Jules Feiffer passed away on January 17, nine days shy of his 96th birthday. Nonetheless, he was focused and productive until the end, so I—and many others—were still taken by surprise at the news.
There have been numerous comprehensive obituaries for him in the New York Times , the Washington Post, the Comics Journal and many other places. Instead of me repeating what they say, here are some memories of the friendship I was lucky enough to have with Jules.
My first memory of Jules was the same as that of many members of my generation: the appearance of his book The Great Comic Book Heroes. I don’t know how I heard about it—but somehow I and all my comics-loving friends knew it was coming. It was the holiday gift for 1965, and I (subtly, I’m sure) let my parents know I wanted it for Chanukah. I got it. I read and reread it many times over the years. (It was eventually so worn and tattered that, when I brought it to Jules 44 years later to be autographed, he inscribed it, “Buy a new book, for Christ’s sakes!”)
My actual friendship with him, though, began with a fax machine.
In 2006, I wanted to interview him for my book, Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews Comics and the Creation of the Superhero. Since Jules was among the first to write about the Jewish perspective on comics history and content, he was a natural person for me to interview. As it turned out, we lived very close to each other on Manhattan’s upper west side. But I had no way to get in touch with him.
Jules did have a website, but if you sent a note to the contact email given there, he was unlikely to respond. (He was born in 1929, after all.)
I finally figured out how to get directly to his assistant, who told me to send Jules a fax. Even in 2006, no one was using faxes besides doctors’ offices.
So I sent him a fax and made a point of dropping Will Eisner’s name in it. (I knew Eisner a little.)
Five minutes later, the phone rang (my landline, of course). “Hello, this is Jules Feiffer.” Which is how I got to meet and interview the founder of superhero comics history and the inventor of the Minsk Theory of Krypton.
That interview led to our 2009 event at the Yiddishist YIVO Institute, where I was to interview him as part of my “Comics and the Jewish-American Dream” series. (Harvey Pekar and Al Jaffee were the interview subjects for the two other nights of the series.) I came prepared with a long list of questions. I started reciting them when Jules interrupted: “If you’re just gonna read from a piece of paper, what the hell do I need you for?”
I threw the questions over my shoulder and off we went. And, of course, he was brilliant and hilarious.
Another event memory: In his terrific memoir Backing Into Forward (if you haven’t read it, stop right now and order a copy), Jules mentions that he and Philip Roth used to do comedy routines together at parties. When I asked him, at an interview I was doing with him at Columbia University, what they were like, his response would be, “We were too drunk. I don’t remember.” I would nag him from time to time, “Why don’t you get your pal Roth to do a panel together and I’ll moderate.” He replied, “Never mind Roth. Put me together on a panel with Hasen.”
Hasen was diminutive dynamo Irwin Hasen, co-creator of Wildcat and early Wonder Woman artist, best known for his decades writing and drawing the Dondi newspaper strip. Everyone knows that Jules famously worked for and admired Spirit creator Will Eisner, starting his career as an unpaid assistant in Eisner’s studio, ending up as the co-creator of some of the best loved Spirit stories. But few people know or remember that Jules also admired—and loved—Irwin. Irwin, like Jules, was hilariously funny and he and Jules brought out the best in each other. An event with the two of them was arranged and held at the old Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. I moderated—or something like that. These two were forces of nature, after all. There was a bottle of scotch involved.
Then there was the time I was giving a talk on Eisner at Columbia and Jules attended. I was standing there speaking at the front of the lecture hall, talking about the classic Spirit story, “Ten Minutes,” showing the artwork on a screen behind me. A few minutes in, Jules raised his hand. “Yes, Jules.” “Y’know, I wrote that story when I was 17.” If I didn’t know that before, I knew it then.
I continued with my talk, but the audience members kept throwing questions at Jules. And, of course, it seemed a little silly for me to be pontificating about the story when the writer was sitting right there. So I said, “I’m gonna sit down for a while, Jules, and you can take questions about ‘Ten Minutes.’” (It should be noted that Jules was always quick to credit Eisner as at least the co-writer of the Spirit stories he wrote, claiming he was only emulating/channeling Eisner.)
I also recall sitting in a diner on the Upper West Side with a bunch of other comics folks, listening to Jules recount the story of his testifying at one of Lenny Bruce’s obscenity trials. That was history being recounted by someone who helped make it, keeping his listeners on the edge of our seats. It doesn’t get better than that.
And I’d be remiss to not recall the time I went out to visit Jules when he was living in the Hamptons. I was on a dual mission: to interview him for a never-finished documentary series about comics I was working on with a couple of filmmaker pals, and to pick up a piece of art he was going to lend for the “Will Eisner’s New York” exhibition at the old Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA), which I co-curated with Denis Kitchen. There was a related exhibit in the same space called “Inspired by Eisner,” and the art was intended for that.
But Jules couldn’t find the piece he was going to loan us. “I’ll draw you a new one,” he said. And he did. (It’s “The Spirit as Feiffer Dancer” image you may have seen on the internet, or even at the exhibition.) It was easier for him to draw a new image than to spend time trying to find the old one. That was pretty damn impressive.
And then there was the time I mentioned to him that I was doing a project about Jack Ruby. Without missing a beat, Jules made the traditional gun gesture with his thumb and first two fingers, which he jabbed into my chest as he exclaimed, “Bang!” I ended up using a Jules quote about Ruby for the book’s epigraph. Because, of course.
Maybe the theme of all the above is that it was fun to be around Jules Feiffer. It was also entertaining and inspiring and hilarious. But for all his accomplishments—the comics, the Feiffer strip, the kids books, the screenplays, the stage plays, the graphic novels—he never made you feel that he was some sort of lofty figure who was above you. He took it for granted you were his peer.
Jules was someone who, from the moment you met him, made you feel like you’d known him forever, like you were sitting across a table from him at Elaine’s, the legendary east side writers’ hangout, sharing a drink. He made his readers feel that way, too. What a gift it was that we had him for more than 95 years.
– Danny Fingeroth is a popular culture historian and commentator who conducted numerous interviews with Jules Feiffer. Danny was a longtime editor and writer at Marvel and is Chair of Will Eisner Week, the annual worldwide celebration of Feiffer’s mentor. He’s the author of A Marvelous Life: The Amazing Story of Stan Lee (St. Martin’s press/Macmillan, 2019 and Jack Ruby: The Many Faces of Oswald’s Assassin (Chicago review Press, 2023). www.dannyfingeroth.com