Fischetti was born in Brooklyn, New York, where his Italian father was a barber. As a teenager during the Great Depression, he worked various jobs, including one at a hotel where Rollin Kirby, one of his influences, lived. At 19, Fischetti began studying commercial art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he continued his education for three years. Then he moved to California, where he worked for the Walt Disney Studio in Burbank. Fischetti's job with Disney lasted only nine months, due to the work's strain on his eyes. While pursuing freelance work, Fischetti began his career as an editorial cartoonist at the Chicago Sun in 1941. Some of his freelance work appeared in such publications as Esquire, The Saturday Evening Post and Collier's. Fischetti served 1942–1945 as a radio operator and army sergeant during World War II. In 1945 he joined the staff of Stars & Stripes as a war-time artist with Dick Wingert and other war-time cartoonists. From 1951 to 1962 Fischetti was a syndicated cartoonist for the Newspaper Enterprise Association. He then joined the New YorkHerald Tribune, departing in 1967 when that paper folded. In 1967 he moved back to Chicago and joined the Chicago Daily News, which ceased publication in 1978. He joined Bill Mauldin at the Chicago Sun-Times two years before he died of a heart attack in 1980. He published a compilation of his cartoons Zinga Zinga Za in 1973.
Style
Fischetti, like many of his colleagues, favored heavy use of crayon, pencil or ink brush in a vertical format at the beginning of his post-war career. By the 1960s, as his style matured, he began using a horizontal pen-and-ink style that betrayed his roots in animation, Fischetti satirized politics, fads and social issues.
The Fischetti Editorial Cartoon Competition Award, usually referred to as the John Fischetti Award, is given annually to a staff, syndicated or regularly published professional cartoonist for cartoons on current social and political subjects published in a daily or weekly newspaper or regularly published periodical in the United States. They are administered by the Journalism Department of Columbia College Chicago.
