James E. Anderson's Space Kangaroos & Eco-Disasters is a collection of cartoon strips, editorial and other cartoons and mostly humorous editorial illustration. Much of the artwork was produced in the 1970s while Anderson worked as the staff artist at the Colorado Daily, a feisty left-wing newspaper in Boulder, Colorado. Among several of his comic strips, Bunkie the Space Kangaroo was a galactic collision of silliness, alternative press sensibilities and sci-fi tropes. Later, he drew editorial illustrations for The Rocky Mountain News, Mountain Gazette, Rocky Mountain Business Journal, Denver Monthly, Oil & Gas Investor and other Colorado and national publications. His environmental cartoons "True" Tales of Eco-Disaster and Frackenstein were published online by the Sierra Club.
James E. Anderson was born in Denver, Colorado in1949. He attended the University of Colorado at Boulder and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. He primarily studied printmaking in the Fine Arts Department. While an undergraduate, he began working as the staff artist at the Colorado Daily, an independent, campus-oriented, collectively managed left-wing newspaper. For four years, he produced a series of comic strips and editorial cartoons and drew editorial illustrations. His longest-running cartoon was Bunkie the Space Kangaroo, an amalgam of science fiction, politics, 60's underground press sensibilities and general silliness. He also learned the basics of commercial art here, doing page layout and production graphics. He later worked on staff for Denver Monthly magazine and for Hart Publications, a publisher serving the petroleum industry, as a designer and illustrator. He also free-lanced as an editorial illustrator for the Rocky Mountain News, the Mountain Gazette, Rocky Mountain Business Journal, In These Times, the Greenpeace Chronicles and other local and national publications. Given the vicissitudes of the print media business, even before the Internet ate its lunch, he often turned to advertising and commercial art to make a living. He designed ad layouts, book illustration, brochures, newsletters, logos, and t-shirt art. He produced technical illustration, clip art, and painted cels for traditional animation. Starting a family rather late in life, he was a Mr. Mom before it was cool. A 16 year stint in the Yellow Pages Directory business, mind-numbing yet financially rewarding for artist work, ended when the whole shebang was outsourced to a foreign land. Just old enough to retire, he did. He then volunteered for three years as a graphic designer and cartoonist for the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Sierra Club. He presently has launched a venture selling t-shirt designs online and has prepared a book of his collected cartoons and illustrations. He lives in Denver and is married with two grown children.
