Joel Pett

Joel Pett (born September 1, 1953) is an editorial cartoonist from Kentucky. He works for the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Interview (2022)

 * I had an early love affair with cartoon line drawing. I remember playing Monopoly with my siblings, but I would insist that I got to take all the Chance and Community Chest cards, turn them over, and then redraw the little rich guy. I made them play with my pictures face-up. I liked copying stuff like that. And then I fell in love with political cartoons. We always had newspapers around the house, as people did back then. When I was a late teenager and realized I could be drafted into the Vietnam War, I started to pay attention to politics. And the cartoons of the famous Herblock [Herbert Block], who was at the Washington Post for like 50 years, really grabbed me. At the time, I wanted to be a professional golfer, but I was not good enough to be an amateur golfer. So cartooning looked like something that could use my skill set of sarcasm and humor and bitterness and anger and frustration and mockery — all those attributes that people like so much in a person.


 * Up until the mid 1990s, everything was a pen-and-ink drawing, dipping an old-style crow quill pen into an ink well, then painstakingly going over a pencil drawing, then waiting for it to dry, then erasing it, and then touching it up if need be. And then somebody at the paper would take a photograph of it. If you made a mistake, you had to start over. Now there’s Photoshop, so it’s very different. The hard part is coming up with the idea. The drawing is nothing. It takes an hour to pencil it, ink it, erase it, put it on the scanner, and Photoshop it. But sometimes the gestation period of the idea takes years. You know, people say, “Oh, how long does it take to do that?” It takes some time between one hour and 68 years.


 * there’s a whole group of cartoonists — especially younger cartoonists — who think that labeling anything is really hackneyed and old style, and who just roll their eyes and groan. But I really like heavily labeled things for complex issues.


 * the worldwide internet is such a curse, but also a blessing in some ways.


 * I wish that every kid was fortunate enough to have parents who could teach them the skills that they will need, but I’m not sure that the parents even have that, because things are changing so fast.


 * there’s an old saying that a cynic is just a heartbroken optimist. If you don’t care, then there’s not even a reason to be cynical.