J. D. King – RIP
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Cartoonist, illustrator, and musician J. D. King has passed away.
John David (J.D.) King
May 3, 1951 – “on or about October 27,” 2025
Word spread on social media that illustrator J. D. King had passed away.
From Thurston Joseph Michael Moore’s Facebook page of November 6:
J.D. King, comics illustrator, and founder of 1979 NYC art rock band The Coachmen has passed away. J.D. (or simply, John, as I knew him) and I met in ‘78 at Cutlers Record store in New Haven CT as we both hovered over the Velvet Underground section (it was empty) and began talking about all things Punk. He graduated RISD that year and moved with a bunch of art rock lads to downtown NYC cohabitating in the infamous South Street building housing Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo, Kathryn Bigelow a.o. (J.D. had a bit role in Bigelow’s 1st film The Loveless)…
From the late 1970s to the mid 1990s J.D. contributed to alternative comic books and magazines creating one page strips and short multi-page comics.
By the 1990s his creativity was mostly reserved for newspapers, magazines, advertising and record albums.
From the J. D. Illustration website:
My work has appeared in: Fortune, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Boston Globe, American Lawyer, USPS, Audubon, Nickelodeon, AARP, Women’s Wear Daily, Smithsonian, Consumer Reports, Washington Post, Princeton Alumni Weekly, Scholastic.
As of 2022, I retired from illustration.
A site for the Limited Edition Bite Sized print adds more clients:
J.D. King is an American artist best known for his commercial art illustrations for companies including Absolut Vodka, Atlantic Records, Condé Nast Publications, Sony and others.
J. D. King began his career in the late 1970s with contributions to several underground press magazines including: STOP! WEIRDO, and Commercial Funnies.
King’s illustrations have appeared in The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. In addition to book illustration (Martin McIntosh’s Beatsville), he has contributed to numerous magazines, including Adweek, US Postal Service, Audubon magazine, BusinessWeek, Entertainment Weekly, Fortune, Women’s Wear Daily, The Smithsonian magazine, New York, The New Yorker, Princeton Alumni Weekly, California magazine, and Time. Beastniks, a comic strip inspired by beatniks, ran in Drawn & Quarterly and Twist during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
J.J. Sedelmaier Productions animated King’s eccentric cartoon characters for a Nick @ Nite promotional film, and Curious Pictures also animated King’s creations for a US cellular phone commercial.
His artwork has been displayed in awards annuals including American Illustration, Communication Arts and the annual of the Society of Publication Designers.
Lisa Kapps, for The Observer-Dispatch, sat down with J. D. in 2011:
“Initially, I was more interested in comics,” King said. “I sort of veered into illustration.”
In the 1980s and ’90s, King authored an underground comic strip called “The Beastniks,” which ran in Drawn and Quarterly.
He was drawn to illustration, first creating work by hand, later scanning rough outlines into a Mac and polishing them digitally; he now works completely on the computer.
“It took me a long time to really get a handle on the computer,” King said. “It was such a big jump.”
Now, he appreciates the ability to change colors easily or make several different colored versions of the same illustration.
Today The Comics Journal posted John Kelly’s obituary for J. D. King.
J.D. King, a prolific cartoonist whose stylized, jazz-infused illustrations appeared in many magazines in the 1990s, died at his home in Remsen, New York in early November, 2025. He was 74 years old. There is no exact cause of death but also no cause for suspicion. According to several people close to him, King was in good health and regularly rode his bicycle and did pushups daily. A long-time friend who spoke to him shortly before his death said that King had been saying that he was experiencing flu-like symptoms.
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