Close to Home (comic strip)

Close to Home is a daily, one-panel comic strip by American cartoonist John McPherson that debuted in 1992. The comic strip features no ongoing plot, but is instead a collection of one-shot jokes covering a number of subjects that are "close to home," such as marriage, children, school, work, sports, health and home life. It runs in nearly 700 newspapers worldwide.

About the creator

Born and raised in Painted Post, New York, John McPherson began drawing cartoons at age five on the dining room wall. After graduating from Bucknell University in 1983 with a B.S. in mechanical engineering, he worked for seven years as a design engineer. It was during this period that he again took up cartooning, discovering that his drawings looked much the same as they had 20 years earlier. Nonetheless, McPherson was able to moonlight his way to a thriving free-lance cartooning career, working as a regular contributor to The Saturday Evening Post, Campus Life, Yankee, Christianity Today and 30 other national publications.

In 1990 he decided to leave his engineering job and pursue full-time freelance cartooning.

After freelancing for two years and publishing five collections of his cartoons with Zondervan Publishing House, McPherson teamed up with Universal Press Syndicate, now Universal Uclick, and in November 1992 Close To Home debuted in 50 papers. McPherson has published numerous Close To Home collections with Andrews McMeel Publishing, as well as yearly page-a-day calendars, a children's book, a book of medical cartoons, a line of greeting cards and many other gift items. McPherson has teamed up with Chicken Soup for the Soul and has authored four collections of his cartoons: Cartoons for Moms, Cartoons for Dads, Cartoons for Teachers and Cartoons for Golfers.

The father of two sons, McPherson lives on a hilltop in the country in northern New York state.

External links

• GoComics: Close to Home