Ricky Nobile has not missed a deadline in 50 years.
It’s probably even longer than that if he’s counting all of the high school and college newspapers his cartoons have appeared in since the 1960s.
He’s a mainstay on The Enterprise-Tocsin’s opinions page, along with dozens of other community newspapers across the state.
Editors on Thursday evenings still anxiously await the arrival of his cartoons, usually sent by his wife, Mary, by email. There’s usually three to choose from, including a color cartoon, which is a recent addition to the mix.
The Moorhead native’s first cartoon - in a non-school paper - appeared in The E-T a half century ago.
“I never would have had nerve enough to ask The Enterprise-Tocsin about running my cartoons, but my sister-in-law, Beverly Nobile, asked Jim Abbott,” Nobile said. “Jim Abbott was a young, energetic new editor, and he was open to me sending my cartoons in. That was great.”
Those first cartoons, which tackled issues ranging from potholes to shopping local, were the start of something special, and by the mid-1970s, Nobile’s cartoons were in papers from the top half of the state to the bottom half.
He would become well-known for using his artistic abilities to tackle statewide issues and portray the personalities that shaped state politics through his doodles.
“The main thing I enjoyed doing was the caricatures and the personalities of the different politicians,” Nobile said.
Recently, Nobile published a book of his cartoons, Home Grown, Home Drawn!: 45 Years of Mississippi Editorial Cartoons.
At first glance, it’s a little over 130 pages of cartoons, but it’s much more than that.
It’s a history book. It tells the history of a half century of Mississippi politics.
“What I tried to do is try to have an overview of Mississippi politics for the last 50 years,” Nobile said.
Nobile was raised on a cotton farm between Moorhead and Indianola.
He is the son of Pauline and Gus, and he had three brothers, Billy, Jimmy and Dennis.
It was apparent very early on, Nobile said, that he was not going to be a farmer.
“I always loved to draw,” Nobile said. “Like most kids, I drew all over everything, my homework and everything else, but I never outgrew it. I’m still doodling today…I never was much of a cotton farmer. I think my daddy saw right off I wasn’t going to be a very good farmer.”
Nobile took a correspondence course in high school in cartooning.
His family was very supportive.
He began to draw for the school newspaper at Moorhead High School, which shuttered right after Nobile graduated in 1966.
He then attended Mississippi Delta Junior College (MDCC today), and he drew cartoons for the school paper there, and he also served as editor of the annual.
“Anything I could do to get in print, because I enjoyed just seeing my cartoons in print,” Nobile said.
From Moorhead, Nobile would travel down to the bustling town of Hattiesburg, where he attended the University of Southern Mississippi.
And guess what. He drew cartoons for that school’s paper as well.
“That’s when I got the idea of trying to get into some of these weekly newspapers,” Nobile said.
Shortly after that, in early 1971, Nobile made his debut in his home county’s paper.
When he finished college, he took a job at the Bolivar Commercial in Cleveland, working in ad sales under then publisher Norman Van Liew.
“I started doing cartoons on Mississippi politics, and I sent out mailers, and my idea was to get into as many of these community newspapers as I could,” Nobile said.
There were not many cartoonists doing local or state drawings back in the early 1970s, so Nobile figured he had a product he could sell.
And he was right.
“I’d go to these ad sales meetings, and I’d corner these editors up in the elevator or somewhere and sell them my cartoons,” Nobile said.
Back then, there was no email.
After drawing his weekly cartoon, he said he would get the woman who photographed the newspaper in Cleveland to take a picture of his cartoon. He would then use the copying machine to make copies, and he would then stuff envelopes and mail them out.
At his peak, Nobile was in about 40 community newspapers, he said.
“I’m a big believer in community newspapers,” Nobile said. “I believe they’re the nucleus and kind of the heartbeat of the community. It’s really nice to be part of it. I just try to be an added feature, something that makes the newspaper a little more interesting.”
Over the years, Nobile has had the privilege of drawing national figures like the late Senator Jim Eastland and also the state’s governors.
“The basic issues, over the years, really never changed much,” he said.
But the faces have indeed changed, and Nobile has a gift of bringing those personalities to life.
One governor in particular stands out, and that is Haley Barbour.
“The Mississippi governor is supposedly weak, compared to the Legislature, but Haley Barbour had a strong personality, and I drew him as Fred Flintstone and Boss Hogg and different things over the years,” Nobile said. “I even had him rapping one time.”
But Barbour was always a good sport.
He even wrote the forward to Nobile’s book of cartoons, and when he was first elected to office, he commissioned Nobile to draw the Barbour Christmas card that year.
Not all of the feedback has been positive.
Back in the early 1980s, when what is now the Mississippi University for Women was about to start allowing men to enroll, Nobile said he drew a cartoon that riled one Memphis reader to the point that she mailed him a note.
“I got this letter in the mail, from Memphis,” he said. “She had torn out the cartoon and written across there, ‘Why don’t you grow up?’”
After working in ad sales for 27 years, Nobile retired and moved to the Hattiesburg area where he’s been for the last 20 years.
Since then, he’s made cartooning his full-time job.
Aside from his syndicated newspaper cartoons, he often appears at conventions and other events where he draws caricatures of those in attendance.
He’s even done some special projects like coloring books for several organizations.
The COVID-19 pandemic has slowed his business some, mostly due to events being canceled or postponed, but after 50 years, Nobile is still in the business of drawing, and he doesn’t plan to slow down anytime soon.
