Transcript of CS#64: Gary Cangemi Umbert the Unborn

Transcript of Interview with Gary Cangemi about Umbert the Unborn – A Womb with a View. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

Umbert the Unborn – A Womb with a View is available at The Catholic Company.
http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1004798/Umbert-Unborn/

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Chris Cash:  This is the Catholic Spotlight, the podcast where we talk about what is new, cool and exciting in the Catholic marketplace.  I am your host Chris Cash, Director of e-Commerce from CatholicCompany.com, your stores for all your Catholic needs.

Today in the Spotlight, we have Gary Cangemi.  Did I say that right there?  I am sorry, I forgot to ask you how to say your name.

Gary Cangemi:  Hi, Chris.  That is Gary Cangemi.

Chris Cash:  Gary Cangemi, author of Umbert the Unborn, an excellent, awesome, pro-life book, cartoons actually and we are going to talk a lot about who Umbert is and why he is such an exciting character.  So, Gary, welcome to the show.

Gary Cangemi:  Thank you very much.  I am happy to be here.

Chris Cash:  Gary, tell us just a little bit about yourself and about who Umbert is and why he is so special.

Gary Cangemi:  Well, you just probably want to hear more about Umbert than me, so I will be very brief about myself.

Chris Cash:  I want to hear about you too, Gary.

Gary Cangemi:  Well, I was born in Virginia, originally from Maryland; I grew up in Maryland, moved to Pennsylvania to actually attend a seminary.  I was in the seminary for about three years, decided that, that was not my vocation.  Went at the human services for about five years and then from there, decided to try my luck in the business of graphic design.  I had always been a cartoonist.  I have done many political cartoons for local newspapers, but the problem with that was a lot of that was very negative.  You are always attacking politicians and attacking issues and so forth.  I wanted to do something a little more positive.

So, about seven years ago, I was skimming through some old cartoons I have done and I saw a pro-life cartoon, a political cartoon that I have written about a baby who was about to be aborted and he overhears the doctor basically saying to the mother not to worry, “We have done this before.  It is just a non-viable mass of unwanted protoplasm” and then the baby yells in the final panel, “Speak to yourself.”  When I saw that little baby in that panel that I had drawn several years earlier, I thought to myself, “Wait a minute, what if this is a regular character in his own comic strip.”  It could really give a face, a voice and a personality to the unborn child and maybe people would identify with that character much like they identify with Charley Brown or Snoopy or Garfield and really grow to love that character and then they get unimaginable that anyone would want to harm that character.  That was my thinking behind the creation of Umbert the Unborn.  He is just the baby in the womb, in his own little wombiverse, I like to say, anticipating life after birth but really enjoying life before birth and celebrating it as he goes through his various adventures.

Chris Cash:  Now, what kind of adventure is this Umbert have or maybe we should start with just tell us a little bit more about who Umbert is and what he does.

Gary Cangemi:  Well, he is about, I would say six months gestation in the womb, in his mother’s womb, he is a little boy baby.  Originally, I did not really specify a gender but most of my readers tend to think of him as a boy.  So, I just pretty much defer to their…

Chris Cash:  I think they probably just could not imagine a girl being named Umbert.

Gary Cangemi:  Exactly.  That is my most frequently asked questions, how I came up with the name Umbert.  I really wanted something that begins with the letter U to go with the unborn.  I want a kind of a heroic sounding name.  So, I could not think of a name that begins with a letter U.  Then, I was reading a book by Umberto Ecko, The Name of the Rose I believe was the name of the book.  The word Umberto really appealed to me but that sounded very Italian and I wanted just to be an American name.  So I thought, I just drop the O.  It sounds kind of American so, I took the O off and it became Umbert.

Chris Cash:  So, have you heard of anybody naming a child after Umbert at this point?

Gary Cangemi:  I am waiting to hear from the first person who says they named their baby after my cartoon character.

Chris Cash:  So there is a challenge out to all of you listeners, anybody who is expecting and wants to make a real statement, there you go, Umbert.

