
Jules Feiffer
Born: January 26, 1929 in New York City, NY
Died: January 17, 2025 in Richfield Springs, New York Pen Name: None Connection to Illinois: Feiffer taught at Northwestern University in Evanston. Biography: Jules Feiffer was raised in The Bronx, New York City, New York, where he graduated from James Monroe High School in 1947. Feiffer is an adjunct professor at Stony Brook Southampton. Previously he taught at the Yale School of Drama and Northwestern University. He has been a Senior Fellow at the Columbia University National Arts Journalism Program. He was in residence at the Arizona State University Barrett Honors College from November 27 to December 2, 2006. June through August 2009, Feiffer was in residence as a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College, where he taught an undergraduate course on graphic humor in the 20th century.
Awards:
- The Village Voice for Political Cartoons Pulitzer Prize
- George Polk Award for his cartoons, 1961
- American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1995
- Comic Book Hall of Fame; 2004
- National Cartoonists Society's Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award, 2004
- Creativity Foundation's Laureate, 2006
- Lifetime Achievement Award from the Writers Guild of America, 2010
Selected Titles
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A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears ISBN: 0062059262 OCLC: 38996402 HarperCollins Publishers, [New York] : 1998, ©1995. Prince Roger is sent on a quest, the purpose of which is to turn the carefree young prince into a sober man and worthy monarch. Roger gets everything wrong--except for the meaning of life, and that he gets right. |
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A Room With a Zoo ISBN: 0786837039 OCLC: New York : Hyperion Book CH New York : 2007 Julie wants a dog more than anything in the world, but her parents won't let her have one until shes old enough to walk it by herself. Julie does manage to collect some other pets while she waits, though: a sick cat, a hamster, a big, ugly fish, six smaller fish to keep the big fish company, a turtle, a strong-minded kitten, an unresponsive hermit crab, and a borrowed classroom rabbit that seems to be dying. All in one bedroom. Is enough ever enough for this critter connoisseur? |
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Amazing Grapes ISBN: 006296383X OCLC: Michael di Capua Books 2024 Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist Jules Feiffer brings the fantastical to life with his signature style in this zany, whimsical adventure about a family on a quest to find their mother and save another dimension. Curly and Perlie, brother and sister, find themselves transported to the Lost Dimension. Soon they are joined by big sister Shirley and their very special Mommy. Marvelous adventures await the whole family in that weird dimension. Come along and see for yourself! |
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Backing into Forward ISBN: 0385531583 OCLC: 370387406 Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, New York : ©2010. The award-winning cartoonist, playwright, and author delivers a witty, illustrated rendition of his life, from his childhood as a wimpy kid in the Bronx to his legendary career in the arts. |
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Bark, George ISBN: 9781448748204 OCLC: 41560450 A mother dog tries to teach her pup how to bark, and is surprised at why he wasn't learning. |
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By the Side of the Road ISBN: 0786809086 OCLC: [New York, N.Y.] : Michael Di Capua Books [New York, N.Y.] : 2002 When his father leaves him beside the road to teach him a lesson about misbehaving, Richard discovers that the roadside is not a bad place and takes up residence there. |
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Explainers: The Complete Village Voice Strips (1956-1966) ISBN: 156097835X OCLC: Fantagraphics Books 2009 In 1956, a relatively unknown cartoonist by the name of Jules Feiffer started contributing a strip to the only alternative weekly published in the US, a small radical newspaper called The Village Voice. It was the first time the American public had been subjected to a weekly dose of comics that so uncompromisingly and wittily confronted individuals' private fears and society's public transgressions. Explainers is the first of four volumes collecting Feiffer's entire run of weekly strips from The Village Voice. This edition contains approximately 500 strips originally published between 1956 and 1966 in a gigantic landscape hardcover format. |
