Episode 60 – “Jim Palmer VS Li’l E”

Lin WorkmanMar 25, 2024

Show notes: This episode features an interview I did with long time Mid-South Cartoonists Association member Jim Palmer. We talked toons after one of the recent MSCA monthly dinner meet-ups at Garibaldi’s Pizza.

Jim’s first printed work was in 1969 while working at a Baptist Publishing here in Memphis. After being there just a few months, they requested he come up with a comics page for one of their magazines for kids in grades 1-6. They said they wanted it to be a (their words) “a Christian PEANUTS”, and named it “CAPERS”. After leaving there in 1971, he continued to freelance it, as well as do other illustrations until September 1987.

The next month Jim began “LI’L E”. Jim said, “I began LI’L E in the October issue of “MEMPHIS STAR” magazine, a local (at the time) music mag. I had been working there for maybe a year & a half by then doing paste-up (remember that?), working in the dark room, & providing a few cartoon style illustrations for each issue. I wanted to do a regular strip or page of my own creation. The editor said ok, but it had to be done “off-the-clock”. It had to have some kind of local music connection, but I wanted it to be something that would also work outside Memphis. Thinking newspaper syndication. Having grown up listening to Elvis, I thought why not do an Elvis impersonator, & I suppose also being a PEANUTS fan to make him a little kid. That’s about all the “inspiration” there was to it.”

Jim got into acting during his second year of college and did about a dozen shows before graduating. He’s been doing it ever since, including plays around town- many with his wife Jo Lynne. He was in “The People VS Larry Flint” and once portrayed Alice Cooper’s butler for TV.

Back in 2010 Jim portrayed the evil Professor Moriarty in Theatre Memphis‘ production of “Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure”. I did my “Elementary – The Many Faces of Sherlock Holmes” art show out in the lobby area of Theatre Memphis during the run of the play.

In 2022, Jim played Police Inspector Goole for Germantown Community Theatre‘s production of “An Inspector Calls“, and has participated in other GCT plays and the MSCA art shows there as well.