National Cartoonists Society - USO Tour and Charitable Causes

USO Tour and Charitable Causes

When Al Posen originated the idea of National Cartoonists Society tours to entertain American servicemen, he became the NCS Director of Overseas Shows. On October 4, 1952, nine cartoonists left on a USO-Camp Shows tour of U.S. Armed Forces installations in Europe, traveling via a Military Air Transport Service plane from Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts and landing at Rhein-Main Air Base in Germany. On the tour, the cartoonists engaged models in each country to join in their Laff Time show of audience participation stunts and gags. The cartoonists were Posen, Charles Biro, Bob Dunn, Gus Edson, Bill Holman, Bob Montana, Russell Patterson, Clarence Russell and Dick Wingert (Hubert). The comic strip Dondi came about because of a friendship that developed between Edson and Irwin Hasen during a USO trip to Korea.

Hy Eisman described the atmosphere at the NCS when he joined in 1955:

At the time I joined they were meeting at the Lambs Club in New York. It was an actor's club, which was actually a copy of an actor's club in London. When the NCS started, Rube Goldberg, Russell Patterson and Bob Dunn had become very friendly with a lot of actors. Goldberg had even done a couple of movies and Dunn was on early TV doing a program called Quick on the Draw. They had gotten the club to allow them to use the premises as a meeting place for cartoonists. When I joined, they had what they called a Shepherd—after all, the meetings were at the Lambs Club—who was the president, Billy Gaxton. The meetings were monthly, and there would be a dinner afterwards. There was always a lot of drinking going on. For Pete's sake, there was a bar right there in the meeting room. In order to get the meeting going, they would always have to pry the guys away from the bar. The first guy I met, sitting right across from me at my first dinner, was Raeburn Van Buren. He was the creator of Abbie an' Slats, and this was always a strip I liked. What was so nice was that even though he was much older, he just talked to me like a fellow professional. At that first meeting there was Al Capp, Walt Kelly, Alex Raymond, Ernie Bushmiller, Milton Caniff, all of them just sitting there, big as life. As I went to more meetings, I got to talk to a few of them. To me, it was unreal that so many legends were just standing around talking shop and gossip with each other. They were all, so, let's just say, normal. These were guys I had idolized for years.

During the 1960s, cartoonists of military comic strips went to the White House and met with Lyndon B. Johnson in the Oval Office. The group included Caniff, Bill Mauldin and Mort Walker.

In 1977-78, the National Cartoonists Society released The National Cartoonists Society Portfolio of Fine Comic Art, published by Collector's Press. The portfolio featured a total of 34 art prints. Each 12" x 16" print was printed on archival fine art paper.

In 2011, to memorialize and commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11, many NCS cartoonists auctioned off art that gave commentary to the tragedy and raised money for families victimized by the event in a reflective homage called, Cartoonists Remember. These cartoon tributes raised over $50,000 to benefit the 9/11 families.The art was featured and displayed in both nationally syndicated newspapers and museums across America, including the Newseum in Washington, DC, the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco and the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in New York City.

In 2005, the Society formed a Foundation to continue the charitable works of its fund for indigent cartoonists, the Milt Gross Fund.

The Society's offices are in Winter Park, Florida. In addition, the NCS has chartered 16 regional chapters throughout the United States and one in Canada. Chapter Chairpersons sit on the NCS Regional Council and are represented by a National Representative, who is a voting member of the Board of Directors. As NCS president for two consecutive terms, Jeff Keane, cartoonist for the Family Circus and son of comic creator, Bil Keane, returned to the charter and spirit of the NCS by extending the society's outreach to the military by visiting and cartooning for vets who served in the Iraq War and Afghanistan War, during the years 2007-2011.

In 2008, NCS joined over 60 other art licensing businesses (including the Artists Rights Society, Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, the Stock Artists Alliance, Illustrator's Partnership of America and the Advertising Photographers of America) in opposing both The Orphan Works Act of 2008 and The Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008. Known collectively as "Artists United Against the U.S. Orphan Works Acts", the diverse organizations joined forces to oppose the bills, which the groups believe "permits, and even encourages, wide-scale infringements while depriving creators of protections currently available under the Copyright Act."