A cartoonists’ cartoonist: Florence’s Hilary Price won the highest honor awarded by the National Cartoonists Society

HILARY PRICE

HILARY PRICE HILARY PRICE

HILARY PRICE 

HILARY PRICE  HILARY PRICE

HILARY PRICE 

HILARY PRICE  HILARY PRICE

HILARY PRICE 

HILARY PRICE  HILARY PRICE

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Cartoonist Hilary Price, who lives in Florence, won the 2023 Reuben Award for Cartoonist of the Year, the highest honor awarded by the National Cartoonists Society, in August of this year.

Cartoonist Hilary Price, who lives in Florence, won the 2023 Reuben Award for Cartoonist of the Year, the highest honor awarded by the National Cartoonists Society, in August of this year. COURTESY SANDRA COSTELLO PHOTOGRAPHY

By CAROLYN BROWN

Staff Writer

Published: 10-10-2024 6:42 PM

Modified: 10-10-2024 6:46 PM


Cartoonist Hilary Price, who lives in Florence, won the 2023 Reuben Award for Cartoonist of the Year, the highest honor awarded by the National Cartoonists Society, in August of this year.

Price draws the comic “Rhymes with Orange,” which is syndicated to 261 newspapers — including the Daily Hampshire Gazette. The one-panel cartoons involve a variety of characters in humorous situations rather than a recurring cast or storyline — for example, birds tearing strips from a cardboard Ikea box to make a nest, a child named Sisyphus rolling a ball up a slide, or a gingerbread man telling his neighbor that his dog “has gummi worms.”

Price said that the award is special because it’s chosen by other cartoonists — people who know the particulars and nuances of the job. Non-cartoonists may have misconceptions about the profession — that a cartoon always gets made and published quickly, for example, or that a cartoonist spends all their time thinking of ideas for future strips. One common misconception, she said, is that cartoonists only care about telling jokes.

“People think the aim is to be funny, but the best part is when someone says to me, ‘Oh, that’s so true,’” Price said. “I’ve touched upon something that people can relate to, and there’s a connection through time and space, and that’s a really good feeling.”

“Of course I want to be funny — of course I want to delight and amuse — but the brass ring is, ‘Oh, that’s so true.’”

Incidentally, this was also not Price’s first time being honored by the National Cartoonists Society: she’s been awarded Best Newspaper Panel Cartoon four times.

Price said she’s had a love of cartooning from a young age. As a child growing up in Weston, she looked up to Sandra Boynton — who, as it happens, has also won an award from the National Cartoonists Society, the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award — and would copy her cartoons. As the youngest sibling in her family, Price used drawing to express herself.

“With my siblings being older, the airwaves were taken,” Price said. “A piece of paper and a pencil — that was my space, my real estate. It was my microphone.”

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Price went to Stanford University for college, where she studied English. She graduated in 1991 and moved to western Massachusetts seven years later. When she was 25, she became the youngest female cartoonist to be syndicated nationally.

“Rhymes with Orange” has now been in syndication for nearly 30 years. About seven years ago, Price started collaborating with Canadian cartoonist Rina Piccolo, which she said “has energized me and the strip in great ways.”

“If I could speak to people that are starting in the business, [I’d say] just get rid of the myth that you have to do it all by yourself. It’s a lot more fun going back and forth with other people,” she said.

Cartooning, she said, is a lot like comedy writing in that sense — writers on a comedy TV show often work together in a writers’ room, but the rules of comedy are alike no matter the medium: “end on the punchline,” for example, and include “surprise, suspense and stakes.”

Though she works in a very visual format, Price considers herself “a writer who draws” rather than “an artist who writes.”

“When I got out of college, I wanted to get paid to write.” Now, she said, “I do get paid to write — just very short sentences.”

Carolyn Brown can be reached at cbrown@gazettenet.com.