He’s Got Jokes: Former insurance litigator spent decades juggling work, family and cartooning
How did Phil Witte juggle dual careers? “I didn’t watch any TV, I limited my social interactions and I didn’t go out much," he says. (Photo by Rob Yelland)
Philip Witte started writing and drawing cartoons at the age of 8, thanks to a heavy dose of Mad magazine. By the time he was in high school, Witte, who would often be found scribbling cartoons in the back of the classroom, was described in his yearbook as the “class cartoonist,” he says. He sold his first cartoon at 15.
But how many high school doodlers actually make it as professional cartoonists? And at what cost? Witte decided he needed to grow up and drop the cartoonist act.
He attended Princeton University and started focusing on more serious writing, studying creative writing with Joyce Carol Oates. He had a few articles published in the Washington Post and considered becoming a journalist.
Witte was conflicted. He loved cartoons, humor and writing, but he didn’t want to be a starving artist. So he decided to go to law school at the University of Chicago.
“I could write and I had analytical abilities, so I thought law school would be a good idea,” he says. “I can’t say it was a pleasant experience, though.”
It definitely was not as pleasant as sitting in an artist’s studio dreaming of cartoons.
But Witte, by then married with a young daughter, tried to stick with the script: get older, take a pragmatic job and support his family (along with his wife, who is an architect).
(Courtesy of Phil Witte)While working up to 60 hours a week practicing insurance and business litigation, Witte carved out a little spare time for a few passion projects. He wrote a children’s book and compiled a few articles for legal publications. The book wasn’t published, but he met a publisher who asked him if he could write novelty joke books about aging. Witte had never written a joke in his life at that point, but he has always practiced the “fake it till you make it” rule. The two books were published in 1999 and in 2006, respectively.
Witte could be a writer! But he was already a lawyer.
So Witte did what any enthusiastic-yet-naive young lawyer would do: He did it all.
The Northern California lawyer went to his law office by 8:30 a.m. and worked until 7 p.m. He rushed home to cook dinner for the family, then worked at home from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. writing short stories, plays and other types of fiction, but with little success. He also worked at the law firm half days on the weekends, spending the remainder of his time sleeping, doing chores and exercising. Witte’s thick hair started graying, and his beard eventually turned white.
“I didn’t watch any TV, I limited my social interactions and I didn’t go out much,” says Witte, who lives in Piedmont, California. “It was very stressful for many years.”
During the day, Witte would mull over court proceedings, and as soon as he was out of the office, he would switch gears to consider how relationships, life experiences, childhood and dreams could be funny. Much of it has to do with the visual incongruity, like a bear in a bed. He was done with joke books but realized if he combined his gag-writing skills with drawing, he could be a cartoonist again.
Phil Witte’s newest book, Funny Stuff: How Great Cartoonists Make Great Cartoons was released this week.After about a year of honing his drawing skills, Witte began selling cartoons to major outlets. In one, the Grim Reaper in a black hood leads an older man away from his house. His elderly wife retorts, “You’re not going anywhere until you finish our estate plan,” he wrote.
Witte, though, was going places.
He and a neighbor, Rex Hesner, created a blog called the Cartoon Companion, where they would rate and review cartoons for fun. Three years later, Witte received the call from Bob Mankoff, then the cartoon editor for The New Yorker, that would change his life.
“He said that he enjoyed our critiques of New Yorker cartoons on our blog,” Witte recalls.
Mankoff later left The New Yorker to head up Cartoonstock.com, which is essentially the Getty Images of cartoons. He got back in touch with Witte, asking if he and Hesner would work for him writing the blog that would eventually become Anatomy of a Cartoon.
Witte was at a turning point. He could continue doubling down, as he had been doing for the past 15 years, creating cartoons and blogs while spending his days as a lawyer, or he could give up his day job.
“There were aspects of law that I really enjoyed, like winning,” Witte says, laughing. “I would have liked a lot less of it, more of a 9-to-5 job. But you can’t do that.”
Eight years ago he finally gave up the law to be a full-time cartoonist. So far, it’s not going too badly. Witte has sold more than 1,000 cartoons to dozens of publications in the United States and the United Kingdom, including about 100 to the Wall Street Journal. The 67-year-old has no plans to retire. He has co-written an authoritative book on cartoons, Funny Stuff: How Great Cartoonists Make Great Cartoons, released by Prometheus Books on July 16.
“I consider myself to be in mid-career,” he says.
No joke.
