Bunny Matthews: His Life, Art, and Obsessions

Fiendishly creative, sharply observant, and deeply devoted to his city, Bunny Matthews was among the most influential cartoonists and writers in New Orleans. Matthews obsessed over his native city, and throughout the four decades during which his art and writing appeared in almost every local magazine and newspaper, he revealed that city through his work, teaching New Orleans new ways to listen to itself and laugh at itself. Along the way, he helped found or influence some of the most important local cultural entities invented by his generation: Jazz Fest, Tipitina's, and WWOZ.

Matthews is best known for his cartoon characters Vic and Nat'ly, two irreverent bar owners from the Nint' Ward who rank alongside Ignatius J. Reilly and Blanche DuBois in the pantheon of fictional New Orleanians. Although best known as a cartoonist, Matthews was also a musician, arts journalist, and promoter who helped create the visual culture of the 1970s music scene in New Orleans through posters, calendars, and fliers for clubs like Tipitina's and Jimmy's.

As a critic, Matthews earnestly pursued authenticity. In his later years, he spilled thousands of words articulating what he saw as the depreciation and corruption of New Orleans's cultural capital. He eventually gave up the city for a perch on the North Shore, across Lake Pontchartrain, from which he sparred with local right-wing politicians and started fights on social media. He died in 2021, but his legacy lives on in the young writers he helped mentor, the cartoonists he inspired, and in the yellowing clippings of Vic and Nat'ly still found taped to refrigerators throughout New Orleans.

Matthews once wrote, "Be witty. Be nasty. Be silly. Don't be boring." That ethos animates the pages of Bunny Matthews: His Life, Art, and Obsessions, the first monograph of his work.