Gary Cangemi:  Well, it is not really all that far-fetching idea because I know in England there is the name Humbert I believe, is a common name.  So, I imagine, Umbert would certainly be an American counterpart to Umberto, which is certainly in use in Europe, in Italy and other countries.  So, I would imagine that someone could name their child that without raising too many eyebrows.

Chris Cash:  Well, I have a Faustin in my family.

Gary Cangemi:  There you go.

Chris Cash:  I am always getting questions about, “Oh, that is such a beautiful name, where did it come from?”  It is a great chance for evangelization when you got that kind of a name.  So, you now just think about what kind of a chance for evangelization someone would have if they name their child Umbert.

Gary Cangemi:  There you go.  Well Umbert, he pretty much listens in his own little think-tank and he likes to comment on the issues, he overhears his parents talking at times and the cartoons were kind of divided between pro-life issues, religious issues or just prenatal humor.  For instance, ordering womb service.  Umbert has a good sense of humor and he likes to contemplate the mysteries of the world, the universe, life and so forth, but he also likes to comment on the daily headlines and the news, sometimes listens to his own little radio, he likes to get on his own prenatal computer and kind of surf the inner womb, pick up little tidbits, he goes into chatrooms so he can talk and network with other unborn babies throughout the world.  So, he has his own little universe.

Chris Cash:  So he has got quite a few props that appear off and on inside that little womb of his.

Gary Cangemi:  Yes, he does.  Sometimes, he has this big screen TV and this computer like I said.  Sometimes, he talks on a stem cellphone, the system cellphone uses placental cells not embryonic stem cell.  He is very careful about the products he chooses.  He wants to make sure that they are pro-life.

Chris Cash:  Now, when you talk about pro-life issues in the cartoon, is it very overtly pro-life or is it more of a tongue and cheek kind of approach to it or is it the kind of cartoon that is going to smash people over the head and say, looks stupid, this is the way it is?

Gary Cangemi:  I would say I use all of the above approaches.  Sometimes, I tried to be subtle.  I think, sometimes you have to be.  Sometimes, I am very direct about it.  Sometimes, Umbert uses the A word, abortion in the strip.  So, it is very overtly at times, pro-life but I am speaking to an audience that is pretty much of the same mindset.

Umbert is distributed mostly to faith-based Catholic newspapers, Diocese newspapers.  I am in over a hundred church bulletins.  I am in several dozen pro-life newsletters.

So, right now, my primary audience is very pro-life.  So, I can use very strong language and terms because we are all pretty much on the same page.  If I were probably running Umbert in a mainstream daily newspaper, I would probably try more of a subtle approach because I understand that not everyone is where I am with this issue and I want to try to win them over by getting to think about the issues and win over hearts and minds as opposed to confronting people and getting in their faith about it.

Chris Cash:  Now you are currently trying to get in to more secular venues, correct?

Gary Cangemi:  Yes, that is my game plan.  I kind of trying to organize my own little syndicate and recruit people to help me approach daily newspaper to run Umbert as a daily – because I am already doing Umbert as a daily right now on the internet.  So, I have the material.  I can certainly do crank out a daily strip with no problem, there is plenty of story lines and actually doing a daily strip as much easier than doing a weekly because in a weekly strip, each strip is self-contained, it has to have its own point whereas with the daily strip, you can do a story line that can develop from day to day and that is much easier to write, at least for me.

Chris Cash:  So, if you do get picked up into a more mainstream media outlet, does that mean that you are going to change the writing style overall of Umbert or is it possible that you are going to have one version of Umbert that remains still more overtly pro-life and one that is a little more subtle in its approach for the mainstream media?

Gary Cangemi:  That is a very good question.  My plans there and I am not sure I am speaking with this plan, but I will definitely continue Umbert the Unborn in its current version for the weekly and monthly publication also for the daily internet on the Catholic websites.  So, that is not going to affect that at all.  If I were to do a daily version for mainstream newspapers, I am just going to kind of rebrand it a little bit, instead of calling it Umbert the Unborn, call it A Womb with a View and have it be more about all the characters and story lines and so forth.

