Stuff From My Studio: The Reuben!

I just returned from another fabulous National Cartoonists Society Reuben Award Weekend, this time held in Philadephia. It was a great time as usual, planned and hosted by NCS President and first-lady Bill and Kayre Morrison. Getting to hang out with so many of my peers whom I respect and admire is one of the highlights of my year.

Receiving the statuette above was one of the highlights of my life. This is THE Reuben Award, designed by Rube Goldberg himself, which I was honored with at the 2012 Reubens in Las Vegas. This year’s winner was animation legend Glen Keane. His and the names of the 70 plus other honorees reads like a who’s who in cartooning history, and it’s still hard to believe my name is in there among some of the greatest cartoonists of all time. In fact I’m pretty sure there was a miscount in 2012 but you’ll have to pry this from my cold, dead fingers if you want to take it away.

Glen had a touching acceptance speech about how in his family the Reuben represented the pinnacle of the cartooning profession (in case you don’t know, his father was Bil Keane, creator of The Family Circus and winner of the 1982 Reuben) and what it meant to him to be honored with it as his dad had been. This coming from a guy who got an Oscar a few months ago for this animated short “Dear Basketball”. The Reuben really is a big deal in the cartooning world, and I am still humbled and grateful to have been honored with it. It sits just a few feet from my drawing board so I see it now and then as I draw, because it motivates me to keep working hard to try and live up to it.