"I love it," says O'Brien, a 56-year-old Delran resident, whose family ran motels in Wildwood when he was growing up. "I've been a lifeguard since I was 16. I don't know what else I would do in the summertime."
I suspect he'd figure out something - although without the beach, it might be harder to come up with cartoons.
More about his creative process in a moment.
O'Brien began working as a lifeguard in the late '60s, about the time he started playing in garage bands. His commercial art career got started a few years later.
He was a student at what's now the University of the Arts in Philadelphia when he made his first-ever sale of a drawing - a St. Patrick's Day-themed piece purchased by the Evening Bulletin.
And after knocking on doors in Manhattan with his portfolio for several years, O'Brien got his first cartoon into the New Yorker in 1976.
He's since freelanced nearly 400 cartoons, covers, and drawings to the magazine, which is surely one of the most celebrated showcases of such material in the world.
Meanwhile, he estimates that "somewhere between 80 and 100" children's books contain his illustrations. Work on volumes about Jackie Robinson, Ben Franklin, and an Italian mathematician nicknamed Blockhead is under way.
Whether in magazines or books, his signature images are sly and wry ("I like sight gags") and rendered in a style that seems both old-fashioned and postmodern. The work deftly blends whimsy, irony, and a bit of cheek.
Emperors with no clothes walk a fashion show runway, customers at an amusement park's airplane ride march through metal detectors, and "good" and "bad" cops describe their healthful and unhealthful lunch menus.
