For now over 75 years, The Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to life in BL Classics. In this November 1982 Classic, we meet Rick Diamond, the soft-spoken senior behind the Lariat’s beloved comic strip ‘Bobby Baylor,’ and learn how campus life, subtlety, and a love of English inspired his cult classic.
The most popular features in the daily Baylor Lariat are far and away the daily cartoon strips featuring “Doonesbury,” “Garfield,” “Peanuts,” — and “Bobby Baylor.” At first glance Bobby Baylor seems to be the Baylor cousin of Gary Trudeau’s hip, definitely Ivy League Doonesbury. B.B. is just an average guy who laconically comments on the state of things in general and Baylor in particular. He’s aided — and sometimes hindered — by a goldfish with a flair for show business, a love-starved English teacher, a new crop of bewildered freshmen each year and Friday’s feisty Baylor Bear, unbeaten and unbowed after each Saturday’s game.
“Bobby Baylor” has proven so popular on the campus that author-illustrator-guru Rick Diamond has reprinted some of the little guy’s most cogent sayings in a paperback book. The first printing sold out in one week.
Rick Diamond is not Bobby Baylor. He’s a tall, soft-spoken senior, given to quietly thoughtful observations and introspective answers to even ill-defined questions. Some of the time, anyway. It doesn’t take long to see the source of Bobby Baylor’s wry comments and pointed commentary. The real Rick Diamond features what comic artists call “The Steve Canyon Syndrome”: his humor is apt to be witty and subtle, with a faint smile and a pull on the pipe. And not surprisingly, Diamond understands what “Bobby Baylor” is now and will be, what he can and can’t do.
“I started doodling when I was little,” he said, “no training, no goals. Not having that training sometimes makes me feel inadequate to the ‘real’ artists on campus, and I’ve never talked about a career in commercial art. I just like to draw. I drew some for my high school [Richard King High in Corpus Christi, Texas] yearbook, including a running satire on one of the principals.
“I grew up loving comic books and comic strips. I started out tracing ‘Spider Man’ and anything by Neal Adams. I love ‘Peanuts,’ ‘Doonesbury’ (of course), ‘B.C.,’ ‘Beetle Bailey,’ all of the great ones. ‘Doones- bury’ is the logical connection, he’s broken so much new ground for cartooning. It’s hard not to be influenced by his style and the way he includes a statement after the gag panel — just like real life.”
‘Doones- bury’ is the logical connection, he’s broken so much new ground for cartooning. It’s hard not to be influenced by his style and the way he includes a statement after the gag panel — just like real life.”
Diamond has absorbed much of the theory of comic strips from cartoonists like Trudeau and Charles Schultz, who draws “Peanuts”. He works almost exclusively in the four-panel strip format, setting the scene, establishing the conflict, resolving the conflict with a gag or funny comment, then ending with a pithy denouement. He’s developed a continuing cast of characters for the readers to identify with. And when the characters become identifiable, their reactions to the situations become humorous as well.
First question: Where does his store of ideas come from?
“I think at first I drew from the people around me, then the characters began to develop on their own. You need several years to develop believable characters. Probably the people who give me the funniest ideas are Baylor professors. Their comments — and the students’ responses — in classroom situations are a great source of humor.
“Obviously Baylor is a closed environment. But I think what Baylor students respond to as funny is universal. The situations here are pretty standard. Outside of the campus, I don’t know how well Bobby would be received.
“And yes, there is a temptation to really savage something you don’t believe in, or think is wrong. I’m no different from the normal student in that respect. Actually, there’s not all that much that makes me mad. There’s no way I can be aware of all of the higher workings that make this campus run. I’d be shooting in the dark.
“So I stay away from really volatile issues. A lot of students want me to rail at something. I’d rather point out something incongruous and say, ‘Isn’t this interesting?’ If I really blasted something, I think I’d lose my credibility. I can get more done by being subtle and gentle than by being scathing and biting.
“I’d rather search for the common ground, something that can reach both a freshman music major and a senior geology major. If three-fourths of the students live in apartments, I want strips about the last jar of pickles in the refrigerator or the roaches that eat small dogs.
“I just think Bobby Baylor can be more effective if what he says is subtle. You don’t need a banana peel and a pratfall everyday. Every strip doesn’t have to be funny. This way, I can point to something interesting or funny or even silly within the administration and say it — as long as I don’t say it at the top of my lungs.”
Diamond says he has no desire to try editorial or political cartoons. He enjoys the freedom of the panel format — for now.
“Some people who really don’t understand syndication tell me I should try to get ‘Bobby Baylor’ to go national. I’m flattered, but to be syndicated you’ve got to find the right comic niche, something different, but universal. ‘Bobby’ isn’t as funny as it could be, but for a local strip I’m pleased. I wouldn’t submit it anywhere else.
“It takes several years to develop a nationally syndicated strip, and it’s really not what I want to do. I’m certainly no commercial artist. I’ve always cartooned for my own enjoyment first. So many artists submit strips, so few succeed. My own goal is to become a professor of English on the college level. That’s what I love. If something comes along in art, great.
“Charles Schultz once said that a cartoonist has to draw, but not too well, and he has to be able to write, but not too well. You’ve got to be mediocre at a lot of things. And that’s heartening for people like me. If I can’t be a national cartoonist for four to five million people every day, I’d rather reach ten thousand people at Baylor. If I can do that, that’s neat. That’s important to me. If it never goes beyond that, it’s still important to me.”
With his studies, Diamond still sets aside one hour each afternoon to draw “Bobby Baylor.” Unlike syndicated cartoonists, who work six weeks in advance, Diamond does the following day’s strip each afternoon. If that means that occasionally one of the gags falls flat, it also means that he’s able to react to whatever people are talking about that day. “Bobby Baylor” is a big priority. Diamond is constantly jotting down ideas during the day, even during class, if necessary.
He doesn’t have an editor to critique the strip, but he does hand each day’s “Bobby Baylor” to his roommate, Al. Diamond says he knows the difference between Al’s “forced chuckle” and his “guffaw.” If even the forced chuckle isn’t there, he sometimes redraws the final panel.
The process apparently has been successful, because Diamond’s The Bobby Baylor Book is a hot item in the Baylor Bookstore.
“I finally let some of my friends talk me into printing up 100 of the books to sell for $2.50 a piece, and they sold out in a week; so I’m having maybe 1,000, I don’t know yet — copies printed up. I didn’t have any particular reason for doing it: just for fun. It’ll look nice on my graduate school application that I’ve had a book published. It’s nothing to boast about or anything, but I’ve gotten a big kick out of it. I’ve picked cartoons back from when ‘Bobby Baylor’ first ran in April of 1980, all the way through the most recent ones in the Lariat. So far, it’s going well.”
So what happens if Diamond is accepted for graduate work in English at Baylor? Would he continue ‘Bobby Baylor’ another couple of years?
“Well, first off, I’d certainly love to stay at Baylor. I haven’t begun to tap all the knowledge in the Baylor English professors. They are an amazing bunch. But as for continuing ‘Bobby,’ no, I guess not. I just can’t see ‘Bobby Baylor’ cartoons about a guy having trouble writing his thesis.”
