Heller’s work finds ink from Green Bay to Japan
By Ben Rodgers
Editor
GREEN BAY – With more than 11,000 editorial cartoons to his name, chances are Joe Heller gave a million newspaper readers across the globe a chuckle.
Heller put in 28 years as the staff cartoonist with The Green Bay Press Gazette, but at the same time he was building a syndication base that now prints his work around the world, including The Press Times.
“When I decided to become an editorial cartoonist back in 1979, there were only two cartoonists in the state back then. One was with the Milwaukee Journal and the other was with the (Milwaukee) Sentinel,” Heller said. “I worked at The West Bend News for five years doing all kinds of things, graphics, maps, sweeping floors, just to get cartoons in.”
In 1985 Heller landed at the Press Gazette as the answer to a popular cartoonist at the paper’s competition at the time – The Green Bay News Chronicle.
“One reason they wanted me up here was to have a foil and parlay me off Lyle Lahey, because he was so popular,” Heller said. “They wanted their own cartoonist and that worked well.”
But in July 2013, Heller got the news he anticipated was coming for a while.
“After 28 years and about 10,000 cartoons, they let me go because they were cutting back, and I avoided several rounds of layoffs,” he said. “…It was still a shock, I don’t have any animosity toward them, but it was still a shock, my wife and family were shocked. It was inevitable.”
When Heller started at the Press Gazette, he came in with a syndication base around 100 papers, by the time he left in 2013, he grew that to 250. Now he has ramped up his efforts as his cartoons are published in at least 400 newspapers.
But Heller has put in long hours, working multiple jobs, and getting his hands stained in ink to get his cartoons out.
When he started in West Bend, Heller worked the mornings at the local library, glancing at newspapers when he could. He spent his afternoons at the newspaper, and his evenings were spent making pizzas, a staple in the diet of any aspiring journalist.
While at the Press Gazette, before the age of the internet, Heller and his wife, Pam, would stuff a hundred envelopes each week and physically mail his cartoons out to newspapers.
He had it written in his contract that he could work for the company and continue to be syndicated.
Nearing the age of 65, Heller still has little rest, because he and Pam take care of three young grandchildren during the day.
“In the morning I sit down with green tea, have breakfast with the granddaughters (ages 3, 4 and 5) before they go to school, and open up my laptop and just peruse the news,” Heller said.
He checks about a dozen national news outlets in the morning, being careful to clear his cache to avoid targeted content, gets his idea and goes to work.
Heller then takes his Mirado Black Warrior pencil (which he insists were better years ago) and creates a rough draft.
That gets sent to about 25 trusted friends and colleagues across the country for feedback, before Heller uses Japanese anime pens to ink a copy on heavy stock paper.
It gets scanned into a computer where he digitally colorizes the cartoon and then it goes out around the world.
“In between I’m dealing with kids, too,” Heller said. “They don’t just want grandma, they want grandpa to do something, and I work at the kitchen table when I’m inking, so I can be in the middle of the chaos. Ideally I’ll have the cartoon almost inked in before everybody gets home from school.”
Heller estimates he is one of 25 editorial cartoonists left in the nation whose work regularly appear in print.
He said many papers laid off their cartoonists, and it’s difficult now to make a living off the internet.
“It’s got to be your passion. That’s what moves me, I’m passionate about it,” Heller said. “I can’t wait to draw. Sometimes there are days when I can’t come up with anything, then there are the days when it flows out of you, it’s very cool.”
And when it does flow, people tend to notice as his work gets a lot of ink and attention.
One cartoon with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump that featured a poem which had different meanings when read forward and backward turned lots of heads in America.
Another on the concerns of wind, oil and nuclear power made waves across Europe.
His work also appears regularly in Newsweek Japan.
The one thing every cartoon has in common is they all come from his kitchen table in Green Bay.
Heller was lucky, though he found early inspiration in a magazine that featured Alfred E. Neuman and Spy vs. Spy.
“I come from the Mad magazine culture,” Heller said. “I grew up reading Mad magazine, so everybody has got a big nose and a Mad magazine look. The most difficult thing is when you have a new politician to try and work out the bits in their face to look like the person you’re drawing and interject some personality into the characterization I draw.”
For example, Heller said he draws Trump overwight, with small hands and greasy hair, Barack Obama and Geroge W. Bush have big ears, and Bill Clinton wears his pants around his ankles.
But for Heller, the real tact comes in making people think, not just giggle.
“What I like to do is finesse it a little bit and get people to think about the issue rather than accuse the administration of something and name-call,” he said. “Maybe, just maybe, somebody will change their mind on one side or the other. I don’t like cartoons that preach to the choir. It’s not doing anything if you’re just reaffirming somebody’s biases through a cartoon.”
Heller still has fun drawing from home, but he does miss some of the local politics that make up the meats of Green Bay’s political stew.
“I miss drawing Guy Zima,” he said. “I do the occasional Packers cartoon for my state papers, but I do miss the local politics of drawing the city council and the county board.”
With an eye on the future and three grandaughters that will be out of the house next school year, Heller plans to put his work out on more platforms and not rest on his laurels.
“You’re only as good as the cartoon you did yesterday and you always think the cartoon you’re working on today is going to win you a Pulitzer Prize, even though you haven’t drawn it yet,” he said.