John Jonik (born April 30, 1942) is an American artist, cartoonist, writer, and activist known for his fine art, gag cartoons, commercial art, and political cartoons from the late 1960s to the 2020s. Notable works include a community mural, paintings, snow globe designs, and cartoons for The New York Times, The New Yorker, and F&SF. Jonik is also active with the Philadelphia Dumpster Divers, a found object art collective dedicated to creative reuse. His lifelong interest in games and puzzles led him to create the schizonym, a new kind of visual pun.
Early life and education Jonik was born on April 30, 1942, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Edward L. and Mary Jonik (), active members of their local rowing community. His father was part of the Fairmount Rowing AssociationWolf, Paula (July 26, 2016). "Local rower Marie Jonik Myers recalls her 1976 Olympic experience". LNP. Retrieved July 7, 2025. and a professor of accounting at Villanova University."Edward Jonik, Professor, 57". The Philadelphia Inquirer. May 16, 1969. p. 24. Jonik's mother was a founding member of the Philadelphia Girls' Rowing Club, the first rowing club for women in that region. Jonik grew up with three other brothers and two twin sisters in Havertown. His sisters, Marie and Ann, competed for the United States women's national rowing team in the 1970s and later went to the 1976 Summer Olympics as alternates.
In Upper Darby, Jonik attended Monsignor Bonner High School."People and Events". The Catholic Standard and Times. Catholic Research Resources Alliance. p. 2. May 20, 1966. . Jonik excelled at crew and at the age of 16 won numerous events for his school."Jonik Wins; Shell Christened by Bonner". The Philadelphia Inquirer. April 6, 1959. p. 27. "Unscheduled Feature". The Philadelphia Inquirer. April 12, 1959. p. S3. "St. Joseph's Wins 4 Races; Leads Catholic Crew Series". The Philadelphia Inquirer. April 13, 1959. p. 28. After graduation, he studied at Villanova for a year. During his time there, he was a general staff member of The Villanovan student newspaper, with a gag cartoon panel series called The River Styx appearing regularly in the early 1960s."The Villanovan". Villanova University. 37 (1-23). He transferred to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where he received multiple travel scholarships, allowing him to visit Europe, Australia, and the South Sea Islands. After college, Jonik began creating art in various mediums and showing his work in Philadelphia art galleries.Summerbell, Samantha Dodd (September 13, 2023). "Schizonyms and the Satirical Humor of Cartoonist John Jonik". Unique at Penn. University of Pennsylvania Libraries blogs. Retrieved June 30, 2025. Note: Dodd is the archivist at Penn Libraries who worked on the Jonik papers.
Career Jonik told fellow cartoonist Mark Heath in 1999 that he viewed himself as a painter who sold cartoons. His political cartoons are known for their critiques of power, from the corporate to the political, and for his attacks on the influence of lobbyists. Heath describes Jonik's style as suggestive of "a quilted image, with the wavering line of a needle's path."
Ardmore Junction mural
In 1968, Jonik was working at Delaware Valley Institute, where he taught art, English, and mechanical drawing. Around October of that year, he came up with the idea for a mural. He recalled, "When I see big empty spaces, I get the urge to paint on them."McKeown, Pat (November 21, 1968). "Graphic Graffiti Wins Art's Brush With Law". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved July 5, 2025. "SEPTA's off-the-wall art". The Philadelphia Inquirer. September 8, 1983. What initially began as a homage to his pet duck, led to others joining him and turning it into a community mural. Jonik's twin sisters, friends, and other residents of Havertown, painted the wall of an underpass at West Hathaway Lane and Haverford Road in Ardmore, then known as the Red Arrow tunnel, but currently known as the Ardmore Junction station.
Red Arrow, formally known as the Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company, objected to the mural at first, with the Haverford police taking Jonik into custody. No charges were filed, but he was given two weeks to remove the work. Friends and family soon launched a formal petition known as the "Merwood Citizens to Preserve the Wall Monument", with 20 people picketing the site. Some people were taken in by the police for picketing without a license and later released. The group invited Merritt H. Taylor Jr., the president of Red Arrow, to visit the mural for himself, which he did, reversing course and giving it his official approval and re-classifying it as a beautification project. SEPTA later acquired Red Arrow Lines in 1970.
The mural features Jonik's early experiments with visual puns. Examples include a duck with its head bent down—"ducking"; a rake with ears on its handle—an "earache"; a pack of cigarettes with Wolves as its brand—"a pack of wolves"; an angry bull with a bomb inside it—"abominable"; a ball of many feet—"football"; eyes with whips—"eyelashes"; a rainbow that is unhappy—"crossbow"; and the Greek letter pi made of apples—"apple pie". The mural lasted for 14 years until a graffiti removal project by SEPTA destroyed it in 1983.Alnor, William (September 9, 1983). "Artist's mural is gone; thought it was graffiti". Delaware County Daily Times. p. 5. Retrieved July 8, 2025. A team of Transportation Authority workers set out to remove graffiti from the nearby and similarly named Ardmore Station. By mistake, they sandblasted and whitewashed the Ardmore Junction mural. The removal evoked public condemnation and was said to encourage more graffiti by leaving a blank wall in its place for others to deface."Workers Destroy Mural by Mistake". UPI. September 11, 1983. p. 14."SEPTA's off-the-wall art". The Philadelphia Inquirer. September 8, 1983.
