 | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
Jimmy Johnson is an American comic strip cartoonist who writes and draws Arlo and Janis .
| This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
Jimmy Johnson is an American comic strip cartoonist who writes and draws Arlo and Janis .
Johnson was born and grew up in Lanett, Alabama, graduating from Lanett High School in 1970. He is an alumnus of Auburn University where he was a member of Phi Kappa Tau fraternity, class of 1974.
"My earliest cartoon work was copying Fred and Barney and Yogi Bear. I became quite proficient and was able to amaze my friends," wrote Johnson. [1] Johnson credits his mother with being especially supportive of his early artwork.
Johnson noted an early endeavor related to his future profession in a 2020 blog entry: "When I was in college, I did a comic strip for the weekly student newspaper. It was about a hapless hippie (Yes, that term was alive and well back then.) named 'Arlo.' Indirectly, the character was named for Arlo Guthrie. I say 'indirectly,' because I had a buddy named Pat whom we had nicknamed 'Arlo,' because he had a shocking mane of long curly hair, much like the singer. Basically, I just wanted to annoy him." [2]
As a young man just out of college, Johnson briefly worked as a reporter and in the public relations department of Auburn University. [3] In 1979, he drew a recruiting poster for Auburn University that was banned. [4] In the years before Arlo and Janis , from about 1980 to 1985, Johnson drew cartoons professionally for newspapers. He did so on a part-time basis when he was a reporter and editor, and then full-time as an editorial cartoonist in Jackson, Mississippi. While employed in this role, Johnson won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award.
Beginning in 1985, Johnson drew Arlo and Janis for national syndication by the Newspaper Enterprise Association. Johnson said, "At the time I sold Arlo & Janis to the newspaper syndicate United Media in 1985, there were a lot of 'talking animal' strips. Newspaper editors reacted to this by demanding more comic strips about human beings, particularly young families. So, it really was a market-driven thing." [5]
Johnson cites Mort Walker as an influence on his comic strip work, putting him at the head of "a cabal of talented and successful humorists who were redefining the newspaper comic strip in a post-war world." Mel Lazarus, Johnny Hart, Dik Browne, Charles Schulz, Bud Blake are also mentioned. "As a youngster, I read them all in their heyday," Johnson recalls. "These men were the primary influence upon me, and foremost among them was the enterprising and prolific Walker." [6]
Naming other direct influences on his work, Johnson cites "the old Warner Bros. Looney Tunes animated cartoons, originally produced for theater audiences of all ages... Even as a kid, I could appreciate a subtle, grown-up wit that absolutely was missing in the Disney cartoons that dominated the scene in my day." Johnson also describes himself as a "huge fan of Scrooge McDuck comic books and the work of Carl Barks." [7]
Unsatisfied with the line-quality produced when he experimented with markers, Johnson draws the strip in traditional comic strip fashion, "with an old-fashioned pen nib and India ink on 2-ply Bristol paper." [5] But Johnson scans the finished drawings electronically for transmission to the syndicate editors. Syndicate colorists colored the daily strips until 2018, when Johnson took on the work. He has long used Photoshop to color the Sunday strips himself.
In his comic strip about a small family, Johnson presents political and social commentary through his characters. Humor is also integral, and Johnson writes "jokes about many different subjects, not unlike stand-up comedians do." Much of the strip's content is grounded in "Arlo and Janis' love and continued desire for each other." [5] Johnson's work is often sexually suggestive, and "the Arlo Award" is awarded to "cartoonists who slip one by the syndicate's censors." [8]
Johnson was at one time married to author Rheta Grimsley Johnson, and the two remain good friends. [9] [10]
As of 2006, despite the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, he owns a home in Pass Christian, Mississippi. [11]
On April 3, 2006, he suffered a mild heart attack. [12]
A comic strip is a sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st century, these have been published in newspapers and magazines, with daily horizontal strips printed in black-and-white in newspapers, while Sunday papers offered longer sequences in special color comics sections. With the advent of the internet, online comic strips began to appear as webcomics.
A cartoon is a type of visual art that is typically drawn, frequently animated, in an unrealistic or semi-realistic style. The specific meaning has evolved, but the modern usage usually refers to either: an image or series of images intended for satire, caricature, or humor; or a motion picture that relies on a sequence of illustrations for its animation. Someone who creates cartoons in the first sense is called a cartoonist, and in the second sense they are usually called an animator.
Charles Monroe "Sparky" Schulz was an American cartoonist and the creator of the comic strip Peanuts, featuring his two best-known characters, Charlie Brown and Snoopy. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential cartoonists in history, and cited by many cartoonists as a major influence, including Jim Davis, Murray Ball, Bill Watterson, Matt Groening, and Dav Pilkey.
