« I have the best roommates in the world! It creates a fun sense of family… and that’s really important to me. Things can get so lonely without it. » — Kristen Bell
It’s late November, and, to quote John, the Wolfking of L.A., « All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray ». Outside my window, just about everyone’s dressed for a funeral and there’s a traffic jam in dire shades of monochrome.
How did we come to this? Bah.
I think it first struck me how afraid of bright colour* we’d become, as a society, from years of ads for Bose’s odiously-designed Wave® sound systems, as consistently expensive are they are hideous (so they must sound fantastic!), circa the early 2000s.


Today, I’m going to (gasp!) restore some colour to your lives. This may lead to a sudden jolt, so avert your eyes if necessary.
Strictly speaking, I don’t have a favourite Playboy cartoonist — honestly, how could I, with that sumptuous, half-century-plus embarrassment of multifarious riches? Ah, but I certainly hold Leo ‘Dink’ Siegel (June 30, 1910 — Dec. 28, 2003) in quite lofty regard, thanks to his fantastic sense of design, his bold, delicious colour palette and his fastidious attention to detail (pay and treat your cartoonists well, and see what you get!). Today, I’ll concentrate on Siegel’s ‘roommates’ series; there’s generally a black pussycat hanging about, a fine furry bonus.
Here we go!










– RG
*Oh, do check out this pseudo-scientific cluster of twaddle and pop-psych claptrap!
Favorite playboy artist: Gahan Wilson (Kurtzman & Elder would be my first choice, but their best work was in Mad)
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Hi George! For me, it’s too many cases of apples-and-oranges… which testifies to Hugh Hefner’s skill and taste as a cartoon editor: he loved all kinds of styles, and didn’t push for homogeneity, as a lesser man would have. I mean, you don’t expect the likes of Gahan Wilson, Shel Silverstein, Jack Davis or Charles Rodrigues to bring the sexy — but you do want them on board.
And yeah, I can’t help but think of the just-mildly-amusing Little Annie Fanny as a waste of Kurtzman and Elder’s formidable talents… but it kept them fed and housed, which is right and good. Kurtzman had far more bad luck than he deserved, so a nice break was in order.
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Well said.
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