Sid Couchey
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sid Couchey (May 24, 1919 – ) is an American cartoonist best-known for his illustration work on the Harvey Comics characters Richie Rich, Little Lotta and Little Dot. His style is known for big, friendly faces and a sharp sense of visual humor.
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[edit] Childhood and early career
Couchey was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He counts Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon, Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon and Howard Pyle among his influences.
After enrolling in the Landon School of Cartooning, a correspondence course out of Cleveland, he continued to practice his craft on the back of his school papers. When he was 14, he wrote to Walt Disney, and "asked when I should come...I've sharpened my pencils...I'm ready". However, Disney told Sid that they weren't quite ready for him.
He graduated from the Art Career School and the Cartoonists and Illustrators School, both located in New York City. For his first job after art school, Couchey assisted John Lehti on the comic strips Tommy of the Big Top and Tales from the Great Book. In his home, Sid has framed an original piece from the Great Book strip, in which he appears as the census taker and scribe for the Pharaoh.
In the early 1950's, Sid worked on backgrounds for the Lassie, Big Town and Howdy Doody TV tie-in books. His first complete work was published in Hoot Gibson #6 and several Couchey-illustrated stories appear in Heroic Comics, published by Famous Funnies. His stories were printed in Issues #62, 70, 71, 74, 75, 76, 78, 80 and 82.
[edit] Harvey Comics (late 1950’s – 1980’s)
Sid Couchey's "big break" came when Harvey Comics advertised for cartoonists. A few of Sid's fellow graduates, who had started an art studio of their own, told him about the advertisements. At Harvey, Couchey's distinctive artwork began appearing in the Richie Rich, Little Dot, and Little Lotta titles throughout the 50's and 60's, with reprints that ran for many years. Contrary to popular belief, Sid did not create these famous Harvey characters--but he did have carte blanche to change attitudes or events. According to Sid, "One time they had Little Lotta facing a mean bulldog, and the script called for her to bash or kick him or something, and I didn't think that was keeping with her, so I changed that to have her subdue it in a somewhat less brutal way, and tie it up or something...so in that sense, I would change the story, but it was changing more to keep in character."
[edit] Later career (1983 - present)
In the spring of 1994, Sid Couchey received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Kansas City Comics Convention. Also in attendance at the ComiCon were John Byrne, George Perez, and Lee Falk, who bore a striking resemblance to Sid. Sid and Lee played on this, and dressed alike during the convention for their fans.
Couchey has kept busy with local artwork, especially with many cartoons devoted to Champ, the Monster of Lake Champlain. A second cousin to Scotland's "Nessie", Champy has been sighted for centuries in the Port Henry region of Lake Champlain, even by Samuel de Champlain himself (who described the creature as a 20-foot-long serpent with the head of a horse).
In addition to his work with Champy, Sid created the characters of Rascal Raccoon and the Drinking Dog/Cool Cat as part of an alcohol-awareness program for the State of Vermont. These characters were featured in various posters and animated TV spots to present an anti-alcohol message to children.
Sid and his wife Ruth still make appearances at book signings and film premieres (the Richie Rich movie, for example), in addition to visiting cartoon museums and libraries. Recently, Sid has completed a series of paintings that echo his professional training--Champy in the Style of the Old Masters, which has been on display in Plattsburgh and at the Ticonderoga Cartoon Museum, both located in New York State. In this collection, Couchey portrays the famous lake-serpent as he would have been painted by Seurat and Picasso, among others.
On June 21st, 2002, Sid--a lifelong Cleveland Indians fan--got a chance to throw out the first pitch at a Cleveland vs. Montreal Expos game, thus becoming a member of the First Ball Pitcher's Hall of Fame (complete with his own baseball cards).
Sid also provided the interior artwork for Tom Tyler Tales—and Tom Tyler Tales, Too—two independently-produced comic books dedicated to the memory of Tom Tyler, a B-movie cowboy hero and matinee idol born in Port Henry, New York.
Sid and Ruth Couchey live in Essex, New York and have two children--Brian and Laura--and many grandchildren.
[edit] "Local Hero"
In 1964, Sid drew The Story of the Champlain Valley to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Plattsburgh, in northern New York State. It was serialized in Plattburgh's newspaper, the Press-Republican. Samuel de Champlain, the first European to visit the Champlain Valley, is employed as the narrator of the series; it can be compared to Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe in style and format (if not in scope!). The series covered over 200 years of history in only a few dozen panels, and was collected in a reprint edition, Our Champlain Story—and is still in print today.
Cartoonists and comic-book artists love to add in-jokes to their work, and Sid is no exception. He included local references in dozens of books. The residents of northern New York State would be surprised to find the names of nearby towns in the pages of a Harvey book. In one Little Lotta story, Couchey drew a strip around an athletic contest between the towns of Keeseville and Willsboro. Years later, Sid met a basketball coach from Keeseville, who had been wondering "how the heck [our town] ever got in that comic and why they had to lose to Willsboro!" This story, entitled "Not Qualified", appears in Little Dot's Uncles and Aunts #8.
On that note, it's also worth tracking down the April 1960 (Vol. 1, No. 55) issue of Little Dot, because Sid Couchey appears in a Little Lotta strip entitled "Problem Child", along with his then-fiancée Ruth Horne. According to his wife, Sid proposed to her with that story. They were married on November 14, 1959.
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] Digital
·*Lambiek.net – Sid Couchey ·*[1] ·* [2]
