Richard Thompson

Richard Thompson, attended but didn't graduate from, Montgomery County Community College. Before his Washington Post newspaper strips, Richard’s Poor Almanac and Cul de Sac, he did Fleabag Theater for the school newspaper, The Spur. After that he illustrated his mother Anne Hall Witt's autobiography, The Suitcases. He also did science fiction fanzine work for Disclave in Washington, DC. Thompson worked regularly doing illustrations for the Washington Post from the early 1980s, eventually appearing almost every day of the week. He illustrated Joel Achenbach's syndicated column Why Things Are, and those drawings were collected in 2017. He also illustrated Gene Weingarten's syndicated column for the Washington Post. He also did two comics for the newspaper - Saturday's Richard's Poor Almanac panel and Sunday's Cul de Sac in the Magazine. Beginning in 1991, he did interior illustrations for the New Yorker. He did over 400 caricatures for US News and World Report over the course of nine years, and also did work for National Geographic Magazine. His illustrations regularly appeared in trade publications such as Contingencies Magazine and the Food and Drug Administration's Food News. Cul de Sac went into syndication in 2007, but a rapid case of Parkinson's disease meant that in four years he was forced to end the strip. His Cul de Sac comic strip was collected by Andrews McMeel and a biography was published as The Art of Richard Thompson.