Cartoonist Profiles and Cartoon News
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Barry Blitt, Dennis Draughon, Tim Oliphant, Drew Litton, Cathy Wilcox, Jules Feiffer, Ernie Bushmiller, Quino. Randall Enos, and dozens of Cartoonists For Kamala.
Pulitzer-Prize winning cartoonist Barry Blitt tired of Trump
One might expect that Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Barry Blitt would be on the euphoric side with a coming U.S. election pitting his seemingly favourite target, former president Donald Trump, up against Vice-President Kamala Harris. But the acclaimed New Yorker magazine political caricaturist, a Côte-St-Luc native, is becoming a tad weary of the man.
Bill Brownstein of The Montreal Gazette profiles artist/caricaturist Barry Blitt.
Although Blitt, 66, visits Montreal regularly to touch base with his family here, he left the city after graduating from Concordia in 1978. He moved to Toronto to study at the Ontario College of Art and Design and a decade later ended up in New York City. He was to land the plum New Yorker gig in 1992 and to become one of the magazine’s most prolific illustrators — doing both covers and inside sketches — over the course of its nearly 100-year history. Blitt’s work has also appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly, Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, Graydon Carter’s newsletter Air Mail and his online Kvetchbook. He is also the author of the bestselling tome Blitt.
The Condé Nast Store has a wonderful gallery of nearly 500 pieces by Barry Blitt.
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Editorial cartoonist Draughon wins national award for excellence in local cartooning
Dennis Draughon, Capitol Broadcasting Company’s editorial cartoonist, received the prestigious Rex Babin Memorial Award for Excellence in Local Cartooning from the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.
The prize was announced Saturday ( Oct. 5) at the association’s annual convention in Montreal. The award recognizes outstanding work that focuses on state and local issues.
WRAL News proudly showcases Dennis Draughon, their award winning editorial cartoonist.
Draughon’s entry was a portfolio of 10 cartoons concerning state and local education issues. He has been a public school teacher for the last 14 years.
As a student at North Carolina State University, Draughon was cartoonist for The Technician – the campus newspaper. He began his professional career as an editorial cartoonist with the former Raleigh Times and has also worked for the Scranton (Pa.) Times-Tribune, The Durham News, The Fayetteville Observer and the (N.C.) Insider.
The profile includes the submissions portfolio that won the 2024 Babin Award.
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Cartoonist Mr. Ollie looks to inspire with graphic novel autobiography
A special book is soon to be released, one that tells a man’s incredible journey and the lessons he’s learned along the way.
“They always say cartooning gets in your blood, and when that happens, there’s nothing else you want to do,” said Tim Oliphant of Lewisburg.
WTVF talks to Tim (Mr. Ollie) Oliphant about his life and his career.
Since he was 16, Tim was convinced he was meant to be a cartoonist. His work’s been seen in many publications.
“Saturday Evening Post, Woman’s World, Highlights for Children, Boy’s Life, Ebony, American Legion Magazine,” Tim listed.
The pieces are all signed ‘Mr. Ollie’.
Pre-orders are now open for The Life Vest by Mr. Ollie. It’s a graphic novel autobiography.
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Drew Litton is cover artist for Denver’s October 10-16, 2024 Westword
The Denver Nuggets mascot gets cover featured when he retires after 23 years, and local sports cartoonist Drew Litton does the Westword cover illustration for the story.
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A Century of Satire: The Australian Cartoonist Association at 100
Cathy Wilcox has been drawing political cartoons almost every day since 1989.
This makes her the perfect person to explain how to distil an issue down into an image through her process of “un-crafting” political messages.
Andy Park of ABC’s The Drawing Room interviews cartoonist Cathy Wilcox in a 17 minute segment.
On the 100th birthday of The Australian Cartoonist Association, she highlights the significance of cartoons in democracy and the challenges faced by cartoonists in newspapers.
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AT HOME WITH Jules Feiffer
Jules Feiffer, the highly decorated cartoonist, illustrator, author, playwright and screenwriter, left New York City 27 years ago. But to Mr. Feiffer and those who know him, it’s a move that still feels as likely an occurrence as the pigeons departing St. Mark’s Square.
