Roth site is less than cherry, only there are other resources bachelor.

There is a collection of his fine art, Rat Fink: The Fine art of Ed "Big Daddy" Roth by Douglas Nason, Greg Escalante, Doug Harvey, and he is featured prominently in Kustom Kulture: Von Dutch, Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, Robert Williams and Others.

Y'all may also be able to notice some older titles, Ed "Big Daddy" Roth: His Life, Times, Cars, and Art by Pat Ganahl, Confessions of a Rat Fink: The Life and Times of Ed "Large Daddy" Roth and "Hot Rods by Ed "Big Daddy" Roth by Ed Roth and Tony Thacker. I've tried to pull together some online resources beneath.

In that location is a documentary pic about Roth, Tales of the Rat Fink (official site here), by Ron Isle of mann (who also made Comic Book Confidential).

You can see my ain little tribute to "Large Daddy" Roth in this page and this page from Argon Zark!, my webcomic; which carries more than a fiddling of his influence.

Link to gallery exhibit via BoingBoing