Greg Kearney – Kansas Cartoonist
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“I feel sometimes like I am trying to keep alive a dying art form,”
Eric Thomas for Kansas newspapers – here at the Kansas Reflector – interviews editorial cartoonist Greg Kearney about the cartooning business, about Kansas politics, and the future of it all.
Kearney, 67, has drawn cartoons since he was a 14-year-old high school student in Maine, with his first professional work showing up in the Waterville Sentinel in 1972. Since then, he has worked as an editorial cartoonist for publications like the Casper Star Tribune, in addition to working internationally, he said.
Today, his syndicated cartoons appear in newspapers across Kansas, but also in distant states like Maine, Montana and North Dakota. Some newspapers send him ideas of topics or points of view that they would like illustrated. Other cartoons originate from his own ideas.
Greg still has an affinity for his old home state of Maine:
As for his syndicating his cartoons:
“If I draw a cartoon about Kansas,” Kearney said, “I will send that cartoon to every single one of the outlets. They’ll all get it. … That’s the only way right now in editorial cartooning — unless lightning strikes and you get a job at a newspaper, which, just frankly, doesn’t happen anymore.”
The full interview/profile can be read here.
Greg Kearney cartoons can be read at his Drawing Attention blogspot.
Greg is one of a very few that includes a dingbat in his cartoons:
The angular lettering of Kearney’s signature decorates the bottom right corner of most cartoons. His most loyal fans recognize a second common signature: Vic, the cat.
Kearney often draws Vic, round-faced and dressed in a polka-dotted bow tie, peering up at the main topic of the cartoon or addressing the reader. Vic, the cat, always has something to say.
Vic was inspired by Victor Runtz, an editorial cartoonist who worked for the Bangor Daily News in the 1970s…
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