Not long after Rich Sparks moved to Chicago in 1982, he started a job at Carnival Foods, a grocery store in the city’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. Working in the produce department, Sparks was tasked with updating a sign advising customers to “Ring Bell for Service,” and in short order he’d transformed it into a sort of weekly single-panel cartoon that started to generate a following among the store’s customers.
“It was like my own little thing, my own little comic panel, and, now that I think about it, it’s not unlike what I’m doing now,” said the Columbus-born Sparks, who released his first collection, Love and Other Weird Things, today (Tuesday, Jan. 28).
Columbus Alive celebrates local cartoonist made good (i.e. New Yorker Cartoonist),
on the occasion of Rich Sparks‘ collection of cartoons.
Rich was one of my students when I was teaching….I would love to see more of his work.