Malcolm Whyte (1933) is an author, editor, publisher, and founder of the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco. He has produced nearly 200 books, 45 of which he has written or co-written. His taste is for unique, offbeat ideas with a sense of good humor and produced with an eye for color and beautiful graphics as represented by The Original Old Radio Game (possibly the world's first trivia book) from 1965 to Maxon: Art Out of Chaos,[1] FU (Fantagraphics Underground) Press, 2018.
Whyte lives in Marin County, California with his wife, author Karen Cross Whyte.
Troubador Press
Whyte founded Troubador Press in 1959 as a job printer and designer/printer of greeting cards. In 1967 the press published its first book, The Fat Cat Coloring & Limerick Book with art by Donna Sloan and verses by Whyte.
Troubador incorporated in 1970, ceased greeting card manufacturing and became a full-time book publisher, producing scores of critically acclaimed educational books for children (game books, activity books, elaborate color-and-story books), specialty cookbooks (Complete Yogurt Cookbook and The Original Diet, both by raw vegetarian pioneer Karen Cross Whyte), and art books (The Scrimshander and the initial edition of Great Comic Cats). Whyte worked with licenses from Harry Abrams & Co. (several Gnomes books), TSR, Inc. (Dungeons & Dragons), and Edward Gorey (Gorey Games,Gorey Cats Paper Dolls).
In 1982 Whyte sold Troubador, which is now a subsidiary of Penguin-Putnam, and continued to produce Troubador books for the new owners until 1994. Whyte wrote educational text for many of the books.
Troubador Press artists
The artist of Beasties Coloring Book (1970), Vernon Koski, was posthumously selected to have his ashes incorporated into a painting, which is in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.[2][3][4]Winston Tong did the artwork for The Dinosaur Coloring Book (1969).[5]
Other artists include Ruth Heller, Maze Craze, Color & Puzzle; Greg Irons, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons; William Gilkerson, The Scrimshander; Elizabeth Miles, Mother Goose Coloring Album; Morrie Turner, Black & White Coloring Book; Phil Frank, San Francisco Scenes, Travels with Farley; and Andrea Tachiera,[6]Tropical Fish Coloring Album, Color of Nature Series.
Cartoon Art Museum
Whyte, with the assistance of some fellow comics enthusiasts, founded the Cartoon Art Museum in 1984.[7][8] He wrote and produced exhibition catalogs that featured the art of Walt Kelly, Charles Schulz, Edward Gorey, and Charles Crumb, Robert Crumb, and Maxon Crumb. Additionally, he wrote and produced two catalogs for touring exhibitions: "Draw Me A Story", "A Century of Children’s Book Illustration" and "Walk In Beauty, Discovering American Indian Art".
Whyte retired from the museum's board of directors in 1995.[9] In 2008, the museum presented Whyte with a "Sparky" award, named after Charles M. Schulz, who was also given a caricature of himself by artist Zach Trenholm.[8]
Word Play Publications
In 1994 Whyte founded Word Play Publications to publish limited, signed illustrated books, among them Goreyography, the bibliography of the works of Edward Gorey, photo-documentary of underground cartoonists The Underground Comix Family Album,[10] and Maxon’s Poe illustrated by Maxon Crumb.
Selected list of works
The Original Old Radio Game, Ed Callahan, Bill Shilling, co-authors. Pisani Press (1965)
Great Comic Game Book, John Stanley, co-author. Price/Stern/Sloan (1966)
The Making of Stereo Views article. Book Club of Calif: QNL LXXVII #1 (2012)
Cottage Classics: Their Makers & The Making. Word Play Publications (2014)
Maxon: Art Out of Chaos - Foreword by Robert Crumb. FU Press (2018)
Gorey Secrets:Artistic and Literary Influences behind Divers Books by Edward Gorey - Foreword by Peter F. Neumeyer. University Press of Mississippi (2022)
