Babies—big babies, neurotic babies, self-indulgent babies—have ruled the world for centuries. But no matter how large or old they get, they’re not ideal leaders for reasons that are unnecessary to explain. (Right?) Nonetheless, Mark Lerer—whose comic creation The Little General takes the metaphor to its absurdist extreme—imagines what happens when three cute babies exercise some real diaper power.
Lerer inhabits the worlds of cartooning, illustration and fine art. He has exhibited his drawings at New York Cityʼs Nexus Gallery, Broome Street Gallery, Lincoln Centerʼs Cork Gallery, and New Century Artists. His illustrations ran in the “Careers Plus” column of the New York Post from 1996 to 1998, and he was the art director of Street News from 1995 to 1996. He has written extensively on comics for The Rumpus, and was assistant editor and designer of Marvel Age Magazine in the early ’80s. On Facebook, Lerer documents the adventures of The Little General, who has starred in a graphic novel and series of mini-comics since 2009.
The arc of this work builds on the premise, What happens when three 18-month-old babies plot against each other with the goal of gaining world power and fame? Although it sounds a bit like a certain presidential candidate, any similarity is purely coincidental (and for that matter, no living babies were harmed in the making of these comics). Here Lerer speaks candidly about his Little General and asks you to draw your own conclusions.
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When and why did you launch The Little General and his cohorts on social media?
Facebook is the ideal venue for posting cartoons. I started off in 2009 with simple one-panel line drawings, and they evolved into more sophisticated color multi-part continuities with (drumroll, please) allegorical content that I compile into zines. The fellow who instigated the whole “baby general” idea, a writer named Andrew Coe, was very pleased with my efforts, and the rest is history.
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What ideally do you want The Little General to be saying to the reader?
Bottom line? The mission is satire. Jonathan Swift wrote that, “Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.” I think of satire as a mirror. Stan Lee once said that because the news of the world we receive is so heavily sugar-coated, if you present things exactly as they really are, it will come across as satire.
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I used to draw storyboards with soldiers galore. As a kid did you draw military figures and stories to excess?
I always drew to excess! But never soldiers or anything military. What I really enjoyed drawing were the vintage Marvel Super-Heroes and Peanuts characters. In fact, my father framed my Charlie Brown and Schroeder drawings and hung them in his office.
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There’s a hint of Dada humor in your comic books as well as surreal absurdity. Are they or are they not intended to be political?
You honor me by spotting an element of surrealism in my cartoons and, as I become a more confident draftsman, I’ll be able to dispense with the conventions that I’m now laboring earnestly to master. Political? Well, In the second graphic novel, currently in progress, a character with absolutely no knowledge of how to run even his own affairs claims he knows everything better than everybody else, and subsequently makes a huge mess. Absurdity, in cartoons as in real life, rules.
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How much of The Little General (or his guerrilla pal, Chiquita Bañana, for that matter) is some kind of autobiographical fantasy?
It’s not really my dream to be a Central American guerrilla leader, but I can’t help finding Chiquita Bañana (with the tilde over the n) irresistibly cute. That’s usually how she gets things done, in fact.
Are the three 18-month-old babies who star in the Little General really able to save the world? And if so, how?
In the Facebook continuities, our diminutive hero always responds to any crisis with great earnestness (if that’s a real word), like an American Tintin. In the graphic novel, though, he’s the heavy, more motivated by egocentrism and greed, like, say, Blackadder. In a future graphic novel, I’ll have him explain to the readers in a framing sequence that he’s just a character playing a part, and that offstage he really does respect Admiral Kips-Bay and loves Chiquita.
But “save the world?” Nah. They’re more about frantically clinging to power than helping others, like a lot of babies.
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How regularly do you create different scenarios for your characters?
The first graphic novel was about a real place called La Magliana, a 16th-century papal retreat in the Italian countryside that the babies fight over (I won’t give away the ending). The second graphic novel, which we hope to have ready for MoCCA Fest in 2025 (fingers crossed) is inspired by John Ringling, the circus impresario who longed to be a member of the American aristocracy.
The recent Facebook cartoons deal with the war in the Middle East and my frustration that the world’s nations were so slow to respond to the invasion of Ukraine. Now I’m doing “Scenes From the Life of the Little General,” which places the little fellow in various historical situations.
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Do you have a strong fan base? How do your readers respond?
They’ve been wonderful! We’re developing an enthusiastic readership among people who enjoy sophisticated wit and humor. Our Facebook posts keep getting more and more likes and comments, and we’re winning a lot of support from friends in the cartooning profession like Barbara Slate, Elwood Smith and Craig Yoe. Art Spiegelman himself was very encouraging. What’s most flattering is that I’m hearing from old high school and college chums I haven’t seen in years who love the drawing style.
There seems to be many villains, but I can’t tell who they are. Can you give me a hint?
Again, in cartoons, as in life, most of these characters are their own worst enemies.