Dan Bolles

When Jordan Klepper and Steve Waltien were aspiring young comedians in the early-2000s Chicago improv scene, they scored a string of gigs that uniquely prepared them for their later careers. The two met as cast members on “World News Tonight,” a weekly political satire show at ImprovOlympic, now the iO Theater. Their off-the-cuff riffs on the news led to joining the fake late-night iO talk show “The Late Night Late Show” as rotating hosts.

Vermont punches above its weight in all sorts of things: craft beer, cheese, lefty politics, exceptionalism. But there’s one arena in which the state shines bright but has yet to fully receive its flowers: cartooning. We know of no stats to back this up, but we’d wager Vermont boasts a higher concentration of cartoonists per capita than anywhere else in the country — maybe anywhere, period.

Stephen R. Bissette really didn’t want to be Vermont’s cartoonist laureate. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel worthy. In a career spanning more than half a century, the award-winning Windsor resident has become one of the most respected and influential comic book artists in the field.