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Feiffer: The Collected Works ISBN: 1560970316 OCLC: Seattle, WA : Fantagraphics Seattle, WA : 1991 The first two years of Feiffer's Village Voice strip, plus: "Boom," Feiffer's savage take on the H-bomb; "The Deluge" (Noah vs. the bureaucrats); and "Harold Swerg" (an athlete refuses to win the Olympics). In 1956, an unknown cartoonist named Jules Feiffer began drawing a weekly comic strip called Sick, Sick, Sick free of charge for a then-obscure weekly newspaper called the Village Voice. Within two years, Feiffer had become one of the most popular satirists of the period, appearing in several major newspapers in the U.S. and Great Britain, and with a best-selling book under his belt. Feiffer: The Collected Works Vol. 3 contains the first two scintillating years of this strip (later re-dubbed simply Feiffer), shot mostly from the original art. But that's not all! This volume also includes "Boom," Feiffer's savage take on H-bomb testing, government duplicity, and public apathy. "The Deluge" takes a modern everyman, Harvey Noah, and gives him the daunting task of warning the world of impending flood by going through proper bureaucratic channels. "Kept" is the story of a small, ugly man who discovers the awful secret of successful seduction. In "Harold Swerg," the title character is the greatest athlete in the world; he upsets the nation when he refuses to win the Olympics because there's no challenge in it. As a special bonus this book includes "Rollie," a never-before-printed 10-page story from that period, about a bass player whose playing sends everyone who hears it into orbit. This story, which languished in Feiffer's files for close to four decades, is a great lost treasure, and absolutely critical to any Feiffer fan! This is the Feiffer work we've all been waiting for, the classic cartoons that assured him a place in the Pantheon of great American cartoonists and eventually won him a Pulitzer Prize. Black-and-white comics throughout |
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Harry, The Rat With Women ISBN: 1560977930 OCLC: Seattle : Fantagraphics Books Seattle : 2007 This satirical novel follows the humorous, existential rise and fall of a narcissistic lothario, Harry, from his family's endless bounty of love and hope. Feiffer's brilliant modern fable comments less on the anomie of narcissism, and more on the insecure desire of the world to find a charismatic messiah. Originally published in 1963, this scathing satirical tour de force touts America's love for chiselers and rats! |
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I Lost My Bear ISBN: 9781439565384 OCLC: 37493027 Morrow Junior Books, New York : ©1998. When she cannot find her favorite stuffed toy, a young girl asks her mother, father, and older sister for help. |
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Kill My Mother: A Graphic Novel ISBN: 0871403145 OCLC: Liveright 2014 A Vanity Fair Best Book of 2014 A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of 2014 When three daunting dolls intersect with one hapless heroine and a hard-boiled private eye, deception, betrayal, and murder stalk every mean street in…Kill My Mother. Adding to a legendary career that includes a Pulitzer Prize, an Academy Award, Obie Awards, and Lifetime Achievement Awards from the National Cartoonist Society and the Writers Guild of America, Jules Feiffer now presents his first noir graphic novel. Kill My Mother is a loving homage to the pulp-inspired films and comic strips of his youth. Channeling Eisner's The Spirit, along with the likes of Hammett, Chandler, Cain, John Huston, and Billy Wilder, and spiced with the deft humor for which Feiffer is renowned, Kill My Mother centers on five formidable women from two unrelated families, linked fatefully and fatally by a has-been, hard-drinking private detective. As our story begins, we meet Annie Hannigan, an out-of-control teenager, jitterbugging in the 1930s. Annie dreams of offing her mother, Elsie, whom she blames for abandoning her for a job soon after her husband, a cop, is shot and killed. Now, employed by her husband’s best friend―an over-the-hill and perpetually soused private eye―Elsie finds herself covering up his missteps as she is drawn into a case of a mysterious client, who leads her into a decade-long drama of deception and dual identities sprawling from the Depression era to World War II Hollywood and the jungles of the South Pacific. Along with three femme fatales, an obsessed daughter, and a loner heroine, Kill My Mother features a fighter turned tap dancer, a small-time thug who dreams of being a hit man, a name-dropping cab driver, a communist liquor store owner, and a hunky movie star with a mind-boggling secret. Culminating in a U.S.O. tour on a war-torn Pacific island, this disparate band of old enemies congregate to settle scores. In a drawing style derived from Steve Canyon and The Spirit, Feiffer combines his long-honed skills as cartoonist, playwright, and screenwriter to draw us into this seductively menacing world where streets are black with soot and rain, and base motives and betrayal are served on the rocks in bars unsafe to enter. Bluesy, fast-moving, and funny, Kill My Mother is a trip to Hammett-Chandler-Cain Land: a noir-graphic novel like the movies they don’t make anymore. Collor illustrations |
