Angus Oblong Keeps Himself Weird

Angus Oblong’s lies are catching up to him, and he’s thrilled.

The illustrator—best known for the warped children’s book Creepy Susie and 13 Other Tales for Troubled Children and the cult classic animated series it inspired, The Oblongs—confesses that he has given enough fake names and birthdays in online forums like Reddit over the years that more official sources like Google and Wikipedia are hopelessly confused. He confirms his correct birthday is Oct. 2, but stops short of verifying the year.

“Every online forum I’ve ever filled out all my life, I’ve given different information every time,” he says. “If I don’t have an answer for it, I’ll just lie.”

Oblong candidly admits that he’s coming to Brassworks Gallery on Saturday, clad in his trademark clownface makeup, to sketch Valentine’s Day cards for $20 apiece because curator Chris Breshears paid his flight and appearance fee. But that’s not to say that Oblong doesn’t love Portland. His late brother-in-law helped build one of Portland’s main bridges, which in turn lured the rest of his family to the Rose City to at least visit around the time when Oblong was a teenager (he doesn’t remember which one, sorry). A longtime friend lures him to town for his other visits, which makes his Feb. 14 gallery appearance Oblong’s first professional event in Portland outside of comics conventions.

“I love Portland. I almost moved there,” he says. “Now I own a house, so I’m not going to Portland, but that was my goal around 10 years ago.”

Working as a print shop’s graphic designer in the ‘90s, Oblong developed his signature animation style of wide-eyed and/or dot-pupiled characters dressed with nods to the 1950s and an undeniably weird streak. He realized that he only draws things with the capacity for life, not inanimate objects—people, animals, plants and anything altogether ooky. He enjoys oddities and morbidity, and the ‘50s is chock full of that uncanny weirdness.

“I’m obsessed with the 1950s, I think they’re hilarious,” Oblong says. “Moms in aprons and well-behaved boys just cracks me up.”

His drawings led him to write Creepy Susie, which was published by Ballantine Books in 1999. Creepy Susie is for readers who self-identify as troubled children regardless of age, not for parents prescribing the label to their progeny, what with its irreverent stories of murder and mental illness.

“Women were buying my book for their troubled children and then writing me angry letters, which I have framed on my wall. So the follow-up book I titled 13 More Tragic Tales for Ugly Children and I’m like ‘Fuck that up, lady!’ Ballantine wouldn’t publish it because they said ‘Angus, you’ve gone too far,’ and I was like ‘I thought that was what was expected, that a sequel should go a little two steps further,’ but nooo,” he says.

Several of the Creepy Susie characters were worked into an adult animation comedy, The Oblongs, about its titular family who live in The Valley, a toxic waste dump, and their more socially conventional wealthy neighbors who live in The Hills (Oblong now owns a home in the San Fernando Valley). The Oblongs aired for one season on The WB from 2001–02, but found a devoted fanbase through Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. The Oblongs were voiced by Will Ferrell, Jean Smart, Pamela Adlon, the Sklar Brothers, Jeannie Elias and Lea DeLearia, with supporting roles filled by Elias, DeLearia, Billy West and Becky Thyre.

“When I wrote and illustrated the Creepy Susie book and all the characters in it, it was an act of absolute self-indulgence,” he says. “I wrote and illustrated that book for me, nobody else. I was certain nobody would like this book, I wrote it just for me and showed it to friends, and they loved it.”

The Oblongs all have severe physical and mental disabilities: Ferrell’s character Bob Oblong is a chipper pipe-smoking father with no arms or legs, while his wife Pickles (Smart) lost her hair and became an alcoholic after leaving the financially affluent but socially constraining life she knew in the Hills. Their misadventures were less lethal than their characters’ source material, with plots like rescuing the family’s narcoleptic dog from Bob’s chemical manufacturing job, or the town banding together to pay the luchador wrestler mayor’s annual bribe in order to save a little girl trapped in the sewer (because she’s fat—but her best friends include a girl with no lower jaw and a boy with an unusually saggy butt, so it’s not that socio-politically deep).

Oblong says none of his characters are meant to belittle anyone, except those skewering the wealthy. He hoped to give misunderstood people a cartoon where misfits like them were the hilarious main characters.

“I’ve loved circus freaks and those type of people all my life, I find them fascinating,” Oblong says. “I like the societal reject. That’s who I write for, that’s who I speak for. I was the kid who got shoved in a locker, so those are my people…I don’t want to make fun of them, I want them to feel represented and empowered. The Oblongs, although deformed and mentally deranged, were the heroes, they were the good guys.”

Wider culture’s hunger for weirdness is more ravenous than ever. As The Oblongs turns 25 years old this April, Oblong hopes to find a literary agent to not only republish Creepy Susie and 13 More Tragic Tales for Ugly Children, but to publish novels inspired by animation pilots he’s written. One, titled The Victorian Hotel, is a novelette about an 1890s English hotel which Oblong describes as “funny, morbid and dark,” while another, Creaky Heights, follows a seemingly normal family that inherited a house in the titular town of Creaky Heights (Oblong believes the latter story was lifted as inspiration for the Hotel Transylvania film series). A follow-up novel, Creakier Heights, grows out the world he built.

“I’m not so mundane as to have Dracula and Frankenstein and the Mummy and the Wolf-Man,” Oblong says. “It’s a very elusive, hidden, tucked-away city full of ghouls and giant slug people and zombies and ghosts. Everyone’s creepy there, but everyone’s really friendly, like Leave It to Beaver but everyone’s dead.”

To stay true to his own tastes, Oblong isn’t a heavily online person, so algorithms are of little influence to him. People-watching remains a great way for Oblong to stay inspired. Fans have reached out to him directly over the years, resulting in a reliable stream of commission work. Given the prevalence of alternative weirdos at the forefront of mainstream culture—haunted hotels alone have been popular settings for series like American Horror Story, Hazbin Hotel, Ghosts and now Haunted Hotel—it may only be a matter of time before Oblong is king of the freaks again.

“All the morbid kids grew up, and now they’re adults able to produce great stuff,” he says.

SEE IT: Angus Oblong at Brassworks Gallery, 3022 NE Glisan St., 503-593-9311, brassworksgallery.com . 5–9 pm Saturday, Feb. 14. Free entry, $20 per drawing. All ages.