'Phoebe & the Pigeon People'.
Gary Whitney was an underground comix artist, best remembered as the artist behind the gag comic 'Phoebe & The Pigeon People' (1978-1996). Scripted by Jay Lynch, the shenanigans of an old lady and her human-faced pigeons ran in The Chicago Reader for 18 years, making it one of the strangest comics to ever appear in a mainstream U.S. newspaper. In 2019, Whitney also made a graphic novel, 'Song of the Avatar' (2019), to introduce readers to yoga philosophy.
Early life and career
Gary Whitney was born in 1952 in Kansas City, where he lived until age 11. The family moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where he lived until after his marriage in 1972, he moved to Chicago, so he could finish his B.A. at Columbia College. During the 1970s, he contributed to to underground comic books like Bizarre Sex and Dope Comix at Kitchen Sink Press, and was also present at Artie Romero's Everyman Studios. He also appeared in Flying Fungus Funnies and Windy City Comix. From 1977 on, he became a freelance cartoonist.
Phoebe & The Pigeon People
In 1977, the Chicago Seed issued a juvenile supplement called Sidetracks. Underground comix artist Jay Lynch, previously best-known for his series 'Nard 'n' Pat', was asked to create a comic strip, but his preliminary sketches ended in an editor's drawer and were forgotten for about a year. While cleaning up one day, the editor rediscovered them, but simply returned them to the sender. Lynch subsequently sent the pages to a rival newspaper, The Chicago Reader. They were more enthusiastic and so, in April 1978 the first episode of 'Phoebe and the Pigeon People' ran in The Chicago Reader. The gag comic stars an old woman, Phoebe, who feeds pigeons in the park. However, the birds all have human heads and are satirical representations of certain people in society. For instance, one of them, Bix, is a beatnik who enjoys ranting.
At first, Lynch drew everything personally, but he quickly grew tired of it. Whitney then took over the illustration work, while Lynch concentrated on the scripts. 'Phoebe and the Pigeon People' (1978-1996) ran for 18 years on a weekly basis. From 1990 on, Jim Siergey was assistant-inker. The final episode was published in 1996. 'Phoebe and the Pigeon People' inspired a stage show, 'When Cultures Collide'. It was performed by the improvisational theater troupe The Practical Theater in collaboration with rock and new wave bands. Between 1979 and 1981, the best gags of 'Phoebe and the Pigeon People' were collected by Kitchen Sink in three comic books.
Later career
In the late 1970s, early 1980s, Whitney and Jay Lynch also drew comics for Hugh Hefner's Playboy, while he assisted on a few episodes of Lynch's signature series 'Nard 'n' Pat'.
In 1983, Whitney created Practical Comix: Special Family Ties Issue, a comic book made in collaboration with Paul Barrosse, Brad Hall, Gary Kroeger. In 1984-1985, Whitney was one of several alternative comic artists who published in Zat, a magazine published by the SohoZat store in Soho, New York City. He also designed posters and flyers for the band Riffmaster & The Rockme Foundation. Between 1993 and 2017, Whitney was active for Calabash Animation in Chicago. In 1995, he, Siergey and Lynch also contributed artwork to a comic book based on Everett Peck's animated TV series 'Duckman'.
Whitney's wife, Mary, was a notable astrologer, who worked with guru Goswami Kriyananda at the Temple of Kriya Yoga in Chicago. From 1985 on, Whitney also followed lessons under Kriyananda and achieved his hatha yoga teaching certificate in 1990. He taught for a period of three years afterwards. In 2015, Mary passed away from ovarian cancer, while two years later, Jay Lynch also died from lung cancer.
In 2019, he published 'Song of the Avatar', an introduction to yoga philosophy, based on the sacred text, the Bhagavad Gita, presented in graphic novel format. In 2022, he published a manuscript by his grandfather, Ershel R. Whitney, originally written in the 1960s, which Whitney edited with additional commentary and illustrations.
'Puppy Love', from Bizarre Sex, 1978.