John Allen was an American cartoonist and gag writer. He was born in South West Virginia in the middle of the baby boom, and graduated from Roanoke College with a degree in English. He was a book preservator at the UVA library when he started out writing gags for cartoonists. His work appeared in publications like The Saturday Evening Post, Science Digest and The Wall Street Journal.
Allen later became a regular contributor to syndicated comic features like Bob Thaves's 'Frank & Ernest', Bill Hoest's 'The Lockhorns' and Tom Wilson's 'Ziggy'. His own cartoons have appeared in The New Breed, Punchline and C'Ville Weekly, for which he produced a weekly feature called 'Undissolved Mysteries'. He is the creator of the syndicated family strip 'Nest Heads', syndicated through Creators Syndicate. The strip was concluded on 31 July 2020. Allen passed away from complications from brain cancer a couple of months later, on 20 September 2020.
