Rick Altergott


Rick Altergott is an American alternative cartoonist and illustrator. Altergott is best known for Doofus, a long-running low-brow, scatological series of strips which chronicle the misadventures of two small-town weirdos, Doofus and Henry Hotchkiss.

Life and career

Altergott got his BFA in film from the Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, New York. He met and befriended fellow cartoonist and Pratt student Daniel Clowes during his college years. During this period, Altergott and Clowes formed the small press comics publisher Look Mom Comics.
Altergott's first published work was in the early 1980s, but he didn't really settle into the comics world until late in the decade, when he contributed regularly to the humor magazine Cracked. Throughout the 1990s Altergott published the small-press comic Douche Bag Dougan Altergott's work has also appeared in Fantagraphics' Duplex Planet Illustrated and Hate, where Doofus was a long-running backup feature repeatedly promoted by Peter Bagge.
Altergott resides in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, with his wife, fellow cartoonist Ariel Bordeaux. Their collaborative comic book Raisin Pie was published by Fantagraphics Books from 2002 to 2007.
In September 2006, Altergott released a serious biblical minicomic based on the life of Saint Matthias. In 2008, Altergott and Bordeaux contributed to the anthology Kramers Ergot 7.
In April 2014, Altergott began work on a weekly comic for Vice named "Flowertown USA.". The series lasted through the year.
Altergott lived in Chicago for a period when Daniel Clowes also lived there. Due to the similarities in their drawing styles, some observers have suggested that Altergott is a pseudonym for Clowes, allowing Clowes to draw in a different, Wally Wood-inspired style. This is untrue.
Altergott is also friends with Jaime Hernandez.

Quotes

Daniel Clowes:
Gilbert Hernandez: