Legendary cartoonist, satirist, screenwriter and children’s book author Jules Feiffer (Carnal Knowledge, Little Murders) has passed at age 95 — five days short of his 96th birthday.

Born in early ’29, it took him a long while to find his own voice and style but he had things well in hand by his early 30s, which is when most creators tend to find their strength.

Carnal Knowledge (’71) was “the best collaborative work I’ve ever done with anybody,” Feiffer has said a few times.

For me Donald Sutherland‘s marriage ceremony sermon from Little Murders (also ’71, adapted from Feiffer’s play) is the absolute greatest.

The exceptionally bright and incisive Feiffer kept the engine humming for many decades and never seemed to slow down, but the fact is that while he began to gain creative power in the late ’50s and the Kennedy era, he peaked in the counter-cultural ’60s and ’70s, or during his 30s ands 40s…go ahead and complain all you want but that’s how it shook out. He peaked during the LBJ, Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations.

Stanley Kubrick to Jules Feiffer: “The comic themes you weave are very close to my heart … I must express unqualified admiration for the scenic structure of your “strips” and the eminently speakable and funny dialog … I should be most interested in furthering our contact with an eye toward doing a film along the moods and themes you have so brilliantly accomplished.”