Fave Photo Of The Week: Jules Feiffer And Peter Kuper
Peter Kuper, who began contributing to The New Yorker in 2011, posted this photo on social media the other day. He was kind enough to allow me to repost it on the Spill. Mr. Kuper’s text that accompanied the photo:
“Visit to legend, mentor and pal, Jules Feiffer. 94 and still a cartoonist’s guiding light doing the best work of his career.”
Much more about Mr. Feiffer’s long and illustrious career here.
It should be noted, that Mr. Feiffer began contributing to The New Yorker relatively late in his career (his New Yorker debut coincided with Tina Brown’s debut issue of October 5, 1992). In a New York Times piece published in February of 2000, he told the Times’s Sarah Boxer*:
”I grew up reading The New Yorker, but it was the furthest thing from my ideal. I was too Bronx for Arno. I grew up loving comic strips.” And what he calls his ”abrasive social and political commentary” was far from The New Yorker’s ideal. ”William Shawn broke out in hives when he saw my stuff, but Tina didn’t have that problem. She wanted me in the first issue.”
[in all, Mr. Feiffer contributed 27 pieces to The New Yorker from 2000 to 2003]Mr. Kuper, who will be teaching an in-person class in comics and graphic novels at Harvard this Fall, caught me up on some of his news:
“I’m now going into my 4th year working on INterSECTS my graphic novel on the history of insects and the people who have studied them. W.W. Norton will be publishing the book in May 2025. It will be about 250 pages in full color.
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Karl Stevens Interviewed By Gil Roth
In Mr. Roth’s latest Virtual Memories interview he speaks with Karl Stevens, who illustrated Jamie Lee Curtis’s just published graphic novel, Mother Nature. Mr. Stevens began contributing to The New Yorker in January of 2019. Visit A Case for Pencils for more on Mr. Stevens.
While visiting the Virtual Memories site, be sure to check out Mr. Roth’s “comics and cartooning” guest list. Good stuff!
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–My thanks to Stephen Nadler of the terrif Attempted Bloggery for the bringing the Stevens interview to my attention.
— Photo Of Mr. Stevens: My thanks to Jane Mattimoe’s A Case For Pencils .
— My thanks to Peter Kuper for use of the Feiffer & Kuper photo, and the update.