Addison Morton Walker was an American comic strip writer, best known for creating the newspaper comic strips Beetle Bailey in 1950 and Hi and Lois in 1954. He signed Addison to some of his strips.
A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons or comics. Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comics illustrators/artists in that they produce both the literary and graphic components of the work as part of their practice.
Rheta Grimsley Johnson is a reporter and columnist for King Features Syndicate of New York. Johnson travels the country in search of stories, frequently reporting from her native South, with datelines from Washington, D.C., to Iuka, Mississippi.
Stephan Thomas Pastis is an American cartoonist and former lawyer who is the creator of the comic strip Pearls Before Swine. He also writes children's chapter books, commencing with the release of Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made. The seventh book, It's the End When I Say It's the End, debuted at #4 on The New York Times Best Seller list for Children's Middle Grade Books.
King Features Syndicate, Inc. is an American content distribution and animation studio, consumer product licensing and print syndication company owned by Hearst Communications that distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editorial cartoons, puzzles, and games to nearly 5,000 newspapers worldwide. King Features Syndicate also produces intellectual properties, develops new content and franchises, like The Cuphead Show!, which it produced with Netflix, and licenses its classic characters and properties.
The comic strip switcheroo was a massive practical joke in which several comic strip writers and artists (cartoonists), without the foreknowledge of their editors, traded strips for a day on April Fools' Day 1997. The Switcheroo was masterminded by comic strip creators Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott, creators of the Baby Blues daily newspaper comic strip.
Bradley Jay Anderson was an American cartoonist and creator of the comic strip Marmaduke.
United Media was a large editorial column and comic strip newspaper syndication service based in the United States, owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, that operated from 1978 to 2011. It syndicated 150 comics and editorial columns worldwide. Its core businesses were the United Feature Syndicate and the Newspaper Enterprise Association.
Douglas S. Wildey was an American cartoonist and comic book artist best known for creating the 1964 animated television series Jonny Quest for Hanna-Barbera Productions.
The Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA) is an editorial column and comic strip newspaper syndication service based in the United States and established in 1902. The oldest syndicate still in operation, the NEA was originally a secondary news service to the Scripps Howard News Service; it later evolved into a general syndicate best known for syndicating the comic strips Alley Oop, Our Boarding House, Freckles and His Friends, The Born Loser, Frank and Ernest, and Captain Easy / Wash Tubbs; in addition to an annual Christmas comic strip. Along with United Feature Syndicate, the NEA was part of United Media from 1978 to 2011, and is now a division of Andrews McMeel Syndication. The NEA once selected college All-America teams, and presented awards in professional football and professional [NBA] basketball.
Arlo and Janis is an American gag-a-day comic strip written and drawn by Jimmy Johnson. It is a leisurely paced domestic situation comedy. It was first published in newspapers on July 29, 1985.
Bud Grace is an American cartoonist, who has worked on the comic strip Ernie, whose title was later changed to Piranha Club in the United States. He also drew the Babs and Aldo comic strip for King under the pseudonym Buddy Valentine.
Henry Boltinoff was an American cartoonist who worked for both comic strips and comic books. He was a prolific cartoonist and drew many of the humor and filler strips that appeared in National Periodical comics from the 1940s through the 1960s.
Robert Dana Gustafson was an American cartoonist whose work includes eight years on Tillie the Toiler and a 27-year run on the Beetle Bailey comic books.
Mark Tatulli is an American cartoonist, writer, animator and television producer, known for his strips Liō and Heart of the City and for his work on the cable reality television series Trading Spaces and A Wedding Story, for which he has won three Emmy Awards. His comics have appeared in hundreds of newspapers around the world.
The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum is a research library of American cartoons and comic art affiliated with the Ohio State University library system in Columbus, Ohio. Formerly known as the Cartoon Research Library and the Cartoon Library & Museum, it holds the world's largest and most comprehensive academic research facility documenting and displaying original and printed comic strips, editorial cartoons, and cartoon art. The museum is named after the Ohio cartoonist Billy Ireland.
Ferdinand Johnson, usually cited as Ferd Johnson, was an American cartoonist, best known for his 68-year stint on the Moon Mullins comic strip.
For those of you who are new here, we've moved a bit beyond just explaining comics: We also have special sections for the Arlo Page (comics you don't want to explain to the kids) and the related Arlo Award (comics that appeared in mainstream newspapers which somehow slipped by the syndicates censors—this being one of the more blatant examples).