FRIENDSHIP — For one area man, putting pen to paper and touching on recent issues affecting Americans is just another day at the office. 

Greg Kearney, of Friendship, has been drawing cartoons for newspapers, many of them political in nature, since his days as a high school student at the now-closed Oak Grove-Coburn school Vassalboro when the Waterville Sentinel printed his cartoon. 

“I found I could think up cartoon idea quickly and had a talent for it,” said Kearney. 

He continued drawing cartoons through his college days and landed a job as the cartoonist for the Casper Star Tribune in Wyoming, where he spent the bulk of his career until he became an independent syndicated cartoonist. 

Nowadays, Kearney draws cartoons from his Friendship home, for newspapers in Maine, Kansas, Wyoming and Montana.

Much of his newspaper gigs were landed through relationships he has cultivated or by simply reaching out to the editors of newspapers across Maine and the Midwest, with the latter consisting of sending out samples of his work every six months or so to newspapers not yet a client. 

He is able to draw three or four cartoons for his clients on an average day, spending 30 minutes from the moment he puts his pencil to paper to the finished inked drawing.

Thinking up the ideas is what takes longer he said, as does adding color. Once he finishes his cartoon, he scans them into his computer before emailing them off to an editor. 

“Generally I just look at the leading stories in the states where I provide cartoons to on any give day and select a story or issue from a story to draw about,” Kearney said on how he finds inspiration for his cartoons, noting he focuses on issues impacting the readership areas for the newspapers he draws for. At times, editors will approach him about creating a cartoon around a particular subject. 

Kearney noted he has been fortunate to do what he loves, despite now being an independent cartoonist. 

“I have been lucky that I have been able to do this for many years now,” he said. “No one ever got rich doing this. What I miss most is no longer having an editor to edit my work. It's a bit like working as a trapezes artist without a net.” 

Each of his cartoons features a cat, named Vic, tucked away as a secondary feature of the cartoon. The cat is a tribute to his mentor, the late Victor Runtz, from the Bangor Daily News. 

Runtz, too, included a cat in his drawings during his long run at the Bangor Daily News. 

“When Victor Runtz passed away I figured I would honor all that he did for me and my work by keeping alive his mascot cat, who I named Vic,” said Kearney. “While Victor Runtz was a kind and gentle cartoonist as was seen in his cat, I am a bit more aggressive and Vic the cat is as well, but the idea is to honor Victor Runtz by keeping an element of his work still with us.” 

Reach George Harvey at: sports@penbaypilot.com.