The Marine-Turned Saturday Morning Cartoonist: “My Calling from God is to be an Animator”

And we continue with Our American Stories. Up next, a story about a Marine-turned-cartoon animator, and so much more. Without any further ado, here’s Mike Jens.

I am a cartoonist, an animator, a cartoon director. And my story really began, as far as that goes—that end of my story—when I was seven years old. I was at a little school, and I was in second grade, and I just remember sitting in a row and looking over at this little blonde girl right next to me, and she was drawing trees, and she just had a particular way of drawing them that intrigued me. And, as far as I can remember or think, that was the first discretionary, discriminatory thought I ever had regarding my cartoons. She drew trees, and I wanted to draw them like her. So, that kind of began my artistic careers that were seven years old. From that time on, I just was a cartoonist. Every time I could get a piece of paper in my hands, I was drawing cartoons. My dad was a career Marine, so we traveled all the time. Every year we were moving to a new school, a new location. And, you know, for me to help identify or become identified as something to gain approval.
I guess it was with my peers.
I drew cartoons, and that one friends. And, you know, really, that is what established me as a young man. I had an identity as a cartoonist, and that was very important to me.
That lasted all the way through high school.
I drew cartoons for the school newspapers and everything else I went into; graduated from high school and went into Arizona State.
I wanted to be an architect at the time.
And, you know what—I just really wasn’t ready for school, too. I was set free and just kind of just did everything I wanted to do except crack a book. And so, after one semester of school, I ended up dropping out, and it had nothing going on for me. And this was during the Vietnam War, so the draft was very much a part of our lives at that time, and I had a low number. So I knew that Uncle Sam was going to come calling for me, and sure enough, he did.
However, I beat him to the punch by one day.
I enlisted in the Marine Corps because I was at a point in my life where I just didn’t know who I was, where I was going. I had no purposes, it were. And so I said, “You know what? The thing I know the most is the Marine Corps,” and I joined the…
Marines, and that was at the end of 1970 B.
C. I was in boot camp in January of 1971, and I remember standing out on the grinder—240 of us as were waiting for our company to be formed—and the drillings director comes out, and he says, “How many of you guys?” (Of course, he didn’t say “guys”; he said something else.) “But how many of you fellows know how to drive eighteen-wheelers?” And a few hands raised in the crowd. And then he says, “How many people know how to type?” And a few more hands raised in the crowd. And I remember thinking, “There’s these guys, two guys behind me,” and they said, “I’m not volunteering for nothing.” Well, of course, those are the guys that were going to become grunts because they had no specialties. But, anyways, he asked, “How many artists are there in the bunch?” And there’s two of us out of 240 that raised our hands. And after the he broke up the assembly, there we were brought—the two of us were brought into a room and basically told to draw something, anything that was on our minds. And I drew a bulldog with a helmet and a machine gun, firing at the camera or at the person looking at the cartoon. And afterward, the guy—the troop pander—goes, “Well, why did you draw that?” He says, “Well, I was raised in the Marine Corps, and I know that the bulldog is our mascot.” And, well, anyways, long story short, that became my MOS—my Military Occupational Specialty—1411 or 49211, I’m sorry, and that was a combat illustrator. So when I graduated from boot camp—and, itr, by the way, I was the honorman in boot camp because I wanted something to show who I was—the Marine Corps became my identity. And that was very important that I excel in something that I wanted to, you know, pursue, and at that time I wanted to pursue like my dad did.
The Marine Corps is a career.
And I was then on my way to Naples, Italy, and very soon became known in the barracks of 100 men as the barracks cartoonist, and I would draw cartoons for officers’ parties and everything else and going, and that really sustained me.
Again, it helped me to make friends, and it consolidated confirmed my identity as a Marine, number one, and, number two, of the cartoonist.
I’d been in a Marine now for about a year or so, and I just started feeling a great loneliness, a great emptiness in me, that the identities of being a cartoonist and being a Marine just were not fulfilling. And one night, after a liberty, these two Marines basically shared Jesus Christ with me, and I became a Christian.
He became my new identity.
And, believe me, it was an identity that took and changed my whole course in life. So I got out of the Marine Corps with an honorable discharge. I wanted to become a chaplain or a pastor—something behind a regular pullpit—and so I went to Bible College in Santa Cruz, California. There I became an English major because I love to write. I loved books and reading and such, and again, I was like the school cartoonist. I drew cartoons for the annuals, the yearbooks, for the school newspapers, et cetera. So I’m thinking, “Well, maybe God wants me to be somehow involved with cartooning as a career or as a ministry, augmenting somehow my pastorate.”
But, anyways, I went to four year—here’s a Bible college. There.
