CARTOONIST PROFILE

Bio

During a career in publishing, JP Trostle has been an art director, illustrator, graphic designer, journalist and, last but not least, cartoonist. He was the editorial cartoonist for several newspapers, including The Patriot-News and The Chapel Hill Herald, and more recently, on the staff of the alt-weekly Indy Week.

For most of his career, JP has signed his cartoons under the pen name “Jape,” a nickname he’s had since he was about 6 — the same age, coincidentally, at which he decided he wanted to be a cartoonist. It was only later he discovered it was, like, a real word.

You can imagine his disappointment the first time he googled his pen name and discovered it wasn’t as unique as he once thought: in addition to being the nickname of dead rock legend J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson, Jape shares the title with TWO rock bands, a mathematical software program, the Journal of Australian Political Economy, and an S&M club in Florida.

He is the long-time editor of the Notebook, the annual magazine of the AAEC and [full disclosure] this website. He has designed and edited a half dozen books on cartooning, including “Attack of the Political Cartoonists” and all three Attitude books with Ted Rall: “Attitude: The New Subversive Political Cartoonists”, “Attitude2: The New Subversive Alternative Cartoonists”, and “Attitude3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonists.”