Minor Thoughts on the Sale of the Kubert School

I haven't seen this make the rounds on comic book news sites yet, but it was announced this week that The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art has been "acquired" by County College of Morris. The Kubert School was founded, of course, by Joe Kubert back in 1976 and has been pretty instrumental in a number of comic artists' careers. A very partial list of alumni includes Tim Truman, Rick Veitch, Jan Duursema, Eric Shanower, Tom Mandrake, Amanda Conner, and Scott Kolins. The school not only has taught drawing and storytelling skills, but includes courses on portfolio presentation and business skills particular to acting as a freelancer for publishers like Marvel and DC. It's been a school very much focused on getting people ready not just for a career in art, but specifically for a career in comic books.

I haven't heard/seen of any specific financial issues the Kubert School may have been having that they'd be interested in selling the school to a larger institution, but I have to presume that's a large part of the rationale behind this. Joe Kubert himself passed away in 2012, and Jaclyn & Anthony Marques bought it in 2019 and have been running it respectively as Director and President since then. As I'll get into shortly, they've almost certainly been dealing with some difficult headwinds, vastly different than anything Joe himself had to deal with.

Back in 1976, there was essentially nothing like it. Of course, art instruction generally goes back centuries and the Federal School of Applied Cartooning's corresponedence courses (the folks behind those "Draw Tippy" ads) date to 1914. But the Kubert School was a "real" school -- having an actual campus and a formal degree program recognized by the state. Not to mention that it was run by working professionals like Kubert himself.

Over the past two or three decades, though, comic instruction has become more mainstream. Beginning in the late 1990s/early 2000s, at some colleges, you could design your own degree program that focused on comic art. And in the decades since then, more and more colleges turned that into a standardized program. While this offered a great deal more opportunity for aspiring cartoonists, it also made for some stiff competition for the Kubert School.

Beyond just being options for people outside of New Jersey, these other programs offered other benefits. There were often more scholarship opportunities, and the on-campus experience was broader just by virtue of having more facilities for extra-curriculars like sports. Furthermore, going to a less-focused school meant that you had a fall-back position if you decided you ultimately didn't want to pursue comics after all; you could stay in the same school and simply transfer into a program for journalism or electrical engineering or business management.

All of which is to say that I'm not surprised the Kubert School has been bought by another school. It's frankly kind of impressive that it independently continued to do as well as it has for as long as it has. I hope that County College opts to keep the Kubert name attached to the school indefinitely, letting it keep its own identity, and it doesn't just become County's art program. (I haven't heard anything on that point one way or another.) The Kubert School has moved a couple times over the years, most recently in May 2025. While some previous moves were a matter of trying to get into better facilities, I have the suspicion that the most recent one had as much to do with finances (Rent? Taxes?) as anything else. But a big move followed by a outright sale a year later suggests that they weren't doing optimally, And if that has been the case, I am glad that County has helped to potentially extend the lifespan and legacy of what Joe started building fifty years ago.

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