I met my wife, Kathy, and we were married for, after two years of school, and then we had another two years and graduated. I didn’t feel any more as though God wanted me to be a pastor. I had no idea what he wanted me to do. So we decided we would call Kathy’s parents, and they both lived down in Burbank area. We called them up, and they said they were just praying that God would bring us down to Burbank to do what?
We had no idea.
But we took that as an, “Okay, Lord, you’re telling us something.”
We don’t have anything else to…
Go on. So we’re going to step out in faith and go down to Burbank.
Well, we did.
We got down there, and I started going around to all the different Christian organizations like Gospellite, World Vision, David C. Cook—all of these organizations that would hire cartoonists to you to work on their magazine and whatever else. None of the doors opened; all of those closed. Nobody was hiring. And so, with portfolio on my hand, I’m ‘ca-okay, God, now what?’ ‘Well?’ My mother-in-law, Marcine, she knew someone at her church named Gleia Vaughan. And Gleia was the wife of an animator, a Warner Brothers animator named Lloyd Vaughan. And she says, “Well, what if I set up a meeting with you and Lloyd?” I thought, “Great, wonderful!” Now, Lloyd was one of Chuck Jones’s stable of animators. Chuck Jones was an Oscar-winning cartoon producer-director. He was known most notably for his Bugs, Bunnies, et cetera. Anyways, so, and Lloyd was one of his chief animators. You can see his name on the credits.
And you’ve been listening to Mike Jens’s tell the story of his life as a career Marine, moving from town to town; his identity in this thing called cartooning. He dropped out of college. New Uncle Sam was beckoning; beat him to the chase, avoiding the draft by enlisting in the Marines. And it was 1970, no less. The Marine Corps became my identity.
I excelled there.
He became a combat illustrator, and when God beckoned him to become a pastor, well, it didn’t work out, and he wondered what God’s plans were for him.
He’d become a Christian; that was his new identity.
He drove down a Burbank hoping to work with a Christian ministry but was denied, only to have a door open with the great, the legendary Chuck Jones and the Warner Brothers animation team. More of this remarkable story here on Our American Stories. And we continue with Our American Stories, and let’s pick up where we last left off with Mike Jens telling us the story of getting a meeting with cartoon animator Lloyd Vaughan. Vaughan is known for his work at Warner Brothers, working for legendary Looney Tunes cartoonist Chuck Jones.
Here again is Mike Jens.
Anyhow, so I’m in Lloyd’s house, showing him my portfolio, and he looked at it. And he looked at me and he said, “Mike, you need to be in cartoon animation.” I said, “Really?” He said, “Yeah, you need to be in cartoon animation, and here, let me make a call for you.” This is back in 1977. And so he gets on the phone and calls the guy by the name of Harry Love. And Harry was an animator at Hanna-Barbera at the time, and he was also teaching a night class on animation. And so he gets Harry on the phone and says, “I’d like to send Mike over and have him show you his portfolio,” which he did; went over there, met Harry, showed him my portfolio, and Harry goes, “Mike, how would you like to be in our night class?” Of course, I, you know, just agog, and I said, “Absolutely love it!” So at night, I’m learning how to animate. I’m sitting at the desks of animators who had animated on Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hounds, Flintstones. I mean, this place is like, you know, the mecca for cartoonists. And I had arrived, and it was wonderful. So for the next couple of months, I’m, you know, going to the class at night, learning how to animate. And it was like all the bells and whistles in my head started sounding because I had now arrived as a cartoonist.
I love to see my drawings animate.
So I had these five shows that I created while at Hanna-Barbera’s the inco and paint department, and we learned at Harry Love’s class that Filmation was hiring assistant animators. I go, “Oh, wow, that would be cool!” Filmation Studios—they did Fat Albert and Tarzan and those kinds of Saturday morning shows—and a guy by the name of Lou Irwin was in charge of the assistant animators there at Filmation. He saw my stuff. He says, “Mike, you got a job!” So, all of a sudden, now from inking and paignting, I am now an official assistant animator working on, you know, Mighty Mouse, Fat Albert, Tarzan et Saturday—these shows that were being shown on Saturday morning cartoons, which I was just completely thrilled about.
And furthermore, I was making a decent salary.
At that point, was able to join the union, the Cartoonist Guild, and my wife and I were able to move out of the parents’ house, who are supporting us at the time, and move into our own place. Anyways, I’m now an assistant animator, and I worked there until the Christmas season, at which point I got laid off.
Everybody.
Most people get laid off at the Christmas season because that’s when the season ends, and during that holiday break over Christmas is when the producers are trying to sell their new shows to the networks. Well, here I am unemployed, and I’ve got bills to pay, and I’m wondering, “Okay, God, what do we do?” And Kathy and I prayed, of course. And so I went driving around all over the different animation studios with my portfolio in hand, trying to find a job. And nothing was available, and they’re all shut down for the season.
Anyway.
