Neil the Horse
Encyclopedia
Neil the Horse is a comic book character created by Canadian cartoonist Arn Saba
(now Katherine Collins) in the mid 1970s. Neil is a happy, singing and dancing horse who likes banana
s and milkshake
s. Neil's adventures were syndicated in Canadian newspapers, published in a comic book series, and adapted for a radio musical
.
The comic book series featured Neil and his friends Soapy and Mam'selle Poupée. All three of the characters sing, dance, and play music. The more developed comics stories primarily revolve around the trio's attempts to attain show-business success. While existing as a fantasy with nostalgic style, Neil the Horse also pays tribute to the era it was made (the 1980s). A typical issue included a story in prose with illustrations, a few short comic strips, and a longer comic-strip adventure. As the motto of Neil the Horse was "Making the World Safe for Musical Comedy
" all issues also included original sheet music
for the songs sung by the characters in the course of their adventures.
.
Mam'selle Poupée is a hopeless romantic living doll from France. 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
. She wears headbands and works out à la Olivia Newton-John
. In "Video Wars" (issues 4-7), the gang comes in contact with characters that inhabit an arcade game.
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.
For the first two years, Neil was a double-tier comedy-adventure continuity strip, afterward switching to a single-tier gag format. The purported gags were highly surreal, and in fact at times deliberately nonsensical and without a real punchline. Saba has referred to these strips as having "symbolized a comic strip", rather than actually being one.
. This work was seen by Dave Sim
and Deni Loubert
of the Kitchener, Ontario
-based publisher Aardvark-Vanaheim
, which led to their offering to publish a Neil as a periodical comic book. Neil the Horse's first comic book appearance was in Charlton Comics
's Charlton Bullseye #2 (July 1981).
Neil the Horse Comics and Stories was published between 1983 and 1988 - first by Aardvark-Vanaheim
and then by Renegade Press
, also under Deni Loubert
. Issues #11 and 13 of Neil the Horse involved a tribute to Fred Astaire
with song-and-dance routines that flowed from page to page. Letters
to Neil the Horse were always (ostensibly) "answered" by Neil and his friends, instead of the comics' creator. Some of the material were reprints from the 1970s newspaper comic strip.
Creator Saba always worked with other cartoonists as assistants/collaborators. His primary pairings were with David Roman of Toronto and Barb Rausch
of Los Angeles. It was common for the original art pages to be sent by courier back and forth between the two cities to be worked on; throughout the 1980s Saba frequently moved back and forth from one city to the other, and as well often worked while in transit, setting up a temporary studio in guest rooms and even once in a gazebo in Oakland, California.
The last published appearance of Neil the Horse was in 1991, in the last issue of Fantagraphics' Critters
. There exists a Neil graphic novel which has never been published.
wrote a two-and-a-half hour radio musical
called Neil 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 subsequent efforts to mount later musical-comedy projects were unsuccessful.
In 1986, 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.
Arn Saba
Katherine Shannon Collins , formerly Arn Saba, is a Canadian cartoonist, writer, media personality, stage performer, and composer.- Early works :...
(now Katherine Collins) in the mid 1970s. Neil is a happy, singing and dancing horse who likes banana
Banana
Banana is the common name for herbaceous plants of the genus Musa and for the fruit they produce. Bananas come in a variety of sizes and colors when ripe, including yellow, purple, and red....
s and milkshake
Milkshake
A milkshake is a sweet, cold beverage which is made from milk, ice cream or iced milk, and flavorings or sweeteners such as fruit syrup or chocolate sauce....
s. Neil's adventures were syndicated in Canadian newspapers, published in a comic book series, and adapted for a radio musical
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
.
The comic book series featured Neil and his friends Soapy and Mam'selle Poupée. All three of the characters sing, dance, and play music. The more developed comics stories primarily revolve around the trio's attempts to attain show-business success. While existing as a fantasy with nostalgic style, Neil the Horse also pays tribute to the era it was made (the 1980s). A typical issue included a story in prose with illustrations, a few short comic strips, and a longer comic-strip adventure. As the motto of Neil the Horse was "Making the World Safe for Musical Comedy
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
" all issues also included original sheet music
Sheet music
Sheet music is a hand-written or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols; like its analogs—books, pamphlets, etc.—the medium of sheet music typically is paper , although the access to musical notation in recent years includes also presentation on computer screens...
for the songs sung by the characters in the course of their adventures.
Characters overview
Neil is a happy go-lucky (and not too bright) horse with a mania for bananas. In some issues he breakdances in urban streets to the accompaniment of a boomboxBoombox
Boombox is a colloquial expression for a portable cassette or CD player. Other terms known are ghetto blaster, jambox, or radio-cassette. It is a device capable of receiving radio stations and playing recorded music , usually at relatively high volume...
.
Mam'selle Poupée is a hopeless romantic living doll from France. 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
Raggedy Ann
Raggedy Ann is a fictional character created by American writer Johnny Gruelle in a series of books he wrote and illustrated for young children. Raggedy Ann is a rag doll with red yarn for hair and has a triangle nose...
and Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton
Dolly Rebecca Parton is an American singer-songwriter, author, multi-instrumentalist, actress and philanthropist, best known for her work in country music. Dolly Parton has appeared in movies like 9 to 5, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Steel Magnolias and Straight Talk...
. She wears headbands and works out à la Olivia Newton-John
Olivia Newton-John
Olivia Newton-John AO, OBE is a singer and actress. She is a four-time Grammy award winner who has amassed five No. 1 and ten other Top Ten Billboard Hot 100 singles and two No. 1 Billboard 200 solo albums. Eleven of her singles and 14 of her albums have been certified gold by the RIAA...
. In "Video Wars" (issues 4-7), the gang comes in contact with characters that inhabit an arcade game.
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.
Syndicated strip
Neil the Horse started life in 1975 as a weekly newspaper comic strip, self-syndicated by Vancouver cartoonist Saba to Canadian regional newspapers. In 1977, Saba and Toronto cartoonist Jeff Wakefield (Bubblegummers) joined forces to found 'Great Lakes Publishing" (GLP), a cartoon syndicate dedicated to promoting Canadian newspaper comics. At its height, GLP sold weekly comic strips, including Neil the Horse, to about 30 newspapers. GLP quietly faded out of existence in 1982.For the first two years, Neil was a double-tier comedy-adventure continuity strip, afterward switching to a single-tier gag format. The purported gags were highly surreal, and in fact at times deliberately nonsensical and without a real punchline. Saba has referred to these strips as having "symbolized a comic strip", rather than actually being one.
Neil the Horse Comics and Stories
In 1980 and 1981, Neil the Horse appeared as a comics feature in the Canadian Children's Annual, and The 1980 Comics Annual, published by Potlatch Publications of Hamilton, OntarioHamilton, Ontario
Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. Conceived by George Hamilton when he purchased the Durand farm shortly after the War of 1812, Hamilton has become the centre of a densely populated and industrialized region at the west end of Lake Ontario known as the Golden Horseshoe...
. This work was seen by Dave Sim
Dave Sim
David Victor Sim is an award-winning Canadian comic book writer and artist.A pioneer of self-published comics and creators' rights, Sim is best known as the creator of Cerebus the Aardvark, a comic book published from 1977 to 2004, which chronicles its main character in a 6,000-page self-contained...
and Deni Loubert
Deni Loubert
Deni Loubert is a French Canadian comics publisher, co-founder of Aardvark-Vanaheim and founder of Renegade Press. She is the ex-wife of Dave Sim, with whom she founded Aardvark-Vanaheim and published Cerebus from issues #1 to #77 .Loubert and Sim met in 1976) and married in 1979...
of the Kitchener, Ontario
Kitchener, Ontario
The City of Kitchener is a city in Southern Ontario, Canada. It was the Town of Berlin from 1854 until 1912 and the City of Berlin from 1912 until 1916. The city had a population of 204,668 in the Canada 2006 Census...
-based publisher Aardvark-Vanaheim
Aardvark-Vanaheim
Aardvark-Vanaheim is a Canadian independent comic book publisher founded in 1977 by Dave Sim and Deni Loubert. It is best known for publishing Sim's Cerebus....
