Arn Saba
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Arn Saba (b. 1947, Vancouver, British Columbia - ) is a Canadian cartoonist, writer, media personality, stage performer and composer. Originally named Arnold Alexander Saba, Jr., he shortened it to Arn at age 16; and then changed it again in 1993, when he changed gender and became Katherine Shannon Collins.
Born of a Lebanese-Canadian father and a Scottish-Canadian mother (Miriam Allison McBain), Saba grew up in the affluent Kerrisdale district of Vancouver. His maternal great-grandmother was Mary Adda "Dolly" Collins (née Rombaugh), a painter, writer and illustrator in the Winnipeg area in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It was in her honour that Katherine Collins took her surname. Saba's (Collins's) mother was also a writer and cartoonist, who gave her child his first lessons. Saba attended Kerrisdale Elementary School, Point Grey Secondary School, and Magee Secondary School, with slightly-better than average grades.
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[edit] Early works
In 1965, Saba began the University of British Columbia on a Creative Writing scholarship, but devoted almost all his time while at UBC to the campus daily paper, The Ubyssey, where he created his first comic strip, Moralman (1965-1968), and also wrote and illustrated articles.
Saba discontinued going to UBC after the 1967-68 year, opting instead to risk a career in the arts. In June 1968, with his creative partner Gordon Fidler, Saba spent a 6-month internship in Montreal, at the National Film Board of Canada. This award was given on the strength of Fidler and Saba's one-hour experimental comedy film, Dancing Nigel (1965-66) (starring Saba). While at the NFB, Saba directed and edited a short musical film, Euphoria, which frankly celebrated hippies and drug use. It was distributed by the NFB, but not for very long.
In 1969 and 1972, Saba and Fidler co-created two books, The Magenta Frog, and The Second Magenta Frog, billed as "children's books for adults". Saba made most of his income, 1969-73, peddling these books in coffee houses and on campuses, from Vancouver to San Francisco. In 1972-73, Saba and Fidler were given a Canadian Film Development Corporation grant for a feature film, Birdland, which was filmed, but never completed when Saba and Fidler went their separate ways.
From 1974-77, Saba was Art Director for Pacific Yachting magazine (Vancouver), and other magazines from InterPress Publications, while at the same time developing his cartooning, and becoming a member of a stage troupe, Circus Minimus (founded by Ida Carnevali), which toured British Columbia doing avant-garde and experimental circus-like shows for all ages. On stage, Saba first played Clancy the Cop (later a cartoon character), and then Professor Smoothie, a know-nothing braggart whose forté was being booed off the stage amidst a hail of thrown garbage from the audience. Saba also wrote and performed songs for Circus Minimus.
In 1975, Saba began appearances on Vancouver's local CBC Radio programmes, as a commentator and comedian.
In 1977, Saba moved to Toronto, to try for success in a larger arena. He immediately began appearing on, and eventually producing, segments of the popular national CBC Radio programme, Morningside, where he usually paired with host Don Harron for free-wheeling discussions of favourite old comic strips and other pop culture; as well, he wrote, produced and acted in scores of comedy skits. He also made similar appearances on CBC Television, on the Don McLean show. In his appearances he demonstrated, with humor, his enthusiasm and knowledge of cartooning, comics history, theatre and music. (Some of these radio and TV appearances can now be found online at http://archives.cbc.ca/IDCC-1-68-2352-13874/arts_entertainment/canadian_comics/.
In 1978, Saba began writing articles on pop-culture topics (mostly comics) for national Canadian magazines, such as Weekend, The Canadian, Quest, and others.
In 1979, Saba wrote and produced a five-part radio documentary on CBC, The Continuous Art, exploring the cultural position of comics. It featured interviews with some of cartooning's greatest names, including Milton Caniff, Hal Foster (his last interview), Floyd Gottfredson, Hugo Pratt, Will Eisner, Jules Feiffer and Russ Manning. Saba spent several years (late seventies - early eighties) travelling throughout North America, interviewing famous cartoonists, many of them old. (Many of these lengthy interviews were later printed uncut in The Comics Journal in the 1980s and 90s.)
In 1982, Saba moved (for the first of four times) to California, ceasing all other media activity in favour of cartooning.
[edit] Neil the Horse
Saba's most famous creation is Neil the Horse. The series ran in Canadian newspapers from 1975-1982 (Great Lakes Publishing syndicate, Toronto); and in 15 comic book issues from 1983-1988, published by Aardvark-Vanaheim/Renegade Press.
