Jules Feiffer, 1958, WT&S staff photo, {photo credit Dick DeMarsico, photo via the World Telegram & Sun}

Jules Feiffer was an award-winning illustrator. He was also a writer and a pop culture historian. He passed away of natural causes in Richfield Springs, NY, on January 17, 2025. Having been born January 26, 1929, he was 95 years old.

Feiffer was probably best known for illustrating the classic children’s book, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. When MGM made it into a motion picture in 1970, Feiffer’s illustrations influenced director Chuck Jones’ cartoons. Butch Patrick (Eddie Munster in The Munsters) starred as Milo. Cartoon greats Mel Blanc and June Foray supplied most of the other voices.

In the Fifties and Sixties he was one of the most widely read satirists in the USA. He was a delegate to the Democratic Convention in 1968.

Feiffer wrote more than 35 books, plays and screenplays. His first of many collections of satirical cartoons, Sick, Sick, Sick, was published in 1958, and his first novel, Harry, the Rat With Women, in 1963. In 1965, he wrote The Great Comic Book Heroes, the first history of the comic-book superheroes of the late 1930s and early 1940s and a tribute to their creators. In 1979, Feiffer created his first graphic novel, Tantrum. He was also a noted playwright and scriptwriter. He wrote the script for Popeye (1980). Feiffer wrote the screenplay for Carnal Knowledge (1971), which starred Jack Nicholson who would later play the Joker in Batman (1989). Feiffer wrote the screenplay for Little Murders (1971), which was based on his 1967 play of the same name. His other plays included the Tony-nominated Knock, Knock in 1976 and Feiffer’s People in 1969.

Awards and Honors

• As a child he won he won a John Wanamaker Art Contest medal for a crayon drawing of Tom Mix.
• Lifetime Achievement Award from the Dramatist’s Guild
• wrote the animated short Munro, which won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1961
• Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1986
• Inkpot Award in 1989
• inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2004
• “The Library of Congress has recognized his “remarkable legacy”, from 1946 to the present, as a cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter, adult and children’s book author, illustrator, and art instructor.”
• Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004

Jules Feiffer had a long full life, as one might expect of any man who lives nearly a century, but his career was rich and full. His comic strips appeared in The Village Voice, The New York Times, The World Telegram and Sun, The London Observer, The Minneapolis Star Tribune,  The New Yorker, Playboy, Esquire, and The Nation. He trained under noted cartoonist Will Eisner, working as his assistant. Eisner eventually let him collaborate on The Spirit. After ten years of working with Eisner, he began developing his own comic strips. Like Garry Trudeau, Feiffer’s satirical comic strips traced the change of social attitudes in the modern world, and will doubtless be of use to future historians.

Bookstore owner Eric Harper pointed out “His film Little Murders (which he wrote, directed by Alan Arkin, is a forgotten classic. And that is the least of his accomplishments.” Film scholar Domenick E, Fraumeni mourned, “Wow! A giant has fallen.” We here at SciFi.Radio find it impossible to disagree with him. Writer Jeff Baker was shocked to realize “My Heavens! I’ve read his stuff for over fifty years!” Social media is filled today with the gasps of fans remembering how much he meant to them, and how long he’d been important in their lives.

While his fans mourn the loss of a writer and artist, his family mourns the loss of a husband and father. Jules Feiffer was married three times and divorced twice. Feiffer was married to Judith Sheftel from 1961 to 1983. He was then married to Jennifer Allen. From 2016 to 2025, he was married to Holden; she was at her husband’s side when he died. Feiffer had three children, including actress/writer Halley Feiffer, co-creator of American Horror Story. His other two children prefer their privacy, but our thoughts and best wishes are with them.