About Tom Gibson & Gary Varvel
 Gary Varvel is an award-winning editorial cartoonist for The Indianapolis Star.
Varvel's work is syndicated internationally through Creators Syndicate and has been appeared in Newsweek, Time magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, Washington Times, National Review, Sports Illustrated and has been featured on CNN and Fox News.
Varvel has won numerous cartooning awards in Indiana including the Society of Professional Journalists' Award for Best Editorial Cartoon eleven times, and the Hoosier State Press Association Award for Best Editorial Cartoonist ten times. In 2005, Varvel placed second in the "Best of Gannett" award for Best Editorial Cartoonist within the Gannett newspaper chain.
Varvel lives in Brownsburg, Indiana with Carol, his wife of 30 years. They have three adult children. He is a 1975 graduate of Danville High School in Danville, Indiana and received his art training at John Herron School of Art which is part of Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis.
Varvel is an adult Sunday School teacher and the former chairman of the deacon board at Bethesda Baptist Church and is a part-time high school art teacher at Bethesda Christian School.
 Residing in Lebanon, Indiana, with his wife, Sandy and 2 children, Andrew and Samantha, Tom is a local business owner. Describing growing up in his hometown of 12,000 residents, it was the ideal American “small town” of the 1960s. There were dozens of other neighborhood kids who constantly played outside until dark, riding their bicycles everywhere, visiting the public swimming pool every afternoon in the summer, working as a paperboy delivering the local newspaper, building snow forts & snowball fights in the winter. It was the ideal place to grow up.
After graduating from high school, Tom spent 4 years in the U.S. military, living in Italy for almost 3 years where he travelled extensively throughout Italy and Europe. Returning back home he attended and graduated from Butler University earning a B.S. Degree in Radio/Television. While a Senior at Butler, Tom was hired by WIBC radio station to produce the #1 rated morning show in the Indianapolis market, the 10th highest rated morning show in the U.S., providing the creative ideas, scheduling guests and handling the radio station’s promotions.
While growing up Tom’s sense of humor was strongly influenced by Mad magazine, Warner Brothers cartoons, the Three Stooges, Laugh-In and later Steve Martin, Robin Williams and the early years of Saturday Night Live. These influences contributed to bending his already warped sense of humor that is evident in his Off Center comic panels. As a new comic panel, Tom’s goals for Off Center is that it will be syndicated worldwide, to other planets throughout the galaxy and become the official comic of the International Space Station.
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