*Photograph By Shane Van Boxtel/Image Studios
Editorial cartoonist Joe Heller estimates he’s created over 12,000 cartoons throughout his 43-year career. The prolific Oshkosh-born, Milwaukee-raised artist now lives in Green Bay, where he worked as the Green Bay Press-Gazette’s cartoonist for 28 years. Today, Heller Syndication distributes his work to 400 news publications throughout the U.S., including Time, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, U.S. News & World Report, The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Insight: When did your love for drawing emerge?
Heller: I was the kid in school who was always doodling, always drawing things. I went to UW-Milwaukee for fine arts and a little bit of journalism in the early ’70s, so there’s a lot of politics going around on campus. I thought I could try out political cartooning, or I like to call it editorial cartooning because it covers more than just politics. When I got out of college, my first job was at the West Bend News doing cartoons. I was honing my craft, figuring out who I was, where I stand politically. You can’t just hit the ground running and think you’re all one person right away. There’s a growth period. And I’m still growing. I mean, I’m still looking at new stuff and formulating new opinions on things. I don’t want to become stodgy in my old age.
You spent the bulk of your career at the Green Bay Press-Gazette. How did you land that job?
In 1985, the Press-Gazette cartoonist position opened up. There were only two jobs in Wisconsin for editorial cartoonists at the time. That year I went up there to be a cartoonist, illustrator and help out with the general look of the paper with graphics. I was doing six cartoons a week and that lasted for 28 years. That was a very good ride.
I was laid off in 2013. It was a surprise, but I was ready. I was already syndicated at that point, so I walked out of the office and that afternoon I went down into my basement, turned on my studio lights and did a cartoon. For 28 years I got to do what I wanted to do since I was a kid, and I still get to do it to this day. These days I’m doing four cartoons a week. I have not missed a week of cartooning.
What’s your process when creating a cartoon?
First I come up with an idea, which is probably the hardest part. I rough it out and I usually scan it in and send the rough copy to friends and copy editors I know who will take a quick peek and offer feedback. Then I’ll transfer the cartoon onto a piece of drawing paper. I take that on the light table and transfer it. I ink that all in with nib pens, micron and anime pens, scan it and colorize it with Photoshop. I make copies for online, for print, a grayscale copy, and a black and white copy. It usually takes about four to five hours from beginning to end.
What’s the magic formula for a good cartoon?
There are four elements that go into a good editorial cartoon: humor, opinion, illustrations or how you stage a cartoon and what I want the reader to get out of it. Those four things come in at different percentages in every cartoon. Some are more funny for the sake of being funny. Some are very opinionated because I want to make a statement. Others tend to have a combination and try to get readers to react by looking at a topic differently. Other times I like to piss off the reader; I want them to get angry over something because it’s important. Other times it is illustrative and has a simple message. Those tend to fly well with most readerships. An editorial can spell something out logically. A cartoon is more visceral; it goes for the gut.
You’ve had many cartoons go viral, like the one you recently did about Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.
When I send rough sketches to people, they will say, “Oh, this one is going to go viral.” It won’t. Then the ones I think are not going to go viral, go viral. It’s unpredictable. If I had the equation to hit them out of the park every time it would be great, but I can’t figure people out.
When Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were first campaigning for president, I did a cartoon with a poem that if you read it one way, it’s a negative message, but when you read it in reverse, it’s positive. That had like 2.5 million shares and hundreds of thousands of likes on Facebook. That is probably the one that went the most viral outside of my 9/11 cartoon.
Tell me about your 9/11 cartoon.
On the morning of 9/11, I called my wife and she was remembering how she went on a trip to New York in high school and she could see the Twin Towers being built from the Statue of Liberty. Something clicked. I drew a cartoon of the Statue of Liberty sitting down, holding her head in her hands with smoke rising from where the towers previously were and called it “Liberty Laments.” I got it up online right away and it printed the next day.
That week the Press-Gazette was deluged with calls from people wanting to buy the cartoon, so we ended up printing a limited edition to raise money for the 9/11 victims fund. We raised over $120,000 for the Red Cross when it was all said and done. That’s what a good cartoon can do — it can get people motivated to actually do something.
You’ve had quite the career. How much longer do you anticipate cartooning?
I’ve been doing this since 1979. I’m going to re-evaluate when I turn 70 in two years to determine if I’ve still got the fire in my belly to do this. I’d have to ease off because it’s kind of a drug. I get addicted to the fun of coming up with an idea.
Do you ever worry about running out of ideas?
No, not really. As long as there are politicians, there’ll always be things to draw.