As far as the toning down the rederick  – like I said, just a slight adjustment so that it is not going to put people off and have them calling their editors to cancel their papers and so forth, but enough strength in the message that it gets across the foot lights.

Chris Cash:  So you are going to put away the jack hammer and replace it with the rubber mallet?

Gary Cangemi:  Exactly.  Yes.  In other words, to get it introduced and then as people get more familiar with it then I could probably ratch it up the rederick a little bit more.  So, it looks more like the strip that the pro-life version that people are familiar with.  Again, I am very sensitive about watering it down.  I do not want to do that.  I really feel that it is a strong message, it needs to be heard and God gave me the ability to express myself in this way and I really do not feel I should try to subdue that too much.  I am just trying to be sensitive to the audience that might be reading it in a daily newspaper.

Chris Cash:  On that note, anybody who is of the extreme pro-abortion mentality is going to even look at the water down version and immediately take Umbert at it.

Gary Cangemi:  Yes, that is true.  Just the very idea of a comic strip about a baby in the womb is going to be…

Chris Cash:  Especially when it is so well-developed and so communicative and talking with all the other babies in the womb, I mean, that must be…

Gary Cangemi:  They are going to find that offensive regardless, no matter what I do.  So, I am not worried about that.  I am certainly not afraid to confront the other side as far as that goes.  In order to be able to sell this to the editor, I have to assure them that this is not something that is going to blatantly offend the readers or have them calling to cancel the subscription.

Chris Cash:  …cause the otherwise diminishing subscription rates to diminish further.

Gary Cangemi:  Exactly.  Then again, I hate to say, the heck with it, I am going to do it my way and if you want it fine, have it.  If not, well, it is going to be on the internet where everyone can see it.  So, I do not know, it depends on what mood I am that day.

Chris Cash:  There you go.

Gary Cangemi:  Do not hide your light under a bushel basket.

Chris Cash:  Amen to that.  Amen to that.  Although I certainly must say that there are times for being wily as a fox.

Gary Cangemi:  Very true.

Chris Cash:  Getting your message into the right places.

Gary Cangemi:  Right.  I do not want children to be exposed to this.  I can see Umbert as a Saturday morning cartoon some day.  Why not?  I mean, Hollywood has had such full sway over what our children see in here on television and what family see as entertainment and it is hard enough to find a movie that the family can go all see together and why not Umbert the Unborn.

Chris Cash:  Well, if something as offensive as South Park can be a regular cartoon show on the networks then why not Umbert?

Gary Cangemi:  Exactly.

Chris Cash:  Maybe you should contact Comedy Central, they might like the idea.

Gary Cangemi:  They might not take it seriously, they might think it is a satire.

Chris Cash:  Exactly, if you like, “Mark, you are doing all these other offensive stuff just put this one on.”

Gary Cangemi:  They might not realize that I mean what I write about in the script, so I do not know.  That is a nice idea though, I will give them a call.

Chris Cash:  There you go, you might as well, right?  What venues, if somebody is looking to find Umbert as a comic strip, what newspaper should they be looking in and what is your website address so that somebody can look it up and have a look at Umbert and see what is going on?

Gary Cangemi:  Sure, well first of all, Umbert’s flagship newspaper is the National Catholic Register.  Umbert appears in color every week in that paper and they were the first ones actually to pick Umbert up back in June of 2001.  They also operate two websites which carry Umbert on a daily basis and one is www.catholic.net and the other is ncregister.com and Umbert appears on both of those with a new episode every day.  As far as Umbert – what I call his wombsite, Umbert has his own wombsite which is www.UmberttheUnborn.com and that is pretty much…

Chris Cash:  That is hard to remember there.