Being a New Yorker was a key part of his identity. “I never thought I could live out of the city or for that matter out of the Upper West Side,” said Mr. Feiffer whose book “Amazing Grapes,” a graphic novel for young readers was published last month. “I walked everywhere. If I had an appointment downtown, I would leave an hour early so I could walk there. I adored it all.”
But here he is now, at 95, in a high-ceilinged, 5,000-square-foot, ranch-style house in a sparsely populated town outside Albany.
The New York Times catches up with Jules Feiffer.
Part present.
“The book I’m working on, called ‘My License to Fail’, is 350 pages, with big drawings because I have acute macular degeneration so I have to work big to see what I’m doing,” he added. “It’s my way of paying back for all this beauty. We’re living in paradise.”
Part past.
In 1986, Mr. Feiffer won a Pulitzer for his editorial cartoons in The Village Voice. A decade later, the alternative weekly cut his salary so sharply that Mr. Feiffer viewed it as a firing.
Part Home and Garden.
The previous owner generously left behind several pieces of the Renaissance revival furniture he’d had made in Germany and shipped to the property. Mr. Feiffer and Ms. Holden happily fell heir to a dining room table and chairs, a few sofas and lamps, several chandeliers, as well as a couple of Persian rugs and runners.
Ms. Holden was somewhat less enthusiastic about the color scheme they’d inherited…
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VULGAR MINIMALISM – Bill Griffith’s Three Rocks and the cult of Nancy
So elemental that The American Heritage Dictionary used it to illustrate its definition of comic strip, Nancy hyperbolizes the mass-produced, disposable quality of the twentieth-century daily newspaper. Bushmiller’s economical language and virtuoso redeployment of simple hard-edged forms were matched by an iconic cast—Nancy, her bald boy-frenemy Sluggo, and her glamorous guardian Aunt Fritzi.
From May 2024 J. Hoberman for Artforum a combination history of Nancy, a review of Bill Griffith’s Three Rocks biography of Ernie Bushmiller, and a look at the Cult of Nancy.
Not funny but “funny,” Nancy’s gags are “gags” and, designed to be appreciated as such, are—as Mel Bochner observed of the “serial attitude” (which may well have been invented by newspaper funny pages)—“absurdly simple and available.” Though it’s hard to imagine anyone above the age of six laughing aloud at a Nancyworld punch line—except perhaps in wonderment—it’s even harder to imagine anyone over age six not getting the “joke.”
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Happy 60th Birthday Mafalda!
¡Paren el mundo que me quiero bajar! [Stop the world, I want to get off!] says Mafalda in one of her famous cartoons. Sixty years and some 1900 newspaper strips later, the Mafaldamania is still going strong and continues to be a lucid and scathing reading of reality. From cartoonist Joaquín Salvador Lavado (Mendoza, 1932-2020), better known by his pseudonym Quino, the masterpiece turned 60 recently and has lost none of its original wit.
Carolina Alvarado at LatinaMediaCo celebrates 60 years of Mafaldo.
Although Mafalda made her appearance for an advertising assignment in 1962, her official birth dates back to September 29, 1964, in Primera Plana magazine. Her success was immediate, transcending geographical boundaries and winning over a devastatingly loyal readership. Since then and to this day, Mafalda’s sharp observations, both on the Argentine political scene and on internationally – commenting on the Vietnam War, education, the role of women in society, even the meaning of life – continue to be reproduced around the world.
Including new English translations of the entire Mafalda backlog.
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Cartoonists For Kamala Auction
Garry B. Trudeau, Sergio Aragonés, Jim Borgman and Jerry Scott, Ray Alma, Bruce Timm, Patrick McDonnell, Mike Allred, Eric Powell, Bobby London, June Brigman/Roy Richardson, Jim Valentino, Dan Piraro, Cathy Guisewite, Wiley Miller, Cat Staggs, and dozens more are auctioning original art as part of the Cartoonists For Kamala Auction.
Check out the art. And then…
Join us on Saturday [October 12] at 730pm est as we countdown and watch the final auction values for the Cartoonist for Kamala eBay auctions. We will be joined by Bill Morrison, Dave Warren and possibily some of the auction donors!!!
Cartoonist For Kamala Live Auction Watch Party
And then stay tuned for other items coming up in the days following the watch party.
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And a hat tip to Randall Enos for bring back a couple of classic comic characters.
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