Background
Jules Feiffer, who was born on January 26, 1929, in the Bronx, New York, to David and Rhoda (nee Davis) Feiffer, always had an interest in drawing.
(Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist is the defin...)
Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist is the definitive documentary on the life and art of the godfather of the American comic book. This award-winning full-length feature film (which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and screened in over 25 film festivals worldwide) tells the story of arguably the most influential creator in comics, Will Eisner, who as artist, entrepreneur, innovator, and visual storyteller, enjoyed a career that encompassed comic books from their early beginnings in the 1930s to the rise of graphic novels in recent years. During his sixty-year-plus career, Eisner introduced the now-traditional mode of comic book production; championed mature, sophisticated storytelling (especially through his unforgettable creation "The Spirit" and subsequent books); advocated using comics in education; pioneered the now-popular "graphic novel," and became an inspiration for generations of artists. The movie includes interviews with Eisner and many of the foremost creative talents in America, including Kurt Vonnegut, Michael Chabon, Jules Feiffer, Jack Kirby, Art Spiegelman (who also narrates the movie), Frank Miller, Stan Lee, Gil Kane, and many others. The DVD also spotlights a bounty of extras, including filmmakers audio commentary; the never-before-heard "Shop Talk" tapes featuring the complete one-on-one audio interviews between Eisner and a veritable comic book hall of fame: Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Milt Caniff, Neal Adams, Joe Kubert, and others; and an art gallery of rarely seen Eisner artwork.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003MPDTOY/?tag=2022091-20
( Meet Big Sam Hannigan. Tough, righteous, a man on a mis...)
Meet Big Sam Hannigan. Tough, righteous, a man on a mission. Only problem is, it's the wrong mission. With the New York Times bestseller Kill My Mother, legendary cartoonist Jules Feiffer began an epic saga of American noir fiction. With Cousin Joseph, a prequel that introduces us to bare-knuckled Detective Sam Hannigan, head of the Bay City's Red Squad and patriarch of the Hannigan family featured in Kill My Mother, Feiffer brings us the second installment in this highly anticipated graphic trilogy. Our story opens in Bay City in 1931 in the midst of the Great Depression. Big Sam sees himself as a righteous, truth-seeking patriot, defending the American way, as his Irish immigrant father would have wanted, against a rising tide of left-wing unionism, strikes, and disruption that plague his home town. At the same time he makes monthly, secret overnight trips on behalf of Cousin Joseph, a mysterious man on the phone he has never laid eyes on, to pay off Hollywood producers to ensure that they will film only upbeat films that idealize a mythic America: no warts, no injustice uncorrected, only happy endings. But Sam, himself, is not in for a happy ending, as step by step the secret of his unseen mentor's duplicity is revealed to him. Fast-moving action, violence, and murder in the noir style of pulps and forties films are melded in the satiric, sociopolitical Feifferian style to dig up the buried fearmongering of the past and expose how closely it matches the headlines, happenings, and violence of today. With Cousin Joseph, Feiffer builds on his late-life conversion to cinematic noir, bowing, as ever, to youthful heroes Will Eisner and Milton Caniff, but ultimately creating a masterpiece that through his unique perspective and comic-strip noir style illuminates the very origins of Hollywood and its role in creating the bipolar nation we've become.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01693MB80/?tag=2022091-20
( Everyone knows a Feiffer illustration when they see one...)
Everyone knows a Feiffer illustration when they see one: His characters leap across the page, each line belying humor and psychological insight. Over Feiffers prolific 70-year career, his nimble and singular imagination has given us new perspectives as well as biting satires on politics, love, marriage, and religionalternating with stories imbued with the playful anarchy of a child. Feiffers varied output includes childrens books (The Phantom Tollbooth and Bark, George), plays (Little Murders), movies (Carnal Knowledge and Popeye), and comic strips (most notably in his Pulitzer Prizewinning Village Voice comic strip of 42 years). Out of Line: The Art of Jules Feiffer is the long-awaited illustrated retrospective of Feiffers celebrated career, providing a revealing glimpse into his creative process and his role as Americas foremost Renaissance man of the arts. Praise for the work of Jules Feiffer: Jules Feiffer is not only an Academy Awardwinning filmmaker, but a Pulitzer Prize winner, a playwright, a teacher, a childrens book author and illustrator, and a screenwriter. He is also one of the greatest cartoonists working today. Robert Osborne Jules Feiffer is a long-distance runner. . . . He has been operating at the highest level of his craft, producing a body of work that ranks with the finest ever produced in this country. Pete Hamill Samuel Johnson said he hoped God would think he had made good use of his God-given talents. Jules Feiffer need have no dread of such an audit. He came into this world capable of doing amusing and enchanting things with both language and drawing instruments. He has used these gifts as a faithful and tireless servant of humankind. What has made his services so welcome for so many years now is his possession, in addition to high intelligence, of something no hypocrite or egomaniac could claim, which is a humane sense of humor. Kurt Vonnegut Jules Feiffer, prolific hand and eye behind so many brilliant comics, screenplays, novels, and illustrations . . . remains one of the signature voices of a long era of American satire and dissent, the bridge from Lenny Bruce to the Simpsons. Jonathan Lethem Jules Feiffer was one of (if not) the first of the early writer/artists to emerge from the comic book ghetto into the literary/art world. Will Eisner
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1419700669/?tag=2022091-20
(The Line King tells the amazing story of Al Hirschfeld, c...)