So here I’m driving along Kowing A Boulevard in the Burbank area, and I see the Hanna-Barbera Studios there. And I just had a prompting—an inner prompting: “Mike, go in there and try to get a job there.”
Now, why would I go there when I had just worked there earlier and gotten laid off from the inco and painted part?
Anyways, I went into the studio.
The parking lot was empty, and that’s not a good sign.
That tells me that they’re all laid off, too.
But I walked into the studio and went up to the receptionist, and I said, “I’d like to know if there’s somebody here I can show my portfolio to for a job.”
And she said—and I’m not kidding—”Hold on, let me see if Bill Hanna is available.”
Before I could under register what she just said—Bill Hanna of Hanna-Barbera, the guy who created Huckleberry Hound and The Flintstones and all of those great cartoons that were on television—she says, “Let me see if I can get a hold of Bill for you.”
Two seconds later, Mike had on a Bill Hanna’s office.
So here I am, shaking like a leaf, with my portfolio, and I went in there, and there he was! And I’m not kidding, he had his feet up on his desk.
There’s Bill Hanna. I introduced myself, and he said, “Well, what do you got, Mike?” And so I brought out the five shows that I had created, and he was very interested in those.
It took a great interest.
We were there talking in his office for an hour and a half, and at one point he brought in all of these studio heads and to introduce them to me.
And so, “Here’s Mike!”
“Is anybody here got any work? I know that it’s the layoff time, but does anybody have any work for Mike?” And one guy by the name of Uraj Paran stepped forward. “So, yeah, I got something.” “If he’s interested in doing a coloring book,” so I said, “Well, absolutely,” and it gave me enough money to pay for our bill.
That helped us through the layoff period.
I was then rehired after that was completed. I was rehired by Filmation, and I met one of the producers there, Don Christiansen. And he saw my coloring book, and he saw my drawings that I’d done that I showed Bill Hanna. He said, “How would you like to be a storyboard artist?” Didn’t realize it at the time, but this was a turning point in my career.
And if anybody doesn’t know what a storyboard artist does, he’s the guy that takes a script and turns it into its visual form.
First visual form: seen by scene, shot by shot, close-up, long shot, down shot, upshot. All of the different approaches to producing a cartoon are done through the storyboard artist.
So basically, what I was…
Being handed was the gift: the ability, the teaching instruction, on how to create films. It was during that time, actually in 1977, when I came up with an idea called THEO.
And at that point I thought, “You know what? Cartoons are a universal language.”
Kids love cartoons. It doesn’t matter what part of the world they’re from, what ethnicity, what age. Really, people love cartoons. What a great vehicle for communicating biblical truth! What a great pulpit to be working from behind! My animation desk, my drawing table, became my pulpit. I did not realize it in 1978, when I created THEO, that it was going to take 30 years before God finally gave me the financing to produce that series.
But I’m glad I didn’t know, because what I had to go through was, basically, I left Filmation and I started working for Marvel Productions of Spider-Man fame.
I used to play chess in my lunch hours with Stan Lee.
I used to beat him.
He beat me too, but we had a great time to get a great guy.
But, anyways, I worked at Marvel for seven years.
It was during that time that I went from being a storyboard artist to being a writer and also for being also being a director of shows.
And, a finally, as a producer of shows—primetime specials—I produced their very first feature film.
And I’m a little embarrassed to say this, but the “My Little Pony” feature film.
You may have seen that before; that was me who produced that and directed it.
My Little Pony!
Pony All in Spring is here, and you’ve been listening to Mike Jens tell his journeyman’s story—his story of an artist, actually—because this is how artists live: job to job, in a job, out of a job, fired, rehired, laid off, brought back.
But he stayed with it.
He stayed with his calling, his purpose. And soon, well, he was about to do his own show.
But that conversation with that secretary…
“Let me see if Bill Hanna is available,” and there he was—feet on his desk!
My goodness, what a moment in his life!
When we come back, more of Mike Jens’s story here on Our American Stories. And we continue with Our American Stories, and let’s return to our storyteller, Mike Jens, who was just sharing how his rise in the animation industry involved working for the likes of Marvel Productions and playing chess with Stan Lee in his spare time. To producing primetime cartoon specials like “My Little Pony: The Movie” in 1986, the voices of Danny DeVito, Madeline Kahn, Ria Perlman, and Tony Randall.
Here again is Mike Jens.
I produced “Fraggle Rock” for NBC, the animated version of “Fraggle Rock” with Jim Henson. Had a great time at Marvel and learned everything I needed to know to have my own studio with my own cartoons going through it. I left Marvel in 1988. There was a big change in the industry at that time.
A lot of people from New York were moving and buying up animation studios.
Back in the earlier days, studios were run by guys like Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
They were animators; they were directors.
Even at Phil Nation, Lou Scheimer was an animator.
These are guys that understood the process and understood the artistic mentality or the temperament.
So in 19…