Now all he needed to do was
sneak the strip past Ray Katz and his cartoons would be read... this time
by the entire university. As planned the strip was delivered to the Avion
staff, and as promised, they sneaked it into the newspaper without Katz’s
knowing. On February 15th, the first Klyde Morris appeared on the bottom
left corner of the editorial page, a spot that the strip would occupy for
the more than a decade. The strip was an instant hit. The university’s
students, administrators, employees and most importantly, President Hunt
all loved it and Ray Katz could never again entertain a thought of touching
Wes’ work.
Over the next few years, Wes
began to hit a remarkable series of editorial home runs with Klyde Morris.
Targets were hit in their most sensitive locations and Wes’ sharp wit caused
a great deal of deflation among the self-important blow-hards. Student
gripes were worked into the strips, administrative misconduct was placed
in the spotlight and just good old fun was made of the entire university
system. Additionally, Wes found the discipline in grammar and spelling
that he had never had impressed upon him in public school, and his English
dysfunction was repaired through Klyde Morris. In fact, looking at his
transcript will show nearly straight “A”s his English courses... he only
wishes he could have done that well in all of the other classes. In the
fall of 1979, unfortunately, Wes ran short of money and was forced for
the first of many times to forego his return to campus in order to remain
home and work to earn enough money to return to school. This was the beginning
of a pattern that would see the cartoonist in and out of school for the
next nine years as he worked his way toward a degree. In that autumn of
‘79’ hiatus, an odd thing happened with the Klyde Morris cartoon- the Avion
editors did not want the strip to be absent from the paper even though
the author was not on campus, so they demanded that Wes write and send
in his cartoons while he was not in school. For that reason, although Wes
was sometimes out of school for as long as two years at a stretch, Klyde
Morris continued to appear in the Avion. Through the years, the character
matured and evolved. Features such as the “late night, part-time switchboard
operator”, Klyde Morris’ own disc-jockey like alter-ego, became a recurring
standard in the strip.
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