Jules Feiffer Remembered as Influential Cartoonist

Jules R. Feiffer, a cartoonist and writer, died late Friday morning, January 17, at his home in the Town of Exeter with his wife, the writer JZ Holden by his side. The beloved Stony Brook Southampton writing professor and Dan’s Papers cover artist mastered every major narrative art form of the 20th century – comic strips, theater, cinema, novels, graphic novels, children’s literature – and used them to capture our every neurosis, desire, fear, hypocrisy, fantasy, rationalization and twisted daydream. He was 95.

Born January 26, 1929, in The Bronx, Jules Ralph Feiffer was the son of Polish Jewish immigrants David and Rhoda (Davis) Feiffer. Encouraged by his mother, he began drawing at the age of 3 and soon developed a love for cartoons. After graduating from James Monroe High School at the age of 16, he went to work for Will Eisner, who considered Jules a mediocre artist, but he “liked the kid’s spunk and intensity.” The two worked well together, especially on Eisner’s cartoon, “The Spirit.”

From 1951 until 1953, Jules served in the United States Army during the Korean War where he did animation for the Signal Corps.

After working with Will Eisner, Jules eventually ventured off onto his own and became a staff cartoonist for the fledgling The Village Voice where he produced a weekly comic strip eventually titled “Feiffer” that ran for 42 years, until 1997. Known for his signature sketchy, scribbly line drawings, he compiled a collection of his satire cartoons into a best-selling book, Sick Sick Sick: A Guide to Non-Confident Living, a dissection of popular social and political neuroses.

By 1959, “Feiffer” was distributed nationally by the Hall Syndicate and appeared in such newspapers as The Boston Globe and Newark Star-Ledger, as well as major publications including The New Yorker, Esquire, and Playboy. Eventually, syndication reached 100 newspapers at its peak. In 1997 The New York Times commissioned him to create its first op-ed page comic strip, which ran monthly until 2000.

In the 1960s, Stanley Kubrick, a fellow Bronx native, invited Feiffer to write a screenplay for Dr. Stangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Feiffer decided it just wasn’t for him, and Kubrick wound up writing, directing and producing the film himself. Feiffer went on to write the screenplay for Carnal Knowledge in 1971, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel. In the 1980s he wrote the screenplay for Robert Altman’s Popeye. Though it met with mixed, critical reaction, the film, starring Robin Williams as Popeye and Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl was a hit.

Through the years, he published many books containing his art, including children’s books such as The Phantom Tollbooth in 1961, and wrote and drew one of the earliest graphic novels, Tantrum. Age was not a factor for this indefatigable man, and just this past year, he published Amazing Grapes, a graphic novel for middle-school-age children.

Included in the many honors and awards he garnered throughout his life, are an Academy Award in 1961 for best animated short film, “Munro,” the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for political cartoons, a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010 from the Writers Guild of America, and in 2004 he was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame. He taught a popular writing class, Humor and Truth, to students of Stony Brook Southampton’s MFA program (formerly Southampton Campus LIU).

In September 2016, Jules married the writer JZ Holden and moved to Shelter Island. They later moved to upstate New York and settled into a home overlooking fields, mountains and a lake. In addition to his wife, he is survived by two daughters from previous marriages, Halley and Kate Feiffer.

Soon after his death, many tributes to his prodigious career have appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Comics Journal and Variety, just to name a few. Please read these articles to gain an appreciation for a life well-lived.

Jules will be laid to rest later this spring in Lakewood Cemetery in Cooperstown.

Arrangements are with the Connell, Dow & Deysenroth Funeral Home in Cooperstown.