I recently learned about an award that is given out to people who at one point in their lives pursued cartooning. The National Cartoonists Society has an award called the ACE award, or “Amateur Cartoonist Extraordinary”. The last recipient won in 1998, but recipients have been Al Roker and Hugh Hefner. But what piqued my interest was that there were a few ACEs that became famous is comedy. Carol Burnett, Jackie Gleason, and stand-up Denis Leary all at one point in their lives aspired to be cartoonists.

You don’t always hear about the alternative futures that celebrity’s envisioned for themselves before they achieved fame in other fields. Before Al Roker became the famous national weatherman, he double majored in journalism and graphic design. In an interview, Al Roker was asked what was a defining moment in his career as a journalist, and one of his top two moments was interviewing creator of the comic serial “Peanuts”, Charles M. Schulz.

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