I could have picked many, many different books by Jules Feiffer to put next to his photo but I picked the one that meant the most to me. In 1965 when The Great Comic Book Heroes came out, it filled in so much that I didn't know about the history of comics, it was like Information Overload. And along with that information came a ton of inspiration. It showed a respect for the material it covered — in short supply at that time — and this already-successful man was confessing to a love of things that I loved. The book was also, like all his cartoons, written in a witty manner that made instant contact with the reader. I would never claim I ever did it anywhere as well as he did but I sure tried.
Feiffer was a man who did something that then seemed impossible: He moved from lowly-paid work in the lowly-regarded medium of comic books to a prestigious weekly syndicated strip and from there to writing important works for the stage and screen. That became more frequent later on but at the time, it was like golfing on the moon. Obits like this one and this one will explain how he did this.
I only had the privilege of meeting him briefly on a few occasions…never long enough to get to know the man or communicate to him how much I admired his work and how much it meant to me. It meant a lot…and since I have a whole shelf of his works, it will continue to do so.