By Rand Bellavia

Jules Feiffer died on Jan. 17, nine days short of his 96th birthday.

Perhaps most famous (or at least most associated with) his Pulitzer-Prize winning comic strip Feiffer, which ran for over 40 year in the Village Voice – and invented the concept of the alt-weekly comic strip – Feiffer also published several novels, countless children’s books and many plays, including Little Murders, made into a fantastic film directed by Alan Arkin.

He also wrote the screenplays to Mike Nichols’ Carnal Knowledge and Robert Altman’s Popeye, ghost wrote Will Eisner’s comic book The Spirit for many years, has a reasonable claim to creating the first true graphic novel (1979’s Tantrum) and won an Oscar for the short animated film Munro.

My point is that he did a lot, in a lot of different directions, and while you may be feeling the urge to honor the man by partaking of his work, given Feiffer’s broad and voluminous output you’d be forgiven for not knowing where to start.

But fear not, as I have a lifelong tendency to become obsessed with artists, feeling compelled to absorb them completely. Feiffer was in fact my first obsession, which means that I’ve consumed every strip, play, novel, film, children’s book and interview. So I’m here to help.

My lifelong love of comics can be traced back to Feiffer’s 1965 book The Great Comic Book Heroes, which was the first book I felt I actually owned (i.e., the first book my parents didn’t read to me). This collection of Golden Age superhero comics included a lengthy introduction from Feiffer, which was the first published work that bothered to take comics seriously. Not their social or historical impact, but the works themselves. I felt seen. It also introduced me to the artwork of Jack Kirby and Will Eisner. So if you love comics, check this one out.

The Feiffer strip was collected into 15 paperbacks over the years, but you’ll get the best bang for your buck by looking for the 2007 Fantagraphics collection The Explainers, which includes the entire first decades worth of strips (1956-1966) and 1982’s Jules Feiffer’s America: From Eisenhower to Reagan.

His children’s novel The Man in the Ceiling is not to be missed: a YA novel about a young boy who makes comics (examples of his work appear throughout the novel) and his uncle, a failed playwright. So all of Feiffer’s creative interests coalesce into a smart, funny and surprisingly emotional story. If you only have time for one Feiffer thing, this is it.

Every Feiffer picture book is delightful, so you can’t really go wrong, but 1997’s Meanwhile … is particularly well conceived, and 2002’s Some Things are Scary (written by Florence Parry Heide) has my favorite Feiffer illustrations.

Little Murders (starring Elliott Gould) and Carnal Knowledge (starring Jack Nicholson) are probably his best films, and certainly show off his ear for clever if cynical dialogue.

Off the beaten path favorites include Ackroyd, his 1977 detective novel; Passionella, a 1959 collection of comic short stories; Clifford, the comic strip he created as a teenager that was clearly influential on Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes; and the 2004 play A Bad Friend.

And I haven’t even gotten to his 2010 autobiography Backing into Forward, or the four oversized graphic novels he published in 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2024. Oh, and I nearly forgot that he did the illustrations for Norman Juster’s beyond classic 1961 children’s book The Phantom Tollbooth.

The man will be missed, but he left us a lot to remember him by, so let’s dive in.

Rand Bellavia is the director of the D’Youville University library, but is also internationally known for his role in Ookla The Mok, a band that has focused its songs on comic book and science fiction characters.