“Despair. Futility. Stupidity. Ignorance.”
Johnny Sampson reminisces on the themes he finds himself returning to in his work.
Raised in Wildwood, Illinois, Johnny Sampson is a freelance artist, illustrator, and cartoonist. Sampson received a BFA from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana in 1992, and since 2023, has been a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Though Sampson is newer to teaching, he finds it to be a helpful development in his practice, saying, “Teaching has forced me to really articulate the things that I do with muscle memory at this point in my life.” He added that he loves the eager energy of the students at SAIC, noting that the conversations has with students are very gratifying.
Sampson spent nearly 20 years as a freelance illustrator, making commissioned posters and prints. Though he’s been illustrating all his life, Sampson claims to have been “bit by the bug of cartooning” after he read “Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice” by Ivan Brunetti.
In 2020, Sampson began making comic fold-in pages for MAD Magazine. The practice started after Sampson sent a fold-in design of his own to Al Jaffee, who had been making the fold-ins before Sampson.
Jaffee also introduced Sampson to the National Cartoonist Society, where, on Jaffee’s recommendation, Sampson became a member and is now the Chicago chapter chair.
Sampson later talked about his comics process as being an ever-changing thing. He noted that the process was dependent on the specific project, and he said that he almost never sat down and drew a comic, saying, “I don’t think I’ve ever done a comic without writing it first.”
As a cartoonist who self-publishes, Sampson participates in a number of ’zine fests. He talked about finding joy in the wider comic community, saying, “One of the best things that I’ve found in the comics community is just this real sense of, I don’t know, a sense of togetherness, and support.”
Currently, Sampson is still working as a freelance artist who never knows exactly what he’s going to be working on.
