Catching Up with a Legend: Talking to Jules Feiffer

[struggle4progress]

By Zack Smith
posted: 15 June 2009 10:34 am ET

At 80 years old, Jules Feiffer is busier than most creators half his age – and still has plenty of opinions to share. Feiffer’s career is a laundry list of achievements that have helped shape the comics industry as we know it. Feiffer got his break as an assistant to Will Eisner on The Spirit, and scripted some of the legendary strip’s most memorable episodes. From there, he went on to do his long-running strip Feiffer in the Village Voice, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize, along with early experiments in extended cartoon narrative, one of which was made into the Oscar-winning animated short Munro.

From there, Feiffer went on to illustrate Norton Juster’s classic children’s book The Phantom Tollbooth and write The Great Comic Book Heroes, one of the first anthologies of classic comic books, and one that helped spur a renewed interest in Golden Age material.

He also found time to write a number of plays and screenplays, including Little Murders, the Oscar-nominated script for Carnal Knowledge for director Mike Nichols, and Popeye for director Robert Altman. He also helped pioneer the modern graphic novel format with Tantrum, a favorite of such creators as Neil Gaiman.

Feiffer has mainly focused on children’s books for the last decade. His latest release is Which Puppy?, a tale of pets competing to be the Obamas’ dog in the White House, which he illustrated for his daughter, Kate Feiffer. In addition, Feiffer’s work has enjoyed a renewed appreciation with Explainers, a reprint of Feiffer’s first decade, which was a cover feature on the New York Times Review of Books ...

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/090615-Feiffer.html