WINTER 2013 | ST. LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE 17
TAK I NG I N THE
B I G P I C TURE
by Neal S. Burdick ’72
In the best liberal arts tradition,
John Daly ’86 didn’t plan to become a
cartoonist when he was in college. The
government major’s interest emerged in
graduate school, when he wrote a paper
on Thomas Nast, the crusading political
cartoonist who helped expose New York
City corruption in the 1870s. Later, idle
doodling was the springboard.
"
I got into cartooning as a career when
my wife, Pam (Robinson Daly ’86), and I
decided that I would stay home with our
first child – Kirby (’12) – so Pam could
finish medical school,” Daly explains. “I
started to doodle because I was bored,”
the Saratoga Springs, N.Y., resident told
a local newspaper reporter in 2010.
“
At a certain point I felt some of my
work was good enough to send to
newspapers, and eventually I started
to get published,” says Daly, adding
that his lack of formal art training was
“
probably a good thing,” because he
didn’t know enough to fear “cold call”
submissions. Daly has published his
work in
The Boston Globe
,
the
Boston
Herald
,
the
Chicago Tribune
and the
Albany Times Union
,
where he was for
a time on the staff.
“
I don’t do it for the money, because
there isn’t a whole lot of that,” Daly
says. “I do, however, get a great sense
of accomplishment from being able to
see my work in print.”
Most of Daly’s published work is
detailed caricatures that accompany
editorials or opinion pieces. For inspi-
ration, he says, “Whoever is on page
one will usually make the editorial pages
in a day or two.
“
I consider myself a liberal,” he adds,
“
but anyone in public life and any stupid
act are fair game. The
Boston Herald
is
conservative, but they like my work,
so I bite my tongue. I hope people are
intrigued enough by my art to read the
commentaries that it accompanies. I’m
working on a distinctive style that people
can recognize.
“
The best reaction I’ve
ever gotten,” Daly recalls,
“
was when I was at the
Times Union
:
A congress-
man came in, upset about
a cartoon I did on him.
You hope that people pay
attention to your work, and
in that case, there was im-
mediate proof.”
Daly also does a comic
strip, “Top of the Stretch,”
which runs in the New
York Racing Association’s
official programs sold at the
Saratoga Race Course. And he’s develop-
ing “America’s Hoot,” which he calls “a
good candidate for syndication, so we
keep plugging away at it.”
“
We” alludes to Daly’s writing part-
ner, Eric Kozlowski ’83. The Sigma Pi
brothers are both racing fans, and jointly
conceived “Top of the Stretch.”
“
Eric comes up with the basic idea and
the words, and then I’ll devise a way to
put it into a three-panel format that tells
a joke,” Daly explains.
Kozlowski, a business development
executive who lives in Rochester, N.Y.,
also collaborates with Daly on “America's
Hoot,” which he calls “a look at our eco-
nomic challenges with a focus on general
social commentary.” The scenarios often
involve two people talking in a bar; the
name, he says, was inspired by the Hoot
Owl Express, the well-known Canton
hangout. Of his relationship with Daly,
he says, “I may have the idea, but John is
the one who creates the magic.”
To see more of Daly’s work, go
www.skewedimages.com
.
JOHN J. DALY JR. ’86
images provided
LAURENTIAN PORTRAIT
David
Ortiz
TURN TO PAGE 20
to continue
the tale of
St. Lawrence
traditions.