Pat Oliphant

It's going to be an imperfect '10, which means it will be perfect for cartoonists, who resolutely rang in the new year by connecting the dots and tossing metaphorical bombs at terrorists, airport checkpoints and national insecurity. Pat Oliphant was an uninvited second-guesser of the party in power. Bruce Beattie took a cheap shot at California's not-so-golden fiscal state. And Signe Wilkinson reminded us that the funny one-liners are still serious business to the fundamentally humorless with short fuses and long memories.

Wow, slow news year, unless you count war, protest, revolution, famine, floods, droughts, tsunamis, all manner of meltdowns, sexting, tweeting, the GOP, OBL, OWS, DSK at the IMF and OMG! Pat Oliphant's circular firing squad seems the perfect political metaphor for 2011. Jack Ohman bid Osama bin Laden a not-so-fond farewell. Clay Bennett's clever pyramid scheme captured what's at stake in the Arab world. My presidential high-wire act fizzled. Adam Zyglis wondered if what happened there could happen here.

Mordant commentary on the first year of the Bush Administration from two Pulitzer Prize-winners. Australian-born Pat Oliphant probably is the most influential political cartoonist working in America today. His simplified drawing style and use of a tiny character (Punk, the penguin) who offers a second punch line to his cartoons have been widely imitated, but not improved.

It's going to be an imperfect '10, which means it will be perfect for cartoonists, who resolutely rang in the new year by connecting the dots and tossing metaphorical bombs at terrorists, airport checkpoints and national insecurity. Pat Oliphant was an uninvited second-guesser of the party in power. Bruce Beattie took a cheap shot at California's not-so-golden fiscal state. And Signe Wilkinson reminded us that the funny one-liners are still serious business to the fundamentally humorless with short fuses and long memories.

For cartoonists of a certain age, it used to be so simple. There was us, and there were the pigs: crony capitalists, clueless chauvinists and head-banging cops. For the capitalists, like Pat Oliphant's sloppy bankers or John Sherffius' morphing Wall Street icon, the symbol is making a comeback, not that it ever went away. As Steve Breen demonstrates, bacon-bearing politicos have been the place-holders for the unflattering visual sobriquet for years. Pork chops anyone? -- Joel Pett

And the lifetime achievement award goes to ... Pat Oliphant. Among cartoonists, there is really only Oliphant and everyone else. No one else could capture that dreary soup-kitchen line and its foreboding background with such sad, stark clarity. Or as antiseptic an operating room invaded by such ridiculously villainous blaggards. And only Oliphant's unique combination of whimsy and genius could elevate the Blago-Gandhi gag to Zen perfection.

Wow, slow news year, unless you count war, protest, revolution, famine, floods, droughts, tsunamis, all manner of meltdowns, sexting, tweeting, the GOP, OBL, OWS, DSK at the IMF and OMG! Pat Oliphant's circular firing squad seems the perfect political metaphor for 2011. Jack Ohman bid Osama bin Laden a not-so-fond farewell. Clay Bennett's clever pyramid scheme captured what's at stake in the Arab world. My presidential high-wire act fizzled. Adam Zyglis wondered if what happened there could happen here.

Jim Davis, creator of fat cat Garfield, has been named Cartoonist of the Year for 1990 by the National Cartoonists Society. After six years as a nominee, Davis of Albany, Ind., won the Reuben--the cartoon world's equivalent of the Oscar--for the cynical, overfed Garfield, featured on television specials and many novelty items as well as newspaper cartoons.

Australian-born Pat Oliphant ranks as the wittiest political cartoonist working in the United States today. Paul Conrad is more dramatic; Herb Block ("Herblock") more humane; Mike Peters more broadly comic. Oliphant's caricatures sting with the excruciating delicacy of a needle hidden in chinchilla fur.

Pat Oliphant, who has been called the country's wittiest political cartoonist as well as the most influential, has taken aim at six Presidents during the past quarter-century. All six are represented in a traveling exhibit of his working sketches, finished cartoons, posters and sculptures that opens next week at the Fullerton Museum Center. "Oliphant's Presidents: 25 Years of Caricature by Pat Oliphant," features Richard M.

After painstaking deliberation, deep thought and much eraser gnawing (cynics might say dithering), every cartoonist in the free world weighed in on the Afghanistan war escalation last week. But it's one thing to draw up a plan, quite another to execute it. Pat Oliphant delivered a spectacularly expansive and daunting mountainous quagmire-scape. Steve Sack's grim reaper counted down to an arbitrary flag-draped deadline. And Adam Zyglis re-raised a wartime classic, planting the president's buildup banner on some pretty shaky ground.

War. Poverty. Inequality. In the annals of advocacy journalism or, indeed, human history, could there be a more intractable triad of stubborn antagonists? Steve Sack evokes seasonal ghoulishness as he lends context to Uncle Sam's tangled position in Afghanistan. Steve Breen's poignant cartoon balloons overflow with sadness. And Pat Oliphant's presidential protestations fall hard in the Big Easy. War, poverty, inequality -- we all pay the price. Check, please. -- Joel Pett Joel Pett is the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky.

For cartoonists of a certain age, it used to be so simple. There was us, and there were the pigs: crony capitalists, clueless chauvinists and head-banging cops. For the capitalists, like Pat Oliphant's sloppy bankers or John Sherffius' morphing Wall Street icon, the symbol is making a comeback, not that it ever went away. As Steve Breen demonstrates, bacon-bearing politicos have been the place-holders for the unflattering visual sobriquet for years. Pork chops anyone? -- Joel Pett

And the lifetime achievement award goes to ... Pat Oliphant. Among cartoonists, there is really only Oliphant and everyone else. No one else could capture that dreary soup-kitchen line and its foreboding background with such sad, stark clarity. Or as antiseptic an operating room invaded by such ridiculously villainous blaggards. And only Oliphant's unique combination of whimsy and genius could elevate the Blago-Gandhi gag to Zen perfection.

Pat Oliphant, who has been called the country's wittiest political cartoonist as well as the most influential, has taken aim at six Presidents during the past quarter-century. All six are represented in a traveling exhibit of his working sketches, finished cartoons, posters and sculptures that opens next week at the Fullerton Museum Center. "Oliphant's Presidents: 25 Years of Caricature by Pat Oliphant," features Richard M.

Jim Davis, creator of fat cat Garfield, has been named Cartoonist of the Year for 1990 by the National Cartoonists Society. After six years as a nominee, Davis of Albany, Ind., won the Reuben--the cartoon world's equivalent of the Oscar--for the cynical, overfed Garfield, featured on television specials and many novelty items as well as newspaper cartoons.

Today, some of the most honored political cartoonists in the United States will devote their drawings--and their holiday--to a special project designed to call attention to the plight of the nation's homeless people. Dozens of artists across the country have agreed to draw cartoons on the subject.

After painstaking deliberation, deep thought and much eraser gnawing (cynics might say dithering), every cartoonist in the free world weighed in on the Afghanistan war escalation last week. But it's one thing to draw up a plan, quite another to execute it. Pat Oliphant delivered a spectacularly expansive and daunting mountainous quagmire-scape. Steve Sack's grim reaper counted down to an arbitrary flag-draped deadline. And Adam Zyglis re-raised a wartime classic, planting the president's buildup banner on some pretty shaky ground.

Australian-born Pat Oliphant ranks as the wittiest political cartoonist working in the United States today. Paul Conrad is more dramatic; Herb Block ("Herblock") more humane; Mike Peters more broadly comic. Oliphant's caricatures sting with the excruciating delicacy of a needle hidden in chinchilla fur.

Mordant commentary on the first year of the Bush Administration from two Pulitzer Prize-winners. Australian-born Pat Oliphant probably is the most influential political cartoonist working in America today. His simplified drawing style and use of a tiny character (Punk, the penguin) who offers a second punch line to his cartoons have been widely imitated, but not improved.