Commercial art
Jonik worked as a commercial artist from 1977 to 2011 for Enesco and Silvestri, who sold many of his products. Enesco adapted his cartoons into snow globe designs, selling them in Germany and Japan, where they became best-sellers.Heath, Mark (1999). "A maverick weights the rewards and rejections of cartooning". In Cox, Mary (ed.). Artist's & Graphic Designer's Market. The Markets. Insider Report. pp. 97-100. . Notable designs include: "Strike it Rich" (1985), an older man in a suit and tie sitting on a pile of money while looking up and raising his hands; the snow takes the form of greenbacks raining down into his open armsMcMichael, Nancy; David Emerick (1990). Snowdomes. Abbeville Press. pp. 8, 30. . . "Bunker Madness" (1987), a man taking a golf swing from a bunker or sand trap with the snow taking the color of sand "Bowler" (1987-1988), a man in a bowling alley with snow taking the form of bowling notation or bowling scoring symbols "Careless Cat" (1989), marketed as "Meeeouch!", depicting a cat leering over a fishbowl only to get its tail caught in a floor fan. The snow takes the color of cat hair that is dislodged by the fan.Moore, Connie A.; Harry L. Rinker (1999). Snow Globes: The Collector's Guide to Selecting, Displaying, and Restoring Snow Globes. Knickerbocker Press. p. 43. . .
Cartooning
After university, Jonik got his start as a professional cartoonist in the 1970s with sales to Golf Magazine and Ski Magazine. Other sales to national magazines followed. In 1974, he sold 48 cartoons, totaling about $3,905 in sales. He performed slightly better the next year. The New Yorker turned down his submissions for ten years before finally accepting them. By the late 1990s, he was selling original drawings for as much as $1,000 a piece. Jonik's cartoons have appeared in Audubon, The New York Times, Esquire, National Lampoon, The American Bystander, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Playboy, Cosmopolitan, and Mad Magazine, among many others. He also wrote for many smaller publications including Z Magazine, Earth First! Journal, The Ecologist, and Funny Times.
Gag cartoons Typical, but widely celebrated gag cartoons during Jonik's early to middle period include 37 single-panel gag cartoons for The New Yorker from 1975 to 2006."Jonik, John". The New Yorker Cartoon Bank. Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc. 2025. Retrieved July 5, 2025. One captionless and untitled winter cartoon is known as the "Snow Shoveler" (1977). It shows an unhappy man holding a snow shovel at his side while looking up at the snowfall; the man is standing inside a snow globe. This cartoon was chosen as one of a set of favorites by 60 Minutes. Another favorite, chosen by cartoonist and editor Bob Mankoff, is an untitled, captionless cartoon from 1983 that depicts a variation on the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth. The panel shows men in the background playing American football in a match between the Native Americans and the Pilgrims. The women are seen in the foreground looking unhappy as they wait to eat, with the food sitting ready on the table.
Jonik also created more than 50 cartoons for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (F&SF) from 1987 to 2012.Fantasy & Science Fiction: Volumes 72-92, 96 Index. 1, 2 One gag cartoon in F&SF depicts competing Bronze Age craftsmen building different types of vessels, presumably to survive a future flood in the literary tradition of the Genesis flood narrative. In the left foreground, a carpenter is seen building a ship out of wood like the kind depicted in the story of Noah's Ark. Except, he has stopped building for the moment to stare into the distance, where in the right background of the panel, he sees another builder like himself constructing a futuristic submarine, also out of wood.Benford, Gregory; Jonik, John (April 1992). "Leaping the Abyss". The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. 82 (4): 94.
Political cartoons
From his middle to late period, Jonik started to focus more on politics in his cartooning as a response to the Gulf War air campaign in 1991. The Anderson Valley Advertiser (TVA) began publishing Jonik's political cartoons in their broadsheet in the 1990s.Gemperlein, Joyce (May 12, 1996). "A Really Free Press". The Philadelphia Inquirer. pp. 22, 23, 24, 31. Jonik, John (June 9, 1996). "Call it a draw". Letters. The Philadelphia Inquirer. p. 3. One notable example, "The American People Have Spoken" (c. 1996), depicts two people, seemingly politicians, with dollar sign armbands at a lectern in front of a large crowd in good spirits. The people are holding signs while free-floating, uncontained dialogue appears above their heads. The signs read, "Yes to costly health care", "Please tap our computer messages!", "Limit our internet freedom!", "Pave our farm lands!", "No laws for industry", Don't tell us what's in our food!", "More celeb news", and "Give us e-coli burgers".
One person in the front of the crowd is seen with a button on their shirt that says "[No] Art", with a prohibition symbol drawn through the word. Above the crowd, four messages float in the air, indicating they are emanating from the voices of the people: "We want dirtier air and water so CEOs can make more money!", "Send our jobs overseas!", "Stop giving us benefits from our tax money!", and "Give our forests to the timber companies now!" At the bottom, the title of the cartoon is displayed. "The American People Have Spoken" was used by sociologist Richard H. Robbins to illustrate the second edition of Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism (2002), a textbook on economic history. Robbins uses the cartoon to offer critical commentary on the global nature of capitalism, noting that the cartoon depicts what he sees as the undue influence of corporations over voters, persuading them to support ideas in opposition to their own interests.Robbins, Richard H (2002). Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism. Allyn and Bacon. p. 126. . .