A Well-Drawn Life

Editorial Cartoonist and collector Stan "The Cartoon Man"
Burdick brings world class cartoons to Ticonderoga

Stan Burdick was in trouble.

The year was 2003, and Burdick had been informed that the 50-year-old building that had, for the past seven years, been home to his collection of over 500 cartoons in the form of The Hague Cartoon Museum, would be demolished. Panicked, Burdick approached various community leaders by traveling to such locations as Glens Falls, Lake George, and Corinth, to inquire whether the town was interested in housing a cartoon museum. All said no – except for one.

“I needed a building, one with a low-cost lease,” Burdick said. “I went to Ticonderoga and talked to a town supervisor, and he said that he had space in the basement (of the Ticonderoga Community Building.) The other people I talked to said no, they didn't want the cartoons.”

Burdick is the one having the last laugh. Since the establishment of the Ticonderoga Cartoon Museum, Burdick's collection, which he has been accumulating for the past 30 years, has expanded to over 700 works and boasts “several hundred” visitors a year. The cartoons literally span the decades and almost two centuries, with the museum's displays ranging from selected works of nineteenth century French artist Henri Daumier, considered by Burdick to be the Father of Modern Cartooning (“We couldn't buy the originals of Daumier,” Burdick explained. “Too pricey!”), to Charles Dana Gibson's iconic Gibson Girl of the early twentieth century to Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury. Fantasy art such as the epic Prince Valiant - his personal favorite – is also on display, and a visitor can spy the red hair of the Depression Era's Little Orphan Annie. Jeremy, the perpetual teenager with his customary purple flannel shirt and oversized sneakers, sulks at the dinner table inside the frames of the Zits comic strip, while little Billy is forever in his Family Circus.

"I was so impressed by (Charles Schulz), and he sent me several cartoons before he died."

Yet, although Burdick raves about the “perfectionism” of Hal Foster, the original cartoonist for Prince Valiant who created the strip in 1937, there is an additional artist whose four-piece exhibit in the museum is of particular importance to him.

“(Peanuts creator) Charles Schulz spoke at one convention in St. Paul, Minnesota,” Burdick said. “He was a big, tall guy, and he spoke to a crowd of 300. I was so impressed by him, and he sent me several cartoons before he died. He was so easy to talk to, which I think is a mark of greatness, and he was so congenial to everyone. I have four original cartoons from his studio, and they are important to me. That's one of the fun little things about this job, going to the conventions and meeting new people.”

Indeed, spurred by a desire to hone his own cartooning skills while providing more exhibits for the museum visitors' viewing, Burdick, a member of the National Cartoon Society (NCS) and the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists (AAED), has personally met and subsequently requested – and received – original works from such cartoonists as Garry Trudeau, Bil Keane, Lyn Johnston, and the afore-mentioned Charles Schulz. Originals, Burdick said, are what he regularly requests, and he estimates that one-half to two-thirds of the works that grace the museum's walls are never-before-seen works. The displays, which are classified as editorial, comic, and fantasy, comprise two of the three rooms that make up the Ticonderoga Cartoon Museum. The third room, which will be comprised of Burdick's own editorials, is not yet complete – and he feels that having his own gallery, apart from the other rooms, is necessary.

“I don't want to mix my cartoons with the greats,” Burdick said. “I'm not worthy.”

Burdick's resume begs to differ. An editorial cartoonist for the past 30 years, Burdick's work was selected four consecutive times for the annual publication “Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year,” and he won the 1996 New York Press Association Award for his editorial cartoon on Eliot Spitzer.

Burdick's love for cartoons started in his boyhood; “I would draw cartoons in church for my friends, and we caused a commotion,” laughed Burdick. He first whetted his appetite thirty years ago as an editorial cartoonist for The Sandusky Register in Sandusky, Ohio. More recently, over the course of six years he drew approximately 100 cartoons for the (Glens Falls) Post-Star and over 100 for the (Plattsburgh) Press-Republican.  As a retiree, he has created approximately another 100 editorial cartoons over the past four years for the Lake Champlain Weekly – and only one cartoon has been rejected.

“Few newspapers use local cartoonists,” Caroline Kehne, editor for Lake Champlain Weekly, said. “I believe significantly less than half of local weekly papers employ their own cartoonists. It's unusual; most opt to save money and use syndicated cartoonists. (Stan's cartoons) have strengthened our political page, and they reinforce it with local content. It's nice to have a political cartoon that ties into local issues.”

In addition to working at the museum three days a week, Burdick also teaches a three-week cartooning course in the summer at Adirondack Community College (ACC) in Queensbury. Yet the man who has created hundreds of cartoons - with each work averaging four to six hours to create - and who can name “any cartoon by its description,” and who still wishes to expand his collection by adding the work of “the great” Art Spiegelman, claims that he never runs out of ideas for a craft that, he said, he never wishes to quit.

“Maybe I'll get too old to draw, but I hope not,” Burdick said. “As long as my hands are still working, and there are ideas, I'll keep cartooning.”

What's your favorite comic strip?

The birth of a cartoon museum – and square dancing

The story began with a moving van, a house that was rapidly filling with an ever-expanding cartoon collection, an exasperated wife, an ultimatum, and Sandusky, Ohio.

“My wife (Cathie) and I, we said, someday, we'll have to move up to the North Country,” said Burdick, who married his wife in Silver Bay. “It was going to be hard to move, though, because of all my cartoons; we would need to pay for an extra moving van. My wife said, "Stan, you know, the time has come. You've got to get them out of here, we can't pay (to move) all this stuff.”

Then inspiration struck.

“I thought, suppose I have a museum, one that would benefit from having my cartoons,” Burdick said. “I convinced my wife, we moved them up here, and the museum was born.”

And, he adds, “We also got more room in our cellar and attic!”

“I said, ‘wouldn't it be nice if (Stan) had a museum',” Cathie said. “But I didn't think he would actually do it.”

The move from the Mid-West to Upstate New York was not the couple's first adventure, however. In 1968, they bought the magazine American Square Dance. The national publication, which had a subscription rate of only 2,000 when it was purchased, eventually, under the editorial guidance of the Burdicks', boasted 24,000 subscribers. Indeed, over the course of twenty-three years the magazine claimed not only a national readership, but an international one as well, with subscribers in 10 other countries. And Stan, naturally, incorporated his drawing skills into the magazine.

“My cartooning carried on,” said Burdick. “I did cartoons and sketching for the magazine, the cover art. I still kept my hand in it.”

Cathie, who was co-editor and co-publisher of the magazine, wouldn't have it any other way.