Klyde Morris

As long as there has been Klyde Morris, ladies have been asking me the question, “Why don’t you have any girl ants?” My response has always been truthful- I simply do not draw them well.

The fact is that in some of my earliest cartoons there were female ants. For example, the little old lady stow-away in my 1975 cartoon “Scareport”.

Later in “Scareport 76” there was a female flight attendant ant.

Recently, as Klyde Morris has become increasingly popular on the Internet, I have again come under pressure to create a female ant. The most intense bugging has come from my sister-in-law Karen, who not only wants a female ant character, but wants her to be an aviation mechanic as well.

My excuse of, “I don’t draw them well...” grew so thin that I was forced to show Karen my concept of a female ant.

This rendering was instantly disapproved by not only my sister-in-law, but also by my wife. They said something about the hair looking like dreadlocks.

So I picked up my handy sketch book and drew a new rendition of the female ant.

This concept was also instantly and intensely disapproved... for reasons that are still a mystery to me.

At my wits end I gave Karen my sketch book and told her, “Here, you make a woman approved version of the female ant and I’ll start putting them into the cartoons. After I drew the basic head outline, Karen came up with a female ant concept.

Which both her and my wife approved of.

So, when you feminist readers see the appearance of the female ants in the cartoons, I don’t wanna hear any crap. They were created and approved by women without any input from the author. Of course if I decide to start dressing them in spike heels and teddies... that will be another issue.

Cartoonist Wes Oleszewski pushes his sister-in-law’s patience to the breaking point during the creation of the female ant concept as Klyde Morris offers advice.

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