Jules Feiffer

Jules Ralph Feiffer was born on January 26, 1929, and spent nearly a century leaving his mark across American cartooning, theater, and literature before his death on January 17, 2025. At his peak, he was regarded as the most widely read satirist in the United States — a distinction earned through decades of sharp, psychologically astute work.

His path into the field began early. At seventeen, Feiffer joined Will Eisner's studio, contributing to the writing and illustration of *The Spirit* — a collaboration reflected in his extensive credits across Spirit-related publications. The apprenticeship shaped him, but his own voice emerged fully in 1956 when he joined *The Village Voice* as a staff cartoonist, producing his weekly strip *Feiffer* for over four decades. By 1959 it was nationally syndicated, appearing in outlets from *The New Yorker* to the *London Observer*.

Feiffer's output ranged remarkably wide. His 1958 collection *Sick, Sick, Sick* launched a long run of satirical anthologies; *The Great Comic Book Heroes* (1965) was the first serious historical study of the superhero genre. His 1979 work *Tantrum* stands among his earliest graphic novels. For film, he wrote the screenplays for *Carnal Knowledge* (1971) and *Popeye* (1980), and his animated script *Munro* won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short in 1961.

He received the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1986 and was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2004.