Jules Feiffer

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Jules Feiffer (1958)
Jules Feiffer (1958)

Jules Ralph Feiffer (born January 26, 1929) is an American syndicated comic-strip cartoonist and author. In 1986 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his editorial cartooning in The Village Voice, and in 2004 was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame.

Feiffer was born in New York City, in the borough of the Bronx, and attended the former James Monroe High School. Feiffer served as an assistant for Will Eisner in the 1940s, learning to tell stories with words and pictures while working on Eisner's acclaimed The Spirit comic strip. Feiffer also wrote the stage play Little Murders, the screenplay for Mike Nichols's 1971 film Carnal Knowledge, illustrated the children's book classic The Phantom Tollbooth, wrote the book The Great Comic Book Heroes (an extract of which Quentin Tarantino adapted for a speech in his film Kill Bill), and won an Oscar in 1961 for his short animation "Munro". In addition, Feiffer has written the screenplay for Robert Altman's Popeye film, a movie version of Little Murders, and the screenplay for Alain Resnais's film I Want to Go Home.

Feiffer's cartoons ran for 42 years in the The Village Voice and have been collected into 19 books. They have also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, Esquire, Playboy, and The Nation. He was commissioned in 1997 by The New York Times to create its first op-ed page comic strip which ran monthly until 2000. Feiffer has most recently written several award-winning children's books including The Man in the Ceiling, which he has partnered with Disney and musical-theater writer Andrew Lippa to turn into a musical, and A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears.

Feiffer is an adjunct professor at Southampton College. 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. Feiffer is a member of the Dramatists Guild Council and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He received the National Cartoonist Society Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004 and the Creativity Foundation's 2006 Laureate. He was in residence at the Arizona State University Barrett Honors College from November 27 to December 2, 2006.

Passionella is a graphic narrative initially anthologized in Passionella and Other Stories, and based on the story of Cinderella. The protagonist is Ella, a chimney sweep who is transformed into a Hollywood movie star.


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Awards
Preceded by
Jeff MacNelly
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning
1986
Succeeded by
Berke Breathed