Can we just give Tom Toles the Pulitzer now?

My newspaper has been without an editorial cartoonist since the last round of layoffs, but there's no shortage of other people's cartoons we can put in the places where Lee Judge's work used to go. The problem -- besides the fact that none of these cartoons has a local angle to it, which is a real loss considering Mayor McCheese is running our city right now -- is that most editorial cartoons these days are unexceptional, stultifyingly obvious and so ideological as to be cartoonish in their outlook toward the world. Now, you'd think that not such a bad thing -- isn't the point to be cartoonish? -- but the very best cartoonists avoid this trap. The best cartoonists all know how to throw a wicked curveball.

Today the Star ran the above 11-day-old editorial cartoon (link) by Tom Toles, the veteran scribbler who now works at the Washington Post. For years he worked at Warren Buffett's Buffalo News while contributing to the New Republic which is where I was introduced to him. I think editorial cartoons hit their creative peak in the late 1980s, when Toles was just coming into his own and joining the likes of Jeff MacNelly, Doug Marlette, Pat Oliphant, Garry Trudeau and Berke Breathed, whose "Bloom County" comic strip was so good it waltzed in one year and stole the Pulitzer away from under the noses of the rest of the bunch. After Oliphant complained about that, Breathed created a whiny two-inch-high character in "Bloom County" based on him. Those were the days.

These guys weren't above drawing panels that made obvious points -- they were paid to produce something every day, after all -- but besides that high heat they all could throw a great curve. Of the group, however, MacNelly was clearly the best, head and shoulders above them all. And it wasn't just that his gentle Republican skepticism was attuned to my own outlook. In a field that depended on the predictability of reader habits, MacNelly refused to be pigeonholed. He loved surprising the reader, whether with a minimalist panel that made a wry observation that made you pause or a laugh-out-loud punchline that made you reach for your scissors.

MacNelly drew with an incredibly confident and distinctive hand. Ted Kennedy was always big as a bungalow in his cartoon, but the character's massive size wasn't the first thing you noticed. The first thing you noticed was that it was Ted Kennedy. MacNelly was unparalled at translating faces in the news into his own visual language so lucidly that you didn't need some stupid label sewn onto his coat that said "TEDDY" or something like that. You just knew.

Here's his insanely funny 1977 cartoon of a 1976 tax return that won him the 1978 Pulitzer (!). I went looking for other MacNelly cartoons that didn't involve a cigar-smoking bird and didn't find much I could grab online. The MacNelly website pulled its collection, though I don't know why. I doubt old editorial cartoons have much actual value anymore, probably for the same reason they had so much value at the time.

Like Toles and Doug Marlette, MacNelly (who died too young in 2000) had so many ideas that one panel a day couldn't satisfy him. So he created a strip as well, called "Shoe." To this day, whenever I am in a public restroom, I will occasionally remember one of the "Shoe" punchlines, just four words: "Wipe hands on pants." In addition, MacNelly would draw a color panel every week accompanying Dave Barry's syndicated humor column, which is harder than it sounds.

Anyway, back to Toles. What's so great about that Santa strip is the same thing great about MacNelly's caricatures -- no signage is necessary. Toles loves crowding the margins of his strip with doodles and at least one extra joke, so when he can achieve this kind of minimalist effect it really speaks to his mastery as a cartoonist. Forget about the lobbyists standing in line. Forget even about that perfect, perfect punchline in the lower-right corner (another thing I love about cartoonists is how they inspire and pay tribute to each other -- the tiny punchline was Oliphant's trademark and Toles adopted and made it his own).

No, forget about all that. The girl is on Santa's lap. Santa has the hat of Uncle Sam. Seven words are spoken. That's it. That's your classic right there. Toles could have erased the word "Bailouts" and gotten rid of the bald guys and it would've had the same effect. Of course, it wouldn't have been a Toles cartoon, then. Anyway, you had to have that punchline. And oddly enough, the cartoon is even more timely right now, the day after Thanksgiving, three days after Citigroup, than it was on the 17th.

Admittedly, the field of editorial cartoonists gets smaller each year, but journalism's top award still has a category for them. And between the Santa one and his Nov. 5 cartoon and probably a couple of others that Mrs. TVB took off the refrigerator door ... that's your Pulitzer right there, far as I'm concerned.

Comments

[SpinDozer]

Absolutely right, Aaron. Toles is the best.

[Clif]

I've always believed that political cartoons are more widely read and remembered than written editorials. It's similar to the relationship between Jay Leno's jokes and talking heads TV news commentaries. There are a large number of people who actually listen to Leno.

I think TV news could enhance their relevance and impact by setting aside a daily segment for review of political cartoons from across the nation. I envision that this cartoon review would be accompanied by insightful commentary similar in manner to your comments made for the above Santa Claus cartoon. (There's probably a copyright problem with my proposal.)

[tabarnhart]

i've loved Toles for years, but even the best sometimes don't get it exactly right:

the Oregonian's Jack Ohman has been one of the very best for years. we've been lucky to have him.