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Meanwhile-- ISBN: 0062059335 OCLC: 37720269 “Raymond, I want you!” Just when Raymond is in the middle of a comic book, his mother calls him. Not once but five times. “It's not fair!” Raymond thinks. Then he thinks: “What if I had my own MEANWHILE...?” Comic books always use MEANWHILE... to change the scene. So Raymond tries writing it on the wall behind his bed. To his astonishment, Raymond discovers that he can MEANWHILE...from one perilous adventure to another' from pirates on the high seas, to Martians in outer space, to a posse and a mountain lion out West. Then, at the worst possible moment, Raymond's MEANWHILE... fails him, leaving him in a spot that spells certain doom! Unless . . . |
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Smart George ISBN: 0062790994 OCLC: Michael di Capua Books 2020 *An Amazon Best Book of 2020 So Far* Everyone’s favorite dog is back in the much-anticipated follow-up to Bark, George from celebrated author-illustrator Jules Feiffer. When George’s mother asks her pup to add one plus one, two plus two, and three plus three, George would rather eat, go for a walk, and take a nap. But soon George finds himself in a colorful dream about…numbers! Can George count his way out? Featuring laugh-out-loud humor and expressive and bold illustrations from acclaimed author-illustrator and Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist Jules Feiffer, this imaginative follow-up to Bark, George is the perfect read-aloud for children ready to learn their numbers. |
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Tantrum ISBN: 1560972823 OCLC: 40056349 Fantagraphics Books, Seattle, WA : 1997. A novel-in-cartoons follows the fortunes of a man who no longer wants to be a husband and father, who no longer wants any responsibilities, who wants only to be a two year old |
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The Best Men's Stage Monologues of 2005 ISBN: 1575254298 OCLC: 62861521 Smith and Kraus, Hanover, NH : ©2006. Contains forty-three monologues for men, selected from some of the best plays published or produced during the 2004-2005 theatrical season, most for characters under the age of forty. |
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The Daddy Mountain ISBN: B000FDFVO2 OCLC: 2004 Before your very eyes, this little redhead is about to do something extremely daring. And scary. And she'll show you-she'll actually document, step-by-step-exactly how she does it. First, she takes her Daddy and makes him stand very still. Then, balancing herself on his shoe, she wraps her arms tightly around a leg and starts her perilous ascent to the summit. Thrills and chills, guaranteed. LOOK OUT BELOW!! JULES FEIFFER has won a number of prizes for his cartoons, plays, and screenplays, including the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning. His books for children include The House Across the Street; By the Side of the Road; I'm Not Bobby; I Lost My Bear; and Meanwhile..He lives in New York City. |
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The Great Comic Book Heroes: The Origins and Early Adventures of the Classic Super-Heroes of the Comic Books ISBN: B000K771F0 OCLC: The Dial Press, Inc. 1965 The definitive book on the age of the great action heroes, compiled, introduced and annotated by the inimitable Jules Feiffer. Taking us back to the days when not only Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster's Superman, and Bob Kane's Batman rid mythical cities of villains, but Plastic Man, The Human Torch and Captain Marvel also battled for truth and justice. Clad in mask and cape, and in Wonder Woman's case not much else, these super-heroes made the 1940's a magical time for kids. Despite warnings such as Frederic Wertham's famous book, THE SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT, which Feiffer discusses, these comics have remained an important part of American culture. If you are interested in the golden age of comics, you will find this a fascinating addition to your library. Lavishly illustrated with reproductions of actual strips. |
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The House Across the Street ISBN: 0786809108 OCLC: 50764102 A boy, looking out a window of his home, thinks about the wonderful life of the boy who lives across the street. |
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The Man in the Ceiling ISBN: 0062059076 OCLC: 29688909 HarperCollins Publishers, [New York] : 1993. Although not very good at sports or in his schoolwork, Jimmy can draw and dreams of being a great cartoonist; that dream seems within reach when star athlete Charley Beemer suggests they create comics together. |