Gilbert Shelton earned a bachelor’s degree in history at the University of Texas at Austin in 1961, where he had been contributing cartoons and illustrations to The Texas Ranger since his sophomore year. “In college I discovered that they actually paid people for working on the student humor magazine, which to me was a golden opportunity,” said Shelton. “I was supposed to be studying history, but in fact the humor magazine was my main course of study. And all I’ve done the rest of my life is to continue to publish humor magazines,” said Shelton. “I haven’t had a real job since.”     

In September 1961, a few months after he graduated, Gilbert Shelton moved to New York City, bound for glory and riches, or at least an interesting job. “I probably would never have found a job if the Berlin wall crisis hadn’t caused a lot of people to get drafted about that time,” said Shelton. He was hired as the editorial assistant for two automotive magazines, Speed and Custom and Custom Rodder, to fill in for the editor who had been called back into active duty with the reserves. “It was easy, I just followed the editorial formula they had already worked out,” said Shelton. “I would sneak my own drawings into the magazines from time to time, saying they were drawings from the readers.” Shelton had read car magazines for years, and even raced stock cars through high school and college and felt that these New York automotive magazines were inferior to similar magazines being published in California, the epicenter of the hot rod scene. “What do they know about cars in Manhattan?” he asked.

Shelton and Lynn Ashby, another fellow Texan, who was working as a reporter for the New York Times, made periodic visits to other publications in the city, including Help! magazine, where they met Harvey Kurtzman, Terry Gilliam, and Chuck Alverson. “I showed Kurtzman my cartoons from The Ranger at that time, but he wasn’t interested in publishing them in Help!” said Shelton.  It was while walking along the Avenue of the Americas that fall that Shelton came up with the idea for a comic superhero, named Wonder Wart-Hog. He made some sketches and took them back to Texas with him the next year. He took his pre-induction physical in New York that winter and the draft board was hot on his trail, so he decided to high-tail it back to Austin for a student deferment. He signed up for the summer session in graduate studies at UT. 

In the years since, Wonder Warthog has inspired readers all over the world including troops in Vietnam as well as motocross racing teams.

Written by Patrick Rosenkranz