John first discovered his love for cartooning in 1991 while working for a Chicago Graphic Design firm. That year he and his wife Anne decided to collaborate on a comic strip titled "Second Nature. Although it was never syndicated, Second Nature reached a long list of loyal readers through their privately run subscription service.
John continued experimenting with other comic strip ideas until one day a little boy named Edison arrived uninvited in his imagination. The precocious little ten year old refused to leave, so John eventually awarded him a starring role in the comic strip "The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee," picked up for syndication in 2006 by King Features. The strip, now entering its tenth year, appears in over 200 digital and print newspapers worldwide.
“The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee” was nominated for the Reuben Division Award “Best Newspaper Comic Strip” in 2010 by the National Cartoonists Society. That same year John was a featured speaker at “Toonfest”, the annual Walt Disney hometown festival in Marceline, Missouri. In 2011 he was one of the inaugural speakers at the first annual Kenosha Festival of Cartooning. For the 2015 KFOC he amazed the audience with a one take video in which he drew all the characters of the festival guests.
In addition to Edison Lee, John has been illustrating children’s books and serving on the board of the National Cartoonists Society. Plans for 2016 include creating a series of small Edison Lee books.
John lives in Wisconsin with his wife, daughter, an ancient cat, a passel of comic strip characters and two herding dogs who keep everyone in line.
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