lit a candle 4d ago95 years old. Sharp to the end, they say. That's the way to go.
Their story
Jules Ralph Feiffer was born in the Bronx on January 26, 1929, to Polish Jewish immigrants David Feiffer, a salesman often unemployed in the Depression, and Rhoda (Davis) Feiffer, a fashion designer who sold watercolor clothing designs door to door. He was the middle of three children and the only…
Jules Ralph Feiffer was born in the Bronx on January 26, 1929, to Polish Jewish immigrants David Feiffer, a salesman often unemployed in the Depression, and Rhoda (Davis) Feiffer, a fashion designer who sold watercolor clothing designs door to door. He was the middle of three children and the only son. He began drawing at three; his mother gave him a drawing table at thirteen and enrolled him at the Art Students League to study anatomy. He graduated from James Monroe High School in 1947 (at about sixteen) and later studied briefly at Pratt Institute (about a year from 1947) to strengthen his draftsmanship. He later said he could neither write well enough to be only a writer nor draw well enough to be only an artist, so he combined limited gifts in each into a unique voice.
Desperate for work after high school, he walked into Will Eisner's studio and offered to do anything, even for nothing. Eisner hired the intense "groupie" who knew his work cold. Feiffer cleaned up art, then wrote dialogue balloons, then whole Spirit stories. That apprenticeship (mid-1940s into the mid-1950s, interrupted by U.S. Army Signal Corps service during the Korean War, 1951-1953, where he did animation) taught him how people talk. Army experience fed the savage satire Munro: a four-year-old drafted into the military because no one listens. Adapted as an animated short directed by Gene Deitch, Munro won the 1961 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
In 1956 Feiffer became a staff cartoonist at the fledgling Village Voice. His strip, first Sick Sick Sick, later Feiffer's Fables, then simply Feiffer, ran into 1997. Borderless multi-panel monologues about sex, marriage, politics, and urban anxiety made him, for a time, among the most widely read satirists in America. Collections such as Sick Sick Sick: A Guide to Non-Confident Living (1958) led to national syndication (Hall Syndicate from 1959) and appearances in the Los Angeles Times, Observer, New Yorker, Playboy, Esquire, and The Nation. Stanley Kubrick, a fellow Bronx native, admired the strips and approached Feiffer about a film adaptation of Sick Sick Sick (never made). In 1997 the New York Times commissioned him for its first op-ed page comic strip, which ran monthly until 2000. He left the Voice amid a salary dispute in 1997; syndication continued until he ended the strip around 2000.
Parallel careers multiplied. He wrote novels (Harry, the Rat With Women, 1963; Ackroyd, 1977), early graphic narrative including Passionella, the pioneering novel-in-pictures Tantrum (1979), and late noir graphic novels Kill My Mother (2014), Cousin Joseph (2016), and The Ghost Script (2018). In 1961 he illustrated Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, embedding his line in a children's classic; decades later he and Juster reunited on The Odious Ogre. From 1993 he wrote and drew his own children's books (The Man in the Ceiling; Bark, George; Rupert Can Dance; Smart George; Amazing Grapes, 2024). Theatre and film: Little Murders (Obie; Outer Critics), Knock Knock (Tony-nominated), Grown Ups, Elliot Loves; screenplays for Mike Nichols's Carnal Knowledge (1971) and Robert Altman's Popeye (1980); contribution to Oh! Calcutta!; Alain Resnais's I Want to Go Home (Golden Osella). He taught at Yale School of Drama, Northwestern, Stony Brook Southampton, Columbia's arts journalism program, and as a Dartmouth Montgomery Fellow.
Married thrice: Judith (Judy) Sheftel (1961-1983), Jennifer Allen (1983-2014), and writer JZ Holden (September 2016; Jewish and Buddhist ceremony). Three daughters: Kate Feiffer (author; collaborations with her father), Halley Feiffer (actress and playwright), and Julie Feiffer. In later years he and Holden lived on Shelter Island, then upstate New York with two cats. He had been ill for a couple of years but, Holden told AP, remained "sharp and strong up until the very end. And funny," calling him "a 5-year-old living in a 95-year-old's body." He died of congestive heart failure at home on January 17, 2025, surrounded by friends, cats, and recent artwork. Plans noted burial later that spring at Lakewood Cemetery in Cooperstown. Tributes spanned NYT, WaPo, AP, NPR, Variety, Deadline, Comics Journal, and peers such as Matt Bors and Paul Rudnick.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia Jules Feiffer; AP 2025-01-21; Andy Webster, New York Times, 2025-01-21; Washington Post 2025-01-21; NPR 2025-01-21; Connell Dow & Deysenroth funeral home; Comics Journal (Michael Dean) 2025-.
In their own words
“My goal is to make people think, to make them feel and, along the way, to make them smile if not laugh. Humor seems to me one of the best ways of espousing ideas. It gets people to listen with their guard down.”
Feiffer to the South Florida Sun Sentinel, 1998, via AP
“When I sit at my little table, I'm 25.”
Late-life interview on still working, Comics Journal
“He was sharp and strong up until the very end. And funny. He was a 5-year-old living in a 95-year-old's body.”
Widow JZ Holden to AP, January 21, 2025
“It's hard to remember what hypocrisy looked like before Jules Feiffer sketched it.”
Todd Gitlin in Newsday, 1997, via AP
“Jules Feiffer completely innovated political cartoons, taking them beyond one-panel punchlines and visual tropes by featuring ordinary people, often in monologue, being riled, resigned, grousing, and dancing. Straight up one of the best to ever do it.”
Cartoonist Matt Bors on X, January 21, 2025
“RIP the legendary cartoonist, author and world-class satirist Jules Feiffer, at 95. His work for the Village Voice, his plays and screenplays (including Carnal Knowledge) and his entirely original voice are landmarks in American wit.”
Paul Rudnick on X, January 21, 2025
That's the thing about Feiffer, right? He never talked down to kids or up to adults. Just always himself.