The Line King tells the amazing story of Al Hirschfeld, creator of thousands of famous drawings of stars and celebrities for more than sixty years. Nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature (1996), The Line King celebrates Hirschfelds many years of work for The New York Times, where his drawings were a centerpiece of the Sunday Arts section. With appearances by Lauren Bacall, Carol Channing, Joan Collins, Barbara Walters, Robert Goulet, and many others, The Line King is a fascinating portrait of the artist as a cultural icon.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00020VZVG/?tag=2022091-20
( Rupert has a big secret. When his owner, Mandy, is fast...)
Rupert has a big secret. When his owner, Mandy, is fast asleep, he likes to slip on her dancing shoes and dance the night away. Then one night Mandy catches Rupert in the act. She's not upset; she's thrilled! And she's determined to give Rupert dancing lessons so he can hone his talent. Rupert is horrified. Lessons are for dogs. Cats like to do things their own way. Dismayed, he loses all interest in dancing and goes into hiding. But Mandy comes up with the perfect plan to get Rupert dancing again . . . Michael di Capua Books
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374363633/?tag=2022091-20
(Editorial cartoonists are an endangered species, and even...)
Editorial cartoonists are an endangered species, and even in their heyday they were rare birds -- at the top ranks of print journalism, only a few hundred such jobs existed worldwide in the 20th century. Yet those who wielded the drawing pen had enormous influence and popularity as they caricatured news events and newsmakers into "ink-drenched bombshells" that often said more than the accompanying news stories. Bill Sanders, working in a liberal tradition that stretches back to Thomas Nast and in more recent times includes Herblock, Oliphant, Feiffer, and Trudeau, began his career in the Eisenhower era and is still drawing in the age of Trump. In Against the Grain, he shares the upbringing and experiences that prepared him to infflict his opinions on the readers of the three major newspapers he worked for, the 100-plus papers he was syndicated in, and now, an internet channel. Sanders's memoir is both personal and political. He reveals his small-town Southern roots, his athletic exploits and military service, his courtship and enduring marriage, and his life-long passion for music. These threads are woven into his main narrative, explaining how a cartoonist works and why: "The cartoon should be a vehicle for opinion and it should be polemical in nature -- otherwise, it is a waste of time." Along the way he shares vignettes about people he encountered and events he witnessed, illustrated here with a few photos and scores of the cartoons he produced to meet daily newspaper deadlines. He notes that while a cartoon is a simple communication, it is based on reading and research, and only then comes the drawing. Finally, there is this: "While there may be -- to varying degrees -- two sides to some issues, don't bother looking for that posture on the following pages."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/158838294X/?tag=2022091-20
( A book of interviews with the foremost social commentat...)
A book of interviews with the foremost social commentators of our times. The fourth volume in The Comics Journal Library's ongoing series of lavish coffee-table-book collections of interviews drawn from the Utne Award-winning magazine's archives, this volume gathers together the epic, exhaustive interviews with four of the sharpest social commentators of our times: Ralph Steadman, Jules Feiffer, Edward Sorel, and David Levine. Each definitive conversation will boast the generous amounts of illustration that TCJ Library readers have come to expect from each volume, as well as a full-color gallery of rarely seen work. Color and black-and-white comics throughout
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1560975970/?tag=2022091-20
Jules Feiffer, who was born on January 26, 1929, in the Bronx, New York, to David and Rhoda (nee Davis) Feiffer, always had an interest in drawing.
By age five he had won a gold medal in a contest sponsored by John Wanamaker's department store in New York for his picture of Tom Mix arresting outlaws. After graduating from high school, Feiffer studied at the Art Students League and Pratt Institute.
From 1946 to 1951 he worked as an assistant to legendary cartoonist Will Eisner, creator of the popular comic book "The Spirit. " Feiffer so impressed Eisner with his writing ability that he was given responsibility for scripting "The Spirit. " During this period Feiffer also created a comic strip of his own called "Clifford, " a Sunday cartoon-page feature about the adventures of a little boy and his dog.
His budding career was interrupted in 1951 when he was drafted into the Army.
Although military service was repugnant to Feiffer, the two-year hitch actually changed the course of his work. His anger at being in the Army and his rage against authority, however, led him to satire and the desire to make pointed social and political comments through his art.