Gary Cangemi:  That is pretty much about all information about Umbert where you can meet the characters, do some sample scripts.  There is also an interactive kid’s page.  I have like a comic book, a coloring book that they can download for free, jigsaw puzzle they can do online.  I have lessons on how to draw Umbert on the kid’s page.  I also have some things for the grownups as well.  Also, Umbert has his own little store on there if people want to get the book and other items.  It is a lot of fun.  I just got that finally put up this year.  Hopefully, that will expand as well.

Chris Cash:  It is a really nice looking site too I must say, being someone who is real familiar with different sites online and working with them on the daily basis.  Your site looks very nice.

Gary Cangemi:  Well, thank you very much.  It was a real learning curve for me because being a graphic artist, I am very good with Photoshop and Illustrator but I had no clue how to do web software.  I pretty much had just to teach myself how to do it.  So, it took a while.

Chris Cash:  The rules that work with graphic artistry do not always work so well on the web.

Gary Cangemi:  Exactly, because I do not know the programming code and all of that.  I am sure there are kid’s right out of college or maybe right out of preschool will probably do a better job than I can.

Chris Cash:  Preschool might be pushing a little bit  I have an eight year old and we are just starting to work on web development with her.  So, we will see how that goes.

Gary Cangemi:  Well, not exactly because one of Umbert’s friends in this comic strip is Elwood the expected.  Elwood is an African-American child of two parents who both teach at MIT.  So, Elwood is like the resident genius of the womb.  He is already applying to Harvard Preschool and shopping around for…

Chris Cash:  Well, I will give a buy to Elwood, then he is probably going to outperform me very shortly and take my job.

Gary Cangemi:  There are other characters in the strip.  Vita the viable, I call her, she is the little girl character who Umbert met in the chatwomb and she is the daughter of a single mom.  I wanted to address the issue of parents who are more likely to have abortions because of being single, maybe poor or whatever.  So, Vita over here as her mom frequently talking about not being sure whether she wants to keep her child and Vita’s admission of course is find some way to break through and communicate with her mom to let her know that she loves her and that the two of them can make it together or even consider adoption as an option.  So, that is the running story line throughout the strip.  Vita struggled to get through to her mom.

I also have Fredo the frozen, he is the little frozen embryo who is in a little iceberg in a laboratory somewhere, it is like in limbo waiting to be implanted in a womb or whatever, which is kind of a touchy subject because obviously in the Catholic faith, we do not support freezing embryos or In Vitro Fertilization and yet we have to…

Chris Cash:  But it is a current topic that needs to be addressed here.

Gary Cangemi:  Yes, but we have this dilemma of this embryos we consider human being.  What is their future and what is the proper moral thing to do with them.  So, Fredo the character kind of addresses that whole issue.  Of course, he is more into bringing on global warming because he is so cold.

Chris Cash:  Another fun topic right there.

Gary Cangemi:  On a lighter side, we have Doby and Toby.  They are fraternal twins and of course, Toby thinks that means that his brother is adopted but they are kind of like the Laurel and Hardy of the womb.  They pretty much are the one kind of bosses the other one around and the other one tries out with the other and it is kind of fun.

We also have cousin Eb, Umbert’s cousin from Texas.  He likes to play guitar and do his own little pro-life spin on some country western classics like “Thank God, I am an embryo.”

Chris Cash:  I am sure John Denver is rolling over in his grave on that one.

Gary Cangemi:  Yes, probably.  Actually, I just came back from the National March for Life conference in Washington and I did my workshop there.  Part of my workshop now is I do a pro-life song parodies that has appeared in the Umbert comic strip.  Umbert last year decided to *** raise his own Broadway musical called Unborn Babies on Broadway and we did all kinds of song parodies with some classic Broadway songs like There is no Business like Grow Business and 76 Pro-lifers Live the Big Parade, that type of thing.  You know, that was very well received.  I had everyone singing, clapping and having a great old time.  People in the other workshops were wondering, “What is wondering on here?  Pro-lifers are not supposed to have as much fun.”  You know, I always say that Umbert is like the Bob Hope of the Pro-Life Movement.  He kind of entertains the troops on the front lines of the cause and keeps the morale high and kind of reinvigorates their spirit.  So, they can do the great wonderful work that they do trying to save the children.

