Bronx-born, Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Jules Feiffer, whose decades of commentary and artistry endeared him to generations, has died at age 95.
The prodigious and satirical Village Voice cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter and more died Friday surrounded by friends at his home in Richfield Springs, N.Y., about 70 miles west of Albany.
His cause of death was congestive heart failure, his wife, JZ Holden, told The Washington Post on Tuesday.
Holden said that while Feiffer had been ill for some time, he never dimmed and “was sharp and strong up until the very end. And funny.”
Feiffer was known for writing the movies “Carnal Knowledge” and the Robin Williams-led “Popeye,” released in 1971 and 1980 respectively. But his main claim to fame was the weekly comic strip “Feiffer,” which he penned for the Village Voice from 1956 to 2000 and was syndicated in newspapers across the country.
Feiffer began drawing cartoons at age 6, he told HarperCollins Publishers in his author profile. He launched his cartooning career after attending Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute by apprenticing for Will Eisner, known for creating comic book character The Spirit.
Feiffer’s first official comic strip, “Clifford,” lasted from the late 1940s until 1951, when he was drafted into the Army to serve in the Korean War. That’s where he acquired a hard-earned distrust of authority, he told HarperCollins.
“Militarism, regimentation, and mindless authority combined to squeeze the boy cartoonist out of me and bring out the rebel,” he said, according to the publisher’s website. Upon returning from the war, he began writing the first iteration of “Feiffer,” initially titled “Sick, Sick, Sick,” for the Village Voice.
“Cartoon satire that commented on the military, the bomb, the cold war, the hypocrisy of grown-ups, the mating habits of urban young men and women,” he said. “These were my subjects.”
Feiffer’s biting wit and illustrations took form across several mediums, from plays to novels to children’s books, including the the classic “The Phantom Tollbooth,” which he illustrated. All shared his underlying aesthetic.
“My goal is to make people think, to make them feel and, along the way, to make them smile if not laugh,” Feiffer once told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “Humor seems to me one of the best ways of espousing ideas. It gets people to listen with their guard down.”