Meet the Cartoonist: Edouard Blais

“Oh drat! Your father has the car keys.”

I should be saying something like, “Oh, that’s cold!” but I’m too busy laughing. Cartoonist Edouard “Ed” Blais (pronounced “blaze”) was born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. “I actually started cartooning in 1963. But at that time, I was teaching full time, assistant coach in two varsity sports, and had three small children… So, my cartoon career had to be put on hold.”

“Better hand me that road map again.”

Vacationing with this guy is no picnic, either. As a second career (he taught art for thirty-two years), Ed has been cartooning for thirty years, being published in magazines, newspapers, and trade journals across the United States and Canada. “Several years before I retired from teaching I began drawing again. I didn’t like the sound of ‘being retired.’ It sounded too much like being put out to pasture.”

“So what part of ‘Do Not Feed the Bears’ don’t you understand?”

These characters seem to have troublesome vacations. We’ll just dedicate this one to all those park rangers who are tired of people ignoring signs.

“We wouldn’t be in this predicament if we’d had tougher immigration laws!”

“I was influenced early by Virgil Parch and Al Capp. And I had a mad crush on Moonbeam McSwine,” Ed says. Moonbeam was a kind of 1930s-60s Daisy Duke, animation style. Who wouldn’t fall for a ridiculously shapely, corncob-pipe-smoking hottie who loved spending quality time with the hogs?

“Well, I’ll be… It’s Larry King.”

Listening to the seashell is one of those clichés cartoonists love (like the deserted island, the psychiatrist’s couch, the pearly gates, and so on). This was pure serendipity—the cartoon arrived just as we were doing a cover story on Larry King. We hope Larry liked it. It also shows you how quickly cartoons can become dated—this is from 2008. Even so, I don’t think “Well, I’ll be… It’s Piers Morgan” has quite the same ring to it.

“Of course you can eat whatever you want. You can also be buried wherever you want.”

Ouch. There’s nothing like a doctor who tells it like it is. Ed and his wife presently live in Robbinsdale, Minnesota, with a cat and a dog. They have three grown children. We’ll continue featuring Ed’s crazy characters in the pages of The Saturday Evening Post—even if none of them look like Moonbeam McSwine.