Cartoonist Jerry King to entertain SNEWS® readers

We all like to chuckle now and then. And we really like to chuckle when it’s poking fun at ourselves and what we do.

In the spirit of a few good grins, SNEWS® is bringing on cartoonist Jerry King to offer his one-panel cartoon sketches a couple of times a month. You may recognize his style. He has been a contributor to Playboy for about 12 years. OF COURSE, we would never have known that if he hadn’t told us….

How did King get into cartooning?

“Boredom,” he says.

“No, really, Jerry,” we insisted. “How did it start?”

“I doodled all the time in school,” he said.

Yup, seems those yawn-driven sketchings on the inside and covers of your notebooks really could turn into a profession. For King it did, although it wasn’t something he had thought about in that way until he was nearly a senior in high school. King didn’t even go on to art school. Too expensive for him he told us, although he was accepted after spending three years in the army as a medic. So off he went to Ohio State University to get a degree in … English. Oh, yeah, those professors are surely proud of those 20-word captions he pens….

Hugh Hefner obviously likes them, though. King said Hefner himself picks out the cartoons to run in each issue from among the bunch of 10 or so King sends over at one time. He gets them back with Hefner’s own initials at the bottom, noting a “yeah” or “nay.” And, no, his cartoons in the Hefner mag aren’t the naked ones or even sex-oriented, so don’t go expecting naked cartoons about sex in SNEWS®…we know, we were momentarily disappointed too.

King’s client list includes Disney, American Greetings, the U.S. Golf Association, Better Homes and Gardens, The Saturday Evening Post, National Enquirer and Women’s World — oh, and of course, now SNEWS®. Aside from greeting cards and magazines, King is the author and illustrator of seven nationally published cartoon books, the illustrator of 10 children’s books, and one of his characters has even been made into a stuffed animal. He also has received the National Cartoonist Society Magazine’s Gag Cartoon Award for 2001. We could go on but King is starting to dig his toe into the ground and mumble, “aw-shucks.”

He still resides in Ohio (never escaped, it seems) with his wife, two daughters and two dogs. Feel free to send along ideas, suggestions for cartoon topics, or any comments to him or us by emailing cartoon@snewsnet.com.