Chris Cash:  We are going to have a real quick break here to hear from our sponsors and we will be back in a minute to talk more about Umbert the Unborn with Gary Cangemi.  This is Chris Cash on the Catholic Spotlight.

[scoring]

Chris Cash:  We are back on the Catholic Spotlight with Gary Cangemi.  So, Gary, have any of Umbert’s friends other than Vita, had any kind of close encounters with the subject of abortion or is that kind of as close as it gets?

Gary Cangemi:  I would say, yes Vita is probably the one that is getting to closest to the situations, to having her life endanger.  In fact, I just did a recent story line which kind of reacted to one of Umbert’s readers, a concern that she had.  I often, a lot of the material I come up with is reactions on what I see on the news but also the readers, they call me or e-mail me with concerns they have, I tried to find a way to work that into the strip.  This one woman called and was concerned about laws which permit employers to ask very personal questions of women about their future plans as far as how many children they want to have or if they are pregnant, what their plans are when they have the baby and so forth.  She felt that this system kind of discriminated against women and made them worse is likely not to get a particular job and a job is what they need if they are going to raise children and so forth.  Their inability to get a job might lead to them making a decision to have an abortion.  So, I tried to find a way that…

Chris Cash:  It has in some instances.

Gary Cangemi:  I am sorry.

Chris Cash:  It has in some instances.

Gary Cangemi:  Absolutely.

Chris Cash:  In fact, I can remember a story a few years back about some firefighters who were forced into having abortion.  I think there were three of them actually that they were not directly forced but they were in some way coerced in order to keep their job.

Gary Cangemi:  The pressure I am sure was very strong.  That is a concern and while I think, an employer has the right to know some basic information about who they hire, I think asking personal questions like how many children do you plan on having is none of their business.

Chris Cash:  That is going a little far.

Gary Cangemi:  Yes, I think it is.  Anyway, so what I did with that issue is I had Vita overhearing her mom saying, “You know, if I can get a better job, maybe I could keep my baby.”  That perked up Vita’s ears right away.  So, she kind of listened as her mother went to the whole process of going through this very personal interviews and Vita’s saying, “Is this job interview or congressional hearing?  Give me a break.”  Every time of course the prospective employer saw that the mother was obviously pregnant, she kind of was not given the job.  So, Vita says, “I have got to do something to help my mom.  Every time that I am here, she does not get the job.”  So, she put the big paper bag over her body thinking that she can hide, the employer will give her mom a job.  So, it is from her own little naïve but whelming perspective, that issue as approached.  But that is kind of the way I handle that kind of a situation and that is always going to be a tension in that part of the story line nor I would never think of actually having Vita aborted but the thread of it will always hang in the air as long as the strip is running because so many children do face that possible faith.

Umbert on the other hand has two parents who are eagerly anticipating his arrival.  So, he has nothing but great things to look forward to but I want to share both sides of the story in the script.

Chris Cash:  Now, do you have any characters that are disabled?

Gary Cangemi:  You know, that is a good, great question and people were asking me that this very weekend.  I am planning on doing…let me take a drink of water here.

On issue of disabled children because a lot of times now with the ultrasound, people can see the health of their child before they have it and that may lead to something.

Chris Cash:  Well, I have heard some stories from people who have move – I am in Indiana, so I am kind of in the Midwest and in more acceptable territory for dealing with things like that, but I have heard from some friends who moved from the East Coast that you almost never see a child with Down syndrome out there anymore because it is so common to abort them before they are born.

Gary Cangemi:  That is terrible.  I have worked with Down syndrome children in the past and I know how much love these children are capable of giving and how much compassion we learn when we raise such a child or deal with such a child.  It is just unthinkable that they will automatically be targeted for extinction like that.

