Close To Home

SARATOGA SPRINGS - John McPherson was born in the town of Painted Post, near Corning in the western part of New York state. After graduating from Bucknell University with a degree in mechanical engineering, he landed a job as a design engineer in the mid-1980s at the Watervliet Arsenal, and relocated to Saratoga Springs.

He was an admitted ‘doodler’ as a child, using his parents’ dining room wall as an early sketchpad. He returned to his drawing ways as an adult hobbyist and was successful enough by 1990 to quit his job at the arsenal and go at it full time as a freelancer. He contributed to The Saturday Evening Post, Yankee Magazine and dozens of other publications.

Two years later, he teamed up with Universal Press Syndicate. His cartoon series, ‘Close to Home,’ debuted in 50 newspapers throughout the country. Today, McPherson’s comic page panel appears in 700 newspapers worldwide, including The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Houston Chronicle and the Vietnam News.

His cartoons appear in book collections, on greeting cards and on a new page-a-day ‘Close to Home’ calendar for 2004. His most recent endeavor is creating illustrated books for the popular ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ series.

For the man who keeps a keen eye on life’s little faux pas, things are looking pretty good. Much better, in fact, since his recent physical battle which had him writhing in pain on the office carpet, waiting to pass a kidney stone.
Even that didn’t affect his sense of humor, however. McPherson initiated a game where people were invited to guess when his ‘metabolic meteor’ would pass.

‘I deal with things in everyday life, or try to look at society and everything that is going on,’ McPherson says, finding a moment of relaxation on one of the comfortable couches at The Creative Bloc on Broadway in Saratoga Springs. It is here where he has done a majority of his work over the past five years.

McPherson has two sons, Peter, 11, and Griffin, 7. Parenthood and the humorous absurdities of the dynamics of family life are often woven through McPherson’s work. That is evident in two of his recent books for the ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ series.
In ‘Cartoons for Moms,’ he tackles parenting - from the sonogram to the teen years - where the moms take care of the serious work while dads find ever-creative ways to goof off.
In ‘Cartoons for Dads,’ the goofing off takes on more practical proportions - escaping to the golf course, toying with electronic gadgets and generally going to great lengths in overprotective ways to embarrass their teenage daughters.

It’s all done in good fun, however, and McPherson finds a way to strike a common chord without being malicious. Instead, there is a chuckle of acknowledgement at the silly things humans do and a wonderment of what strange, funny animals we can be at times.

‘I did some cartoons poking fun at the ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ books,’ McPherson says. ‘Every time I did one, I’d get a call from them asking, ‘Can we get a copy of that to hang in the office?’ By the fourth or fifth cartoon, I picked up the phone and it was Jack Canfield (founder and co-creator of the Chicken Soup series) himself. So we got to talking,’ McPherson says.
The two became friends, meeting when Canfield visited here as a keynote speaker at the Humor Conference, and then again in Canfield’s hometown of Santa Barbara, Calif.

‘They started using my cartoons and, after a period of seven or eight years, I became their most-used cartoonist. So Jack and Mark (Hansen) and I got together and they said ‘We have a great idea. We’d like to do some ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ books that are filled exclusively with your cartoons,’’ McPherson says of the plans that call for eight different ‘Chicken Soup’ books. ‘It’s been a fun new venue for my work.’ A ‘Chicken Soup for the Teacher’s Soul’ is slated for release in the spring.

McPherson figures he has created about 6,000 cartoons for ‘Close to Home,’ so there is plenty of material at his disposal. He’s not too concerned with continually coming up with new ideas, either.
‘I’ve been doing this for so long now, they (ideas) always seem to come, one way or another,’ he says.
If he is unconcerned with writer’s block, he is focused on the Creative Bloc, a haven for creative writers and artists in an upstairs loft on Broadway.

‘I do quite a bit of my work in here,’ McPherson says, gesturing through the office where his cartoons and newspaper clips are part of the decor.
‘Being a cartoonist can be really isolating, and when I ran into Nancy Butcher, the children’s book author, she agreed how difficult doing this (creative) work can be,’ McPherson says. ‘We were each eager to connect with someone artistically, so we got Matt Witten to join us and my friend Chris Millis. Jeff Kelly got on board, who began writing his series of novels,’ he says.

Witten worked on his novel ‘Breakfast at Madeline’s’ at the Creative Bloc before relocating to the West Coast, where he has written for the TV series ‘Law & Order.’ Butcher, who has appeared on NBC’s ‘Today’ show, has had success with her books on the Olsen twins. And Millis won an award for his book ‘Small Apartments.’ McPherson keeps the cartoon hits coming, so there must be something to the place.

‘We found that the synergy of working around other creative people helped us to work better (independently). It’s a fun concept, and it’s been an inspirational place to work,’ McPherson says.
There have been about 30 different office mates who have come and gone through the years. Some come to write and to work on a book. Others come to realize that they cannot. Regardless, McPherson says there is always space available for people who want to find out.

‘We’re always reaching out to artists and to be supportive of each other,’ he says.
Next up for McPherson is an animated version of ‘Close to Home’ for a TV special.

What more is there for him to accomplish?
‘I would like to be the leader of a small island nation,’ he says.

What would be special about his island?
‘We would fly all the flags of all of the small island nations,’ he says, his eyes raised to a point on the blank wall as if he were envisioning it.
No doubt, a glimpse of McPherson’s island nation will reveal itself sometime in the future - in a book, on TV or in any one of 700 newspapers around the globe.

by Thomas Dimopoulos
The Saratogian, Dec. 6, 2003.