Jack Bender
Cartoonist, Tulsa
2005 Inductee Oklahoma Cartoonists Hall of Fame
Jack Bender is in the midst of a second career in cartooning. For some twenty-five years he was a political cartoonist in Iowa and Missouri. Since 1991, he has been the artist for the Alley Oop comic strip.
Bender was born and raised in Iowa and holds degrees from both the University of Iowa and the University of Missouri. He moved to Tulsa in 1984 and has been an Oklahoman ever since.
He and his wife, Carole Bender, produce the Alley Oop comic strip, which appears in some 600 newspapers, reaching 26 million readers each day, plus on the Internet at comics.com.
Bender entered the comics field in 1989 as assistant to Don Martin, known as “Mad’s Maddest Artist.” Martin and Bender collaborated on The Nutheads comic strip that was syndicated by Universal Press Service. Other projects included Cracked Magazine pages, paperback covers, posters and pages for the Don Martin comic book.
Early in 1991, Bender also became assistant to Dave Graue on the Sunday Alley Oop comic strip, while continuing to work with Martin. Graue lived in North Carolina and Martin in Florida.
Late in 1991, Graue retired as artist of Alley Oop and, after a competitive tryout with United Media syndicate, Bender was hired as the new artist on Alley Oop, daily and Sunday. Graue remained as writer. Bender continued working with Don Martin as well until the end of 1992.
Bender’s first career, as political cartoonist, was with the Waterloo (Iowa) Courier. His cartoons were also reprinted over the years in other publications as well, including U.S. News & World Report and the New York Times. For his political cartoons, he received the Freedoms Medal from the Freedoms Foundation and the Grenville Clark Award. He also drew sports cartoons for many magazines, including Baseball Digest and Football News.
He received the “Ignatz” career achievement award at Orlandocon in 1992 and his cartoons were honored with a retrospective exhibit at the Grout Museum in Waterloo in 2001.
Biography courtesy of The Toy & Action Figure Museum, Pauls Valley, Oklahoma