Feiffer's first effort in that direction was the creation of "Munro, " the story of a four-year-old boy mistakenly drafted into the Army. After leaving the military, though, Feiffer had difficulty getting started as a satirist. Unable to interest a publisher in his book of cartoons about "Munro, " he drifted from one art job to another between periods of unemployment.
Then, in 1956, Feiffer took some of his cartoons to the Village Voice, the weekly newspaper in New York's Greenwich Village that was just getting started. Although it could not pay, the Voice provided Feiffer with a platform and complete freedom to express his thoughts. Feiffer's simple drawings, which combined the commentary of editorial cartoons with the multi-panel structure of comic strips, were an instant success.
After two years Feiffer's cartoons from the Voice were compiled into a best-selling book called Sick, Sick, Sick. Then Playboy magazine put him on a $500-a-week retainer and his career was firmly launched. Feiffer's cartoons attracted attention and a devoted following because they differed so markedly from the norm.
The characters in Feiffer's sharp pen drawings, which included introspective adults, precocious children, non-conformists, politicians, and army generals, experienced and explained emotional anxiety and political upheaval.
Feiffer used his signature character, the dancer in the black leotard, to offer a ray of optimism.
Feiffer's rage at presidents and the problems he saw in America, even after nearly four decades of cartooning, never moderated.
His novels include Harry, the Rat with Women and Ackroyd. Later he focued on writing children's books. In 1993 he published The Man in the Ceiling. A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears was published in 1995 followed by I Lost My Bear in 1998.
In 1996 Feiffer donated his papers and drawings to the Library of Congress. Feiffer always tried to be innovative in whatever artistic endeavor he attempted.
(Editorial cartoonists are an endangered species, and even...)
(The Line King tells the amazing story of Al Hirschfeld, c...)
( Everyone knows a Feiffer illustration when they see one...)
(Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist is the defin...)
( A book of interviews with the foremost social commentat...)
(Kill My Mother A Graphic Novel)
( Rupert has a big secret. When his owner, Mandy, is fast...)
( Meet Big Sam Hannigan. Tough, righteous, a man on a mis...)
His work looked like comic strips, but instead of gags and preposterous situations, Feiffer offered biting vignettes of contemporary life in an attempt to expose society's ills and do something about them.
His work looked like comic strips, but instead of gags and preposterous situations, Feiffer offered biting vignettes of contemporary life in an attempt to expose society's ills and do something about them. Feiffer spoke of "writing" his cartoons because he believed in the supremacy of wording over illustration.
Indeed, while drawing the cartoons came easily, he sometimes rewrote his captions fifteen times.
Quotations:
The Satirist Before the service, Feiffer said his ambition "was no more and no less than to do a daily comic strip and a Sunday page in whatever style I found. "
Summarizing his own work, Feiffer said that it dealt "with going up against authority and conventional wisdom, and how people use language not to communicate, and the use of power in relationships. "
Beginning in the 1960s, Feiffer, an outspoken liberal, increasingly concentrated on political themes such as race relations, Vietnam, and the presidency. Of the latter he said, "I really go after the presidents and seem to have a good time slapping them around. " Explaining why Reagan was a special target, he said, "I rage at his smugness, ignorance and ideological blindness. "
"When I see something that makes me angry, drawing a cartoon about it provides a temporary 'fix', " he said. "When the system is not corrected overnight-or even in twenty-five years-my temper tends to rise again. "
He once said that as both writer and cartoonist, he enjoyed "understanding, acknowledging, respecting, and then ignoring the limitations of the different mediums I'm working in. "
"Our fights were always collegial. Never once did [Eisner] pull rank on me. I was always amazed by what he let me get away with. It shows how close and tight the relationship was, that he let me do that parody. He had great generosity of soul"
Quotes from others about the person
Feiffer was once described as being "at war with complacency, with the cliche mongers who provide society with meaningless slogans to live by, with the pomposity of officialdom, and with the carefully cultivated dullness of our carefully protected daily lives. "
As Eisner recalled in 1978:
"He began working as just a studio man – he would do erasing, cleanup . .. Gradually it became very clear that he could write better than he could draw and preferred it, indeed – so he wound up doing balloons [i. e. , dialog]. First he was doing balloons based on stories that I'd create. I would start a story off and say, 'Now here I want the Spirit to do the following things – you do the balloons, Jules. ' Gradually, he would take over and do stories entirely on his own, generally based on ideas we'd talked about. I'd come in generally with the first page, then he would pick it up and carry it from there. "
Feiffer was married three times and has three children. His daughter Halley Feiffer is an actress and playwright. His third marriage took place in September 2016, when he married freelance writer JZ Holden; the ceremony combined Jewish and Buddhist traditions. She is the author of Illusion of Memory (2013).