Feiffer Files: Memories of Jules
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Over the course of his nearly 80-year career, Jules Feiffer tried his hand at everything–comic books, political cartoons, editorials, comics history, plays, films, animation, children’s books, graphic novels … and he was hard at work on his next book when he passed away on Jan. 17, just shy of his 96th birthday.
In celebration of Feiffer’s life and legacy, [Andrew Farago and] The Comics Journal reached out to some of Feiffer’s friends, colleagues and admirers and asked them to share appreciations and anecdotes from those who knew and loved him.
Remembering Jules Feiffer
Collects memories and comics from Patrick McDonnell, Rick Parker, Mimi Pond, Derf Backderf, Shannon Wheeler, Noah Van Sciver, Judd Winick, Jen Sorensen, J.J. Sedelmaier, Ruben Bolling, Liza Donnelly, Bob Fingerman, Malcolm Whyte, Danny Fingeroth, Adrian Sinnott, Karen Green, Paul Levitz, Keith Knight, Jason Chatfield, Mike Lynch, Michael Dooley, Shaenon Garrity, Michael Tisserand, Michael Cavna, C. S. Fossett, Tom Tomorrow, Jeet Heer, Terri Lebenson, Jason Bergman, Ben Katchor, Jerry Beck, Roz Chast, Charles Kochman, and Mort Gerberg.
Jules Feiffer and Autistic America
In this archival piece, R.C. Harvey, who was close in age to Jules Feiffer, walks the reader through the cartoonist’s oeuvre and impact. From The Comics Journal #190 (September 1996).
Also from The Comics Journal is an old historical piece by R. C. Harvey.
Like A Character in a Jules Feiffer Cartoon
The Weingartens, David Clark and Horace LaBadie have Barney & Clyde ruminate on Jules’ characters.
Remembering legendary cartoonist Jules Feiffer
Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and writer Jules Feiffer passed away earlier this month at the age of 95. Feiffer was born in the Bronx and studied at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
He spent decades making comic strips for the Village Voice newspaper, published novels, wrote several Broadway plays, and found success in film. Much of his material focused on politics and satire.
Steven Heller, co-chair emeritus from the School of Visual Arts MFA design program, frequently collaborated with Feiffer during his career.
Steven Heller joins Spectrum News’ Lori Chung for a discussion of Feiffer’s legacy in a six minute segment.
Feiffer’s Illustrated Memoirs
Nick Bruel shares pages from the Illustrated Memoirs Jules was working on at the time of his passing.
On the Life and Times of a Comics Master, Jules Feiffer
Feiffer was a chronicler of the American berserk. His fellow travelers included Mike Nichols, Stephen Sondheim, and Philip Roth, his admirers Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Gene Kelly, and Bayard Rustin. A generation of adult-wary teenagers adopted his first collection, Sick, Sick, Sick, as a talisman, and a slightly younger generation studied his illustrations for Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth. Feiffer wrote the screenplays for Nichols’s Bergman-esque masterpiece Carnal Knowledge and Robert Altman’s legendary disaster Popeye. Some of what you have just read made it into the obituaries. Unmentioned in them is damning evidence of our criminal willingness to discard our greatest cultural artifacts. Feiffer’s strips for The Village Voice and satires for Playboy—his most vital work—are out of print.
For Literary Hub Paul Morton Considers the Artist Who Took “Aim at the Radical Middle”
JULES THA G.O.A.T.
“So much of the life of a cartoonist is the sense of getting away with it.”
Jules Feiffer died this week at 95. The hyphens you’d need to describe his work are . . . extensive:
- Cartoonist
- Satirist
- Humorist
- Illustrator (of The Phantom Tollbooth, dayenu)
- Playwright
- Screenwriter
- Novelist
- Memoirist
- Mentor
- Creator
- Artist
Gil Roth remembers The Time I Met Jules Feiffer.
Jules Feiffer, Cartoonist Who Worked At Terrytoons
Feiffer worked across many creative fields, but he was most well known as a cartoonist, and in 1956, he began a 40-year run drawing the satirical Sick, Sick, Sick for The Village Voice. The strip, later called Feiffer, was eventually syndicated to over 100 newspapers and magazines.
In the early years of the comic, when the Voice didn’t pay Feiffer for his work, he got a job working in animation at New Rochelle, New York’s Terrytoons, under the studio’s short-lived Modernist regime overseen by Gene Deitch. Feiffer had previously applied to work at UPA-NY, when Deitch was its creative director, but his highly personal style wasn’t appropriate for the company’s direction at the time. But, Deitch recalled that hiring Feiffer at Terrytoons was a priority for him …
Amid Amidi at Cartoon Brew looks at Jules Feiffer animator.
Thatababy Tribute
Paul Trap pays tribute to Jules with his February 3, 2025 Thatababy comic strip.
Jules Feiffer Remembers The Great Comic Book Heroes
This is cartoonist Jules Feiffer’s nostalgic article about his experiences as a reader and an apprentice during the Golden Age of Comics which was later republished along with a bevy of classic comic book stories as the perennial reprint collection of the 1960s and 1970s–the first such book to reprint old comic book stories.
Tom Brevort presents Jules Feiffer’s nine page introductory essay for his 1965 book The Great Comic Book Heroes as edited for the October 1965 issue of Playboy. More about TGCBH at The Vault of Culture.
Finally The Comics Journal digs into their archives for Jules Feiffer interviews from 1988 to 2014 and more.
feature image from My Side of the Car by Kate Feiffer with Jules Feiffer
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