Dave Fitzsimmons goes full-on Django into part-time semi-retirement
I started getting into trouble for drawing cartoons in the first grade. And sharing them with the person next to me whose snickering would always invite a crackdown.I’ve been meeting cartooning deadlines since I was 13, on the staff of the “The Tumbleweed,” the Naylor Middle School yearbook.
By the way, if you have an easel-sized caricature I drew of you framed in your house, email me a pic at [email protected]. I’d like to see what became of them. I learned to love satire where every young social protest artist learns to love drawing. The bathroom stall at Myers Elementary school. Fourth grade. Nixon as a devil. Unsigned.
When I showed mom my sketches for super hero costumes she showed me her ancient sketches of hat designs for Depression-era movie stars she had drawn when she was a little girl. Good steady hand. Definite line work. Mauldin drew in the Ashcan manner of political cartooning like Herblock, the Washington Post giant. When I was 13, I sent Herbert Block some of my cartoons. He graciously hand-lettered an encouraging response and so I set my sights on cartooning, inspired by the cartoonists of the seventies like Jeff MacNelly and Pat Oliphant, artists inspired by “Rocky and Bullwinkle” and “Mad Magazine.”