Bruce McCall

Bruce McCall (May 10, 1935 – May 5, 2023) was a Canadian author and illustrator, best known for his frequent contributions to ''The New Yorker''. He has also illustrated children's books.

Life and career

McCall was born on May 10, 1935, in Simcoe, Ontario. He was fascinated by comic books and showed an early aptitude for drawing fantastical flying machines, blimps, bulbous-nosed muscle cars and futuristic dioramas. In his memoir, ''Thin Ice'' (1997), McCall recounted that he was never good at physical activity as a boy, but could count on his mother to encourage his creativity.

Without any serious technical training, McCall began his illustration career drawing cars for Ford Motor Company in Toronto in the late 1950s before moving into advertising. At the ad agency Campbell-Ewald, McCall met and worked with David E. Davis Jr., who later rise to prominence as the Editor in Chief of Car and Driver and founder of the Automobile magazine. Later, in New York, he wrote ad copy for Ford and Mercedes-Benz. He temporarily relocated to Germany after he was put in charge of Mercedes-Benz advertising. After several decades in advertising, he sought opportunities elsewhere in the publishing industry.

During his time in New York City, McCall was hired by '' National Lampoon'', where he made a name for himself as an artist with intelligent and whimsical humor. McCall also spent a brief period writing sketches for ''Saturday Night Live''. A large proportion of McCall's work has a retrofuturistic theme. McCall illustrated magazine covers, regularly appearing in ''The New Yorker'', ''Car and Driver'', and other magazines. He has been a contributor to the magazine since 1979. McCall was also a humourist, and has written essays on some of the social ironies of modern life. He wrote frequently for the "Shouts & Murmurs" section of ''The New Yorker''. He contributed more than 80 covers to the magazine over the course of his career.

McCall lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City near Central Park. He died of complications from Parkinson's disease on May 5, 2023, at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx. He was 87.

Selected bibliography

Books

* (1982) '' Zany Afternoons''
* (1993) ''Sit!: The Dog Portraits of Thierry Poncelet,'' text by Bruce McCall
* (1997) '' Thin Ice'' (memoir)
* (1998) ''Viagra Nation: The Definitive Guide to Life in the New Sexual Utopia''
* (2001) ''Sit!: Ancestral Dog Portraits''
* (2001) ''The Last Dream-o-Rama''
* (2003) New York to the World Mural 8th Ave and 34th street
* (2003) ''All Meat Looks Like South America''
* (2008) ''Marveltown''
* (2009) ''50 Things to Do with a Book''
* (2013) ''This Land Was Made for You and Me (But Mostly Me): Billionaires in the Wild'' (with David Letterman)
* (2020) ''How Did I Get Here?''

Articles

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Notes

External links

Lambiek Comiclopedia biography.

McCall's ''The New Yorker'' profile
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*
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McCall Creates Schematics of Unlikely Art
', NPR interview with McCall by Robert Siegel (2003)

{{DEFAULTSORT:McCall, Bruce
1935 births
2023 deaths
Canadian magazine cartoonists
Canadian magazine illustrators
20th-century Canadian illustrators
21st-century Canadian illustrators
Canadian children's book illustrators
Canadian advertising artists and illustrators
Canadian male essayists
Canadian humorists
Canadian people of Scottish descent
Deaths from Parkinson's disease in New York (state)
The New Yorker cartoonists
Writers from Ontario
People from Norfolk County, Ontario
Canadian expatriate journalists in the United States
National Lampoon people
20th-century Canadian essayists
20th-century Canadian male writers
21st-century Canadian essayists
21st-century Canadian male writers
Artists from Manhattan
People from the Upper West Side
Writers from Manhattan