Excerpt from Noah Waverly’s entry in Who’s Who in American Graphic Arts (New York: Pequot Press, 2005):
Noah Waverly was born in Cascade, MI on January 13, 1953, to Emmett, a schoolteacher, and Rebecca, a homemaker. The Waverly family had lived in the Cascade area for more than three generations, and both Noah’s parents were graduates of nearby Osborn College. Noah grew up in Deerville, a short distance from Cascade, where his father taught mathematics.
Noah Weatherby hadn’t been seen since his comic strip ended, and I was determined to interview him for the capstone thesis of my journalism degree.
Professor Legrand hadn’t been enthusiastic about my idea. “What if you can’t find this man?” he’d said. “After all, he hasn’t had an interview in ten years.”
I’d flashed a confident grin and pushed the form he had to sign across the desk. “I’m just a student,” I said. “What could possibly be wrong with something only you and I are going to read? Besides, even if I get the run-around, I can still write about it.”
Of course, once Legrand was done with it and had assigned me my final grade, who’s to say the Times or the Post wouldn’t be interested? It would be quite a coup to start my professional career, and the fact that I loved Weatherby’s work would help make the writing sparkle.
Noah was a quiet student, and led a relatively undistinguished academic career, though he was active in drawing cartoons for the school newspaper and yearbook. He later attended Osborn College, studying education with an art minor—his parents recall that he wanted to be an art teacher—and drew editorial cartoons for the student-run Osborn Beacon and occasionally for the Cascade Herald.
I had fond memories of the bizarre world Weatherby had painted for me every Sunday—eye-poppingly colorful adventures and flights of fancy, as Keith and Harry jetted across the universe, confronted bizarre aliens, wrestled dinosaurs, and plotted world domination without ever leaving their shared yard. It had been something of a bad influence on me in my formative years—I tried to form my own neighborhood anti-girl club, and begged my parents to build me a treehouse despite the fact that we had nothing bigger than a lavender bush.
I snickered at the memory as I pulled into central Deerville and parked in front of the local whistle-stop café, thinking of the strip where Keith had gotten stuck in a square of wet concrete after trying to make an impression of the seat of his pants.
Excerpts From Nonexistent Books 