Artist Spotlight: Tom Eaton

I wanted to do a quick artist spotlight on Tom Eaton, best known for his work in Boy's Life Magazine.

I used to have a subscription to Boy's Life when I was a kid; unfortunately I didn't keep any of them, as they just weren't...I don't know, not really worth keeping. I just remember it as being 90% toy advertisements, some "how to get along with others" advice, the same camping article reprinted 20 million times, and some half-funny comics. As the years went on, the advertisements got bigger and louder, the articles became less interesting, and the comics section got shorter and shorter.

But there was one gem hidden in the midst of the mediocrity: artist Tom Eaton. He wrote and illustrated "The Wacky Adventures of Pedro" (BL's burro mascot), "Dink & Duff", and myriad other comics, crossword puzzles, games, and short pieces. He was the magazine's resident cartoonist, and about the only reason I actually read the magazine.

Here's a recent example of "Pedro":



Yeah, I know, big laffs...naturally the humor was on the blah side. I have a feeling that, without the strictures imposed by the magazine, Pedro would have been a lot more anarchic; I get a sense that Tom Eaton is a very smart writer who's not allowed to let loose. Shades of Carl Barks of Scrooge McDuck fame, ce n'est pas?

But the art...this was my first exposure to surrealism. You can see shades of "Krazy Kat" in the background, only taken to the nth degree. The graphical quality and linework are very precise, all geometric shapes and discreet organic forms, yet it all adds up to something very bizarre. Even as an art-ignorant youth I would stare and stare at the shading: in the inset panel, second tier, the beige control panel has modest little hashes. In the main panel, second tier, Pedro is underlined with a perfect little scribble, while the green frame of the teleporter has these tick-marks like a graduated cylinder. His use of color also made him stand out from the rest of the herd, who seemed hell-bent on different shades of beige, or (in later issues) threw it on like candy coating. Mr. Eaton knows what he's doing.

But what fascinated me the most was the weird organic machinery (circular panel, top tier). They're these swooping, staggered forms, resembling the heads of wading birds; intricacy is created by contoured geometric shapes, little dots, and different tints. There was a time when I would make these weird drawings of "conduits" (as my sister called them), fill up a page with pipes and cables and leads and microchips, and this was my inspiration.

And in a way, the sci-fi was also beautiful - wacky, true, but there was a certain wistfulness to it, a wonder. I remember a Dink & Duff comic from way back in 1996, where our heroes visit a water planet. There's a shot of the weird spaceship (see machinery, above) swinging down toward the planet, which has craggy, circular islands. I could only find one panel, and it's been doctored - some lowlife inserted their own text into the second word balloon.


(Although 20,000 miles of beaches might provoke that reaction...)


Note the oddly charming spaceship in the upper right-hand corner.

I understand if some might be turned off by Mr. Eaton's precision: everything is very geometric and polished, not a line out of place. For me, though, that's part of the appeal. Even the panel above, with its series of obsessive wave lines, the perfect demarcation of water, beach, and sky, the symmetry created by the word balloons on the left, and the spaceship, aliens, and birds on the right, with the moon in the middle: extremely planned-out and calculated, yet for me it never loses its charm.

Unfortunately, Mr. Eaton doesn't show up on the internet. The best you'll get of an archive is the boyslife.org site, with "Pedro" comics going back to 2010. A lot of Google searching turns up this 1970 book, illustrated by Tom Eaton:



He also did four or five other titles for Scholastic in the '70's, which appear on Amazon sans cover art. It's a real drag. I was hoping to find at least a partial omnibus of his work (every cartoonist has a book out these days), but probably the best I can do is find old Boy's Life's at the library and scan them. It's really a shame that Tom Eaton doesn't have a slightly bigger profile; I'm just worried that much of his amazing work will be lost due to simple apathy.

Now, Faithful Reader, here's your chance to help Rick! Do you  know where a Tom Eaton collected works can be found?! Answer below in the comments!! Act now, before time runs out!!!

Rick Out.