Anyway, as an answer to your question, I definitely plan on having a disabled child introduce in the script but I am very careful about doing that because I want to make sure that I am not offending or making fun of a disability in any way.  I am always very careful about crackling the script to make sure that it is not offensive to Catholics that is not offensive to the mothers or parents.

Chris Cash:  Just offensive to NARAL members.

Gary Cangemi:  Yes, exactly, just offensive to the militant pro-abortionist, absolutely.  When I finally conceive of the character in my mind, I will definitely introduce such a character to the script because I think that is very important.  Whether it is a Down syndrome child or a child with maybe a missing appendage or maybe something that is not too obvious, it maybe deafness or blindness or something of that nature, I am not exactly sure of what I am going to do or how am I going to do it but I will do that in the near future, I am sure.

Chris Cash:  Well, it is about time to wrap this up, was there anything else you wanted to share with our listeners before we finish up here?

Gary Cangemi:  Not, just to invite them to check Umbert out on one of the websites that I mentioned or to visit Umbert’s wombsite and get to know the character a little better and just pass the information on to your friends and see that this is an opportunity to do something new and different, a new and different approach to this issue.  To me, it is just another tool in the toolbox for pro-lifers to get their message across.  Certainly, people far more dedicated than I have been in the trenches for the last 30 years or so dealing with this issue and this has just designed to help them give them an added tool to use.

So, I very much appreciate your taking the time to inform your listeners about Umbert.

Chris Cash:  Well, it has been a great fun for me to get to learn more about Umbert as well since I have been reading Umbert for a little while.  I felt like I knew I am a little bit already but this is just extra icing on the cake to have a chance to talk with you about where he has come from and where he is going.  So, that is just always exciting for me.  I always say I have one of the best jobs in the world.  I get to interview all of my heroes out there who are out there making all these great stuff for the Catholic world.  So, thank you so much for everything you do for the Pro-Life Movement out there.

Gary Cangemi:  Thank you very much Chris, it is my pleasure to be here.

Chris Cash:  All of you listeners out there, be sure to go on over to podcast alley and vote for us this month.  It helps us get more listeners and bump us up in the ratings there as well as leave us a review over on iTunes that helps out as well.  Be sure also to go on over, check out our Facebook page.  You can find that by searching Catholic Spotlight over on Facebook and we are also just getting started with a Catholic Company fun page over there.  So, if you are a fan of the Catholic Company, go to Facebook and add on as a fan to our new fan page there.  That will really help us out in getting the word out as well.  Thank all you listeners out there.  Thank you Gary for coming on this week and we hope to hear from you again soon when the new Umbert book becomes available.  How long is that going to be?

Gary Cangemi:  As soon as I get the publisher lock into a date, we will see what happens.

Chris Cash:  I know I am putting you on the spot there because he were not even sure of that a few weeks ago.

Gary Cangemi:  I am not exactly sure when the next book will come out but I have enough cartoons that will probably fill about four or five more books.  So, hopefully soon we will have a potential publishing date for a new book.

Chris Cash:  There you go, we will have a five volume set next time, right?

Gary Cangemi:  That is right, there you go.

Chris Cash:  All right Gary, it has been great, you have a great day and God bless.

Gary Cangemi:  You too Chris, thanks a lot.

Chris Cash:  Thank you for listening to the Catholic Spotlight, a production of the Catholic Company, your store for over 14,000 Catholic books and gifts that make a difference.  Find us online at CatholicCompany.com.  You can find more podcast from the Catholic Spotlight at CatholicSpotlight.com and if you have a question, comment or would like to be featured in our intro, call our voicemail at 206-426-1207, we would love to hear from you.  You can find more info on being featured in our intro at CatholicSpotlight.com as well as announcements about future interviews.  Have a great day and God bless.

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Transcript of Interview with Gary Cangemi about Umbert the Unborn – A Womb with a View. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

Umbert the Unborn – A Womb with a View is available at The Catholic Company.
http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1004798/Umbert-Unborn/