Jack Bender Cartoon Collection

Title:	Jack Bender Cartoon Collection
Call Number:	MS 98-01
Size:	2 linear feet
Acquisition:	Purchase, 1972
Processed by:	KE, 9-1-1997
Restrictions:	None

Literary rights were not granted to Wichita State University. When permission is granted to examine the manuscripts, it is not an authorization to publish them. Manuscripts cannot be used for publication without regard for common law literary rights, copyright laws and the laws of libel. It is the responsibility of the researcher and his/her publisher, to obtain permission to publish. Scholars and students who eventually plan to have their work published are urged to make inquiry regarding overall restrictions on publication before initial research.

The Jack Bender Cartoon Collection contains editorial and sports cartoons, plus drawings Mr. Bender created for the Waterloo Courier (Waterloo, Iowa), Florissant Reporter (Florrisant, Missouri), and the Columbia Missourian (University of Missouri) during the period from the late 1940s to the mid-1970s. The collection is organized by publication date and alphabetically by title within the publication year. Those with no publication dates were placed at the end. Many of the cartoons submitted were not dated. Those from which a date could be surmised from the content were indicated with a circa date. Those which were untitled were assigned a title that was placed in brackets.

From 1947 to 1984, John (Jack) Bender captured local and national events in his sports and editorial cartoons. Born in Waterloo, Iowa March 28, 1931, he began his career as a cartoonist in 1947, while attending the Waterloo East High School, drawing sports cartoons for the Waterloo Courier. After graduation from high school in 1949, Mr. Bender attended the University of Iowa at Iowa City, earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1953. From 1953 to 1958, he was art director and assistant editor at the Commerce Publishing Company of St. Louis. During this time, from 1954 to 1956, he served in the United States Air Force, and continued to served as a reserve colonel after that. He worked as an editor of the Florissant Reporter, Florissant, Missouri, from 1958 to 1961, when he went back to college to study political cartooning. Upon receiving his master’s degree from the University of Missouri at Columbia in 1962, Mr. Bender returned to Waterloo to work as a political cartoonist, sports editor, and, in 1975, associate editor at the Courier until 1984. While Jack Bender was at the Courier, he co-authored two books, Pocket Guide to Judging Springboard Diving with Dick Smith and Inside Diving with Ed Gagnier. After leaving the Courier, Mr. Bender went to work for a national marketing company, the Alpha VII Corporation, as art director until 1987. Four years later, in 1991, he became assistant to Dave Graue, drawing the “Alley Oop” cartoon strip. With Mr. Graue’s retirement that same year, Jack Bender took over drawing the daily and Sunday strip.

Mr. Bender’s cartoons have also appeared in the Kansas City Star, Missouri Press News, Baseball Digest Magazine, Letterman Magazine, and Athletic News, as well as football programs for the University of Iowa and University of Missouri, and in many Missouri daily and weekly newspapers. His works are found in the Museum of Comic Art of Syracuse University; University of Southern Mississippi; the Peter Mayo Collection; Lyndon Baines Johnson Library of Austin, Texas; and the International Salon of Cartoons in Montreal. Mr. Bender received the Best Editorial Award of the Missouri Press Association in 1960, the Grenville Editorial Page Award in 1968, and the Freedoms Foundation Award in 1969, 1971 and 1975.

Currently unavailable

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