, which led to their offering to publish a Neil as a periodical comic book. Neil the Horse's first comic book appearance was in Charlton Comics
Charlton Comics
Charlton Comics was an American comic book publishing company that existed from 1946 to 1985, having begun under a different name in 1944. It was based in Derby, Connecticut...
's Charlton Bullseye #2 (July 1981).
Neil the Horse Comics and Stories was published between 1983 and 1988 - first by Aardvark-Vanaheim
Aardvark-Vanaheim
Aardvark-Vanaheim is a Canadian independent comic book publisher founded in 1977 by Dave Sim and Deni Loubert. It is best known for publishing Sim's Cerebus....
and then by Renegade Press
Renegade Press
Renegade Press was an American comic book company, founded by Canadian Deni Loubert, that operated from 1984 to 1988. Notable titles published by Renegade include Flaming Carrot, Ms...
, also under Deni Loubert
Deni Loubert
Deni Loubert is a French Canadian comics publisher, co-founder of Aardvark-Vanaheim and founder of Renegade Press. She is the ex-wife of Dave Sim, with whom she founded Aardvark-Vanaheim and published Cerebus from issues #1 to #77 .Loubert and Sim met in 1976) and married in 1979...
. Issues #11 and 13 of Neil the Horse involved a tribute to Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute...
with song-and-dance routines that flowed from page to page. Letters
Comic book letter column
A comic book letter column is a section of a comic book where readers' letters to the publisher appear. Comic book letter columns are also commonly referred to as letter columns , letter pages, letters of comment , or simply letters to the editor...
to Neil the Horse were always (ostensibly) "answered" by Neil and his friends, instead of the comics' creator. Some of the material were reprints from the 1970s newspaper comic strip.
Creator Saba always worked with other cartoonists as assistants/collaborators. His primary pairings were with David Roman of Toronto and Barb Rausch
Barb Rausch
Barbara "Barb" Ann Rausch was a Los Angeles based comics artist and writer.-Biography:Barb Rausch was born on June 7, 1941, and worked on a number of comics, cartoons and newspaper comic strips...
of Los Angeles. It was common for the original art pages to be sent by courier back and forth between the two cities to be worked on; throughout the 1980s Saba frequently moved back and forth from one city to the other, and as well often worked while in transit, setting up a temporary studio in guest rooms and even once in a gazebo in Oakland, California.
Animation adaptation attempts
Saba's ambition was to adapt Neil for animation — preferably a full-length feature, but failing that, a television series. To that end, starting in 1985, he began a major adaptation effort, employing David Roman and a fluctuating number (3-12) of experienced animation artists and writers. As a business partner, John Gertz of Berkeley, California-based Zorro Productions was the salesman, advisor, and liaison with Hollywood studios. Between 1988 and 1993, Neil was "optioned" several times by major animation studios and television networks, but no program was ever produced.The last published appearance of Neil the Horse was in 1991, in the last issue of Fantagraphics' Critters
Critters
Critters was an animal anthology comic book published by Fantagraphics Books from 1985 to 1990 under the editorship of Kim Thompson.Prior to Furrlough and Genus, this was the longest running funny animal anthology comic book series. The title lasted for 50 issues...
. There exists a Neil graphic novel which has never been published.
Radio musical
In 1982 Arn SabaArn Saba
Katherine Shannon Collins , formerly Arn Saba, is a Canadian cartoonist, writer, media personality, stage performer, and composer.- Early works :...
wrote a two-and-a-half hour radio musical
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
called Neil and the Big Banana that was twice broadcast in five episodes, in Canada on CBC Radio
CBC Radio
CBC Radio generally refers to the English-language radio operations of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The CBC operates a number of radio networks serving different audiences and programming niches, all of which are outlined below.-English:CBC Radio operates three English language...
. Saba wrote the book, music and lyrics, and played the part of Neil. The play was unanimously reviewed with raves across the country, but subsequent efforts to mount later musical-comedy projects were unsuccessful.
In 1986, 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.
External links
- Katherine Collins at Prism Comics
- "Introducing Arn Saba's Neil The Horse," CBC Digital Archives (Broadcast date: April 26, 1977). Accessed July 19, 2011.
- "Neil the Horse," Don Markstein's Toonopedia
- "Now You See Me," The Comics Journal #255 (Sept. 2003).