Cohoes native John F. Caldwell, who was a freelance cartoonist for publications ranging from The New Yorker to Mad magazine, died Sunday after battling pancreatic cancer. He was 69.

A graduate from Hudson Valley Community College who studied at the Parsons School of Design in Manhattan, he was a cartographer at the state Department of Transportation before he moved on to being an advertising illustrator and freelance cartoonist.

He joked on his website about how drawing maps for the state was not the creative outlet he desired.

"Indeed, you might still find an occasional topographic map of New York showing roads that never existed bearing names like HEY, IT'S ME JOHNNY AVENUE and HOW BORING IS THIS BOULEVARD. There's even a IF I LIVED HERE THIS WOULD BE CALDWELL LANE just north of Rochester," Caldwell wrote in his online biography. "Realizing, under pressure from supervisors, that drawing maps was not the creative outlet he'd imagined it to be, Caldwell moved on to cartooning, an even more tenuous means of expression."

Caldwell's cartoons have appeared in The National Lampoon, Writer's Digest, Playboy, Barron's, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Reader's Digest and Harvard Business Review.

He had also said he was proud to be one of the "Usual Gang of Idiots" at Mad magazine.

Caldwell also wrote a book in the early 1990s called "Fax This Book," followed up by a collection called "Faxable Greeting Cards."

In an interview with the Times Union's Paul Grondahl in 1991, Caldwell talked about a "Gross" and "Beyond Gross" feature he was writing for Mad magazine that included pictures illustrating the following unpleasantries: "'Gross' is finding a hair on your plate. 'Beyond Gross' is flossing your teeth with it; 'Gross' is guys who don't trim their nose hairs. 'Beyond Gross' is guys who braid them."

"Those are even more sophomoric than what I'm used to," Caldwell chuckled at the time.

His one-panel cartoon, "Caldwell," was also distributed to about 60 newspapers, including The Times Union, from 1986 to 1989.

Caldwell continued to create and sell his cartoons thru December 2015 until the pancreatic cancer made him too weak to sit at his drawing table at his Ballston Lake home, according to his obituary. The artist is survived by his wife Diane, a daughter, grandson and many other relatives.

A funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. Wednesday at the Gordon C. Emerick Funeral Home, 1550 Route 9 in Clifton Park.

More Information Check out John F. Caldwell's website and collection of his cartoons here. See More Collapse

lstanforth@timesunion.com • 518-454-5697