Ivey, Jim

James Burnett Ivey (1925- ), commonly known as Jim Ivey, is an American cartoonist and cartoon historian.

James Ivey was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee on April 15, 1925, the son of a college professor. He attended the University of Louisville, George Washington University and the National Art School in Washington, D.C and also pursued correspondence work through Landon School of Illustration and Cartooning. While a Navy submariner from 1943 to 1946, Ivey also drew cartoons.

Ivey began as a layout artist in the engraving department at the Washington Star before he landed a spot in the Star’s editorial art department. In 1953 he left for the St. Petersburg Times, and from 1959 to 1966 Ivey held a cartoonist position at the San Francisco Examiner . Ivey then pursued freelance work until he became a cartoonist with the Orlando Sentinel in 1970 where he stayed until 1977 when he again went back to freelancing. Ivey also spent time teaching the art of cartooning at the University of Central Florida from 1978 to 1983.

Ivey is also well known as a cartoon collector and comics historian. In the 1950s, Ivey received a Reid Fellowship to study political cartooning in Europe and returned to the United States in 1959. In 1967, Ivey opened the Cartoon Museum with items from his own collection and published the quarterly publication cARTtoon . In the 1970s he started the annual Orlandocon convention. Ivey’s interest has spanned all forms of cartooning including comic books and his personal collection of cartoons is international in scope. His writings have appeared regularly in the World of Comic Art, the Comics Journal and Hogan’s Alley and his own work has been included in several books including Thoughts of Man (1975) and his self published retrospective, Cartoons I Liked (2008).

Ivey’s cartoons have been reprinted in other countries though Germany’s Tarantel-Press and were also distributed through the Chicago Tribune and Rotcho syndicates. Ivey was an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists and the National Cartoonists Society and won the NCS’s Silver T-Square Award in 1979.

Jim Ivey currently lives in Orlando, Florida and continues to draw freelance cartoons.

From the guide to the James Ivey Collection., 1892-1971, 1966-1969, (Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries)