Cyclops' Night Out Featuring: Cyclops, the Bongo Family & Quite a Number of Other Oddities by Mott, Stan - 1978

1978. Ephemera. Fine. An exceptional 16-piece original comic-art sequence published across four full pages in Road and Track magazine's June 1978 issue, and one of Mott's finest works.

Stan Mott (1933-2022) was one of the best-known and most-beloved car cartoonists, with work appearing in Road and Track, Automobile, and other magazines. He is best remembered for his silly cars, including the Cyclops II, described as "the world's cheapest ($14.32) and stupidest (fetal seating positions) car." Many car enthusiasts built versions of the car and Road and Track featured their custom built Cyclops in dozens of magazine articles.

This mixed-media cartoon, in pen and ink, watercolor, and gouache, is a fever dream of the Cyclops II, which begins the wordless narrative parked outside a house. As night falls, it transforms into a Bugatti Type 41 Royale Napoleon Coupe, and races through Los Angeles, finding adventure and madness on the way. In one scene, the Bugatti tears through a live TV commercial being shot on a used car lot (a frequent late-night TV staple of LA TV in the 1970s).

In 2012, Mott sent an email to the previous owner of this magnificent piece of automotive cartooning:

"The actual art was done [in] early 1978 on board my yacht "Deniz Agaci" in Malta. But the seeds had been planted decades before in Southern California: the freeways, McDonalds, used cars, the Oscars, and to top it all, the late night chase on Mulholland Drive. I've adored the Bugatti...ever since I saw a photo of it in 1954. To me it is utterly the most elegant and magnificent piece of rolling art ever created. Other than Cyclops, of course..."

"The concept went together fast. But the art took a month. One of my favorite panels was the go at McDonalds. The image of 19-cent burgers sold in nour neon demanded that green aliens work the place, so I just enhanced the weirdness by getting out my Wierd File of vehicles I'd done over the years and lined 'em up around the Mac stand-all the way to the horizon. Wheee! And to top it all, I had to get in the spectacularly beautiful night panorama of L.A. seen from Mulholland Drive, racing up there midst the rich, famous, and degenerate.... "

"Night Out is personal, almost biographical in a surrealistic sense-[stuff] which I would have loved to actually have done!!!"

Original Mott cartoon art is very scarce on the market. The individual paintings were done on stiff paper cut to size, which have been mounted loosely onto a backing board, matted and glazed (with anti-UV Plexiglass), and put into two matching 33-by-25-inch frames. The individual paintings measure roughly five inches square for the six small pieces; the nine larger pieces are about 9-1/2 by 4-1/2; the title piece is smaller. The condition of the frames and the art is excellent.

Compared to the published version, two of the images are in reverse order; it is not clear if the framing reflects Mott's original intention or a mistake in the framing.