The Man Who Gets It Right
THE MAN WHO GETS IT RIGHT
PROFILE:
YOU CAN CAN COUNT ON THE FINGERS OF ONE HAND the number of writers, artists and filmmakers who’ve done motorcycling any favors. But if you should ever decide to compile that short list, don't forget to include William Overgard.
It’s entirely possible that you've either never heard of William Overgard or, if you have, fail to recognize the name. If so, you'll need to know that he has w ritten three novels, including "The Divide," a story of America carved up between the Axis powers, as well as four movies, including "The Bushido Blade," a film about Commodore Matthew Perry’s historic opening up of Japan, starring Richard Boone and Toshiro Mifune. He is also the man who draws the comic strips “/?z/r/r”and "Sieve Roper and Mike Nomad. " Oh, yeah that Overgard.
Unless you've seen those strips, however, you're probably still in the dark. Why should you care about some cartoonist? Well, you might be interested to know that for his entire career as a cartoonist. William Overgard has regularly made motorized hardware—cars, planes and motorcycles—a part of his comic strips. And what's of particular significance to motorcyclists is that he has always used bikes in their proper context, and has steadfastly drawn them with exceptional accuracy and in great, painstaking detail.
To fully understand why such fastidiousness is worthy of our admiration, consider first the impact of newspaper comic strips in America: Many experts figure that they’re the most widely read printed matter in the country—and bv a huge margin. Then consider John Q. Public's appalling ignorance of motorcycling—you know, the ignorance that makes your mother-in-law imagine pillage and rapine to be the common pastime of your BMW club. Then consider the minimal impact a major comic-strip artist could possibly have if he chose to set the record a bit right about bikes and their riders. That’s why you should care about William Overgard: He's spent much of his life getting it right where hardware and—as important—its use is concerned. Even our hardware.
Idealism is not the reason this 59-year old artist gets it right: Professionalism is the reason. That, and his abiding passion for just about everything that moves under its own power. What we have here is your classic hardware crazy, a man whose tastes have driven him to own such morsels as a Kawasaki H 1, a Harley Sprint, a Suzuki street scrambler, even a Velocette Thruxton. A man who fell so madly in love with a 1956 Bentley Continental that he kept it 20 years.
Such fascination for wheels came naturally to someone who grew up in Santa Monica, California, before the war. Like many another SoCal kid, he spent his youth in search of speed in the sun, although in Overgard’s case there were some departures from the norm; one of his friends and fraternity brothers, for instance, was Formula One World Champion Phil Hill, with whom Overgard shared many automotive adventures. (He also dated Hill's sister, but that's another story.)
The professionalism came to Overgard. he says, through his mentor, Milton Canifif. famous creator of "Terry and the Pirates, " arguably the most successful adventure strip of all time. Overgard had written to Canifif for guidance before World War II from his home in Santa Monica. He got it, and after the war, when Overgard got out of the Navy (having visited the beachheads of scenic Okinawa and Ii-shima), despite a 6-month stint at City College, he rekindled his relationship with Canifif and plunged into the arcane world of the professional cartoonist. Anyone familiar with CanifTs older work knows the amazing detail he worked into his own art; His airplanes and cars were just flat right. Canifif the master drove home the point to Overgard the apprentice: Do it right, or don't do it. Overgard did it right. Soon he was a Famous Cartoonist, making enough to move to Ice Pond Farm in Stony Point, New York, enough to indulge in some toys. When he discovered bikes in the late Sixties, so did his characters, including Mike Nomad, the classic American anti-hero whom he credits with saving the Roper strip from being slaughtered by television the way so many other adventure strips were.
And getting it right in the comics is no laughing matter
STEVEN L. THOMPSON
Nomad, through the years, has ridden everything from tiddlers (mirroring Overgard's Suzuki street scrambler) to Kawasaki hand-grenades (ditto Overgard's 500 Triple) and. of course, his current mount, a Vincent. All of these bikes were meticulously drawn, the riding of them equally well depicted, and their universe not caricatured. Overgard once even devoted a whole weeks-long saga to Nomad's running in the “Bajio 1000." The readers, he muses, must have been bored by the time Nomad finally made the finish line—but he wasn't.
Overgard doesn't ride now—he sold his Thruxton long ago, and. like everyone else who ever sold a Velocette, wishes he hadn’t. But his own decade of riding has left him with vivid memories and a keen appreciation of the subtleties of the sport. All this was and still is worked into everything he draws regarding bikes. There’s no absurd. TVstyle fantasy performance in Overgard’s work, and according to him, where hardware is concerned, there never will be.
Even though Overgard has just recently left the Roper strip, he continues to run the riding theme through "Rudy, ” which features an urbane chimpanzee living, driving and riding in Hollywood. For his canny use of sidecars in that strip, the American Sidecar Association wrote Overgard. praising his work. Similar kudos have come from other keepers of the flame: the Vincent Owner's Club. Ferrari people, and even from the Kawasaki Motor Corporation itself
Corporation Still, aside from the occasional rave from a marque freak, w hat has all this meant? Surprisingly, Overgard does not think that his painstaking fidelity is responsible for the success of his strips. With that view from the artist himself, only an optimist would conclude that doing it right all these years has had any impact on John Q. Public's perceptions of motorcycling.
On the other hand, motorcyclists have to be optimists to ride in the first place. So maybe it's not out of the question to imagine, just fora moment, that Overgard has made his own unique contribution to motorcycling by bringing a sort of refreshing reality to a major medium. That the medium is the comic strip reflects not the place of motorcycling in America so much as the skewed values of the masters of the other media, who get it wrong as often as Bill Overgard gets it right.
Will they ever match his tenacious dedication to getting it right? Overgard doesn't think we’ll ever see much motorcycling fidelity in the movies or TV. “They," he says of Hollywood’s movers and shakers, w ith the air of a man w ho has often collided with them, “just don't care.”
Luckily for motorcyclists, William Overgard. past Velo Fellow, does care. And he proves it every time he puts pen to paper. 0
