My article on Victor Cayro is in the newly released “Comics Journal,” #311 (Winter-Spring 2025) $22.99.
I couldn’t help noting that my Contributers bio was the bulkiest, as well as the only one to give a DOB, sufficient to make me feel the esteemed, ancient relic I appear to be. Accept and appreciate, I tell myself.
Here is a sample:
“You might like Victor Cayro,” the editor said.
Another cartoonist I had never heard of. I might be into my second generation of them. Or third.
But I was always up for something new. Well, at 83, not always. My next heart surgery, for instance.
It was hard to find Cayro or his work. He did not have a website. I found a t-shirt he had done about mustard but it was sold out.
“Try Instagram,” someone said.
Cayro responded in a friendlier manner than I expected of a guy who did not have a website. He did not sound like he dwelt in a cave, keeping company with bats. He seemed to like the idea of being written about, even. “I am 43,” he volunteered. “In the last 10 years, it’s been mostly pin-ups for other people’s books, spot illos for stories, shirts, some album cover work, small gallery showings, drawing and painting.”
Cayro sent me a zip file containing three stories and a link to a fourth, which “Vice” had published. He said he’d had a long story in “Kramer’s Ergot” 6, so I bought that. I found two anthologies which had stories by him at Bookfinders, one of which I could pick up cheap on eBay, so I bought both. The editor, once I was on the job, sent me more stories. No on-line site had Cayro’s only stand-alone comic in stock, but one had it available to view.
“If you are going to sue, warn me,” I e-mailed Cayro, “so I have time to read it.”
“I am surprised someone liked it enough to print it,” he said.
So many Bob Levins on the Internet; I'm the Bob Levin who writes.