Various news sources are reporting that editorial cartoonist Doug Marlette, also known for his ongoing comic strip Kudzu, was killed in a car accident this morning:
Born in Greensboro, Marlette began drawing political cartoons for The Charlotte Observer in 1972.
He won the Pulitzer in 1988 for his editorial cartooning in both Charlotte and at the Atlanta Constitution, which he had joined the year before.
He said at the time that his biting approach could be traced in part to “a grandmother bayoneted by a guardsman during a mill strike in the Carolinas. There are some rebellious genes floating around in me.”
He also had worked at New York Newsday and the Tallahassee (Fla.) Democrat.
“Cartoons are windows into the human condition,” he said when he joined the Tulsa World last year. “It’s about life.”
The Tulsa World has a slideshow of Marlette’s cartoons up, and you can view Marlette’s Web site by clicking here.
Marlette was one of my favorite editorial cartoonists and I shall miss his work very much. My sincere condolences to his family and friends.
July 10th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
I’m with you. Marlette was the first editorial cartoonist whose work I recognized, and I was a big Kudzu fan as a kid.
July 10th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
“Those who have attacked my work, whether on the right, the left, Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, or Muslim all see satirical irreverence as hostility and hate. In a democracy, scathing criticism is not necessarily hatred. Just because it’s not worship, is it hate? Just because you’re not an Islamophile, does that make you an Islamophobe?”
from “Cartoon Fatwas” by Doug Marlette
Why do so many sensible people die young? R.I.P.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
He always got the funny side of religion in Kudzu. This is just sad news.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
Wow. I didn’t always agree with his stuff, but I LOVED his style. One of the first comic collections I ever bought was a book of his editorial cartoons, probably about the second term of the Reagan Administration into the first term of Bush. I remember redrawing his caricatures over and over at the time. This is sad news, indeed.