With a drawing style based in Disney comics, as well as in early-20th-Century Sunday pages, Saba added something new to comics: music. The motto for the series was Making the World Safe for Musical Comedy, and many issues of the comic book feature the characters singing and dancing. When the characters are shown hoffing it, it is to original choreography.
Saba had a vaudevillian approach, changing the format of his comics several times within each issue. This variety act included the comic strip, comic book stories, illustrated stories, originally composed sheet music, crossword puzzles, joke pages and more. In the letters column, the characters themselves answered the mail. To top it off, there were paper dolls and fashion pages, in the Katy Keene tradition. It seems like a modern version of early twentieth-century hardbound children's annuals (especially in Britain) using an endless variety of formats, something rarely seen in comics.
Some of the material were reprints from Arn Saba's newspaper comic strip versions of the same characters. At its best, the material was inspiring. Saba's "Fred Astaire Tribute" (issues 11 and 13) showed the cartoonist at the top of his form.
The stars of Neil the Horse include Mam'Selle Poupée (French for doll), Soapy (an alley-cat) and of course Neil. Poupée's body is jointed like a Barbie figurine. With the red circles on her cheeks, curly hair, large bust and thin waistline, the French-accented Poupée appears to be a cross between Raggedy-Ann and Dolly Parton. The more developed comics stories involving the three characters show that Soapy and Neil's adventures primarily revolve around the trio's attempts to attain show-business success. Neil is a happy go-lucky (and not too bright) horse with a mania for bananas. Soapy is street-wise and cynical (with a heart of gold), a cigar-smoker and a drinker, who serves as their manager and the brains of the operation. All three of the characters sing, dance, and play music.
While existing as a fantasy with nostalgic style, the stories and style within Neil the Horse also pay tribute to the present (the 1980s). Poupee wears headbands and works out a la Olivia Newton-John. Neil gets down and breakdances in urban city streets to the accompaniment of a boom box. In "Video Wars" (issues 4-7), the gang comes in contact with characters that inhabit an arcade game.
Arn Saba also completed a graphic-novel-length Neil the Horse adventure, and an illustrated Neil children's book, that have yet to be published. The final issue of the comic book series demonstrate Saba's prolonged and elaborate efforts to pitch Neil as an animated series. From 1998-93, the "property" (Neil and characters) was optioned three times by Hollywood studios and networks, but was never produced. Saba's business partner for these attempts was John Gertz, president of Zorro Productions (Berkeley, CA).
There was also a 1982 Neil the Horse musical radio adventure (Neil the Horse and The Big Banana) that was twice broadcast in five episodes, in Canada on CBC Radio. Saba wrote the book, music and lyrics, and played the part of Neil. The play was unanimously reviewed with raves across the country, but Saba's subsequent efforts to mount his later musical-comedy projects were unsuccessful. In 1986, Arn Saba wrote and produced a twelve-song Neil the Horse music tape, with all new material, which was sold through the comic book. Both the play and the tape were produced with a full twelve-piece band, and live tap-dancers, in jazzy Broadway style.
[edit] After Neil the Horse
Neil the Horse comics were published from 1983 to 1988. In 1993 Arn Saba changed gender and became Katherine Collins. She gave up cartooning in the mid-1990s after her Neil the Horse graphic novel could not be published, and her commercial cartooning work was not lucrative. She has shied from any publishing or public presence since then, except for two issues as Art Director of TNT (Transsexual News Telegraph) magazine, 1999-2000.
Having lived in San Francisco since 1990, Collins was deported from the United States in 2005, under the Patriot Act, for "crimes of moral turpitude". (She had an old conviction for possessing psilocybin mushrooms.) She now lives in Vancouver, Canada. In 2005, she was diagnosed with AML Leukemia, and entered treatment at St. Paul's Hospital, Vancouver.
In 2006, she was declared in remission from leukemia. Her comment on that was "I failed to die."
[edit] Personal life
Prior to changing genders, Saba had many relationships with women, none of them long-lasting.
In January 1995, a few months after her transsexual surgery, the newly-named Katherine Collins met Dr. Bobbie Bentley (Barbara Ellen Bentley), who quickly became her domestic partner and great love. Bentley, a physician who had been forced to retire by a brain injury in a car accident, was a "bulldyke" (her term) or butch lesbian, who dressed in snappy, well-pressed men's clothes. Until Bentley's death from cancer in July 1999, Collins happily termed herself Bentley's wife, and they collaborated together on a number of projects within San Francisco's transgender community, including Bobbie's election in 1997 as "Mr. ETVC".
Collins and Bentley were planning to be married in Canada at the time of Bentley's death, and Collins later began calling herself "the widow Bentley". She remains single.
