John McPherson Works Close To Home

Here’s some great news for all Close to Home fans. John McPherson’s latest book, The Close To Home 30th Anniversary Treasury, will be released by Andrews McMeel Publishing on September 24th. This milestone volume includes more than 800 comics chosen by the Saratoga cartoonist and his editors as well as an instructive glimpse at how McPherson actually creates his cartoons.

To celebrate the coming book John McPherson talks to Wendy Hobday Haugh of The New York Almanack.

Since the first Close To Home panel debuted on October 7, 1992 [November 30, 1992], its rise to fame has been nothing short of meteoric with readers of all ages enjoying McPherson’s quirky characters and offbeat, insightful humor. Today, this popular cartoon, syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate (UPS), appears in roughly 750 newspapers.

The profile tells how John went from mechanical engineering to magazine cartooning (Saturday Evening Post, Yankee) to daily syndicated cartoonist.

Over an 18-month period, he sent out 160 batches of 8-10 cartoons and received 160 rejection letters in return. “But I actually didn’t become discouraged,” he recalls, “because I was passionate about drawing my cartoons and having a lot of fun with it.”

Mark Frost, of The Chronicle in Glens Falls, was the first editor not only to praise McPherson’s work but to offer him a steady gig: two cartoons per month for five bucks apiece. Earning $10 a month and achieving publication were groundbreaking events for McPherson; and over time, as his cartoons gained traction, they captured the attention of even larger publications. When Campus Life magazine – with its circulation of 2-300,000 teenage readers — started accepting his work, McPherson’s world expanded dramatically.