Killed Cartoons: Casualties from the war on free expression

Killed Cartoons: Casualties from the war on free expression by David Wallis 

If editorial cartoonists are the court jesters of journalism, using humor to speak truth to power, Killed Cartoons demonstrates that the monarchs who run newspapers have grown increasingly unwilling to listen. The collection rescues dozens of cartoons rejected for politics, offending advertisers, or just plain effrontery. Their artists include Pulitzer Prize winners Garry Trudeau, Doug Marlette, Paul Conrad, Paul Szep, and Mike Luckovich; renowned illustrators Al Hirschfeld and Edward Sorel; and young turks Ted Rall and Keith Knight and comics creators Carol Lay, Ward Sutton, and Peter Kuper. Sometimes the editorial vetoes are understandable, such as the I^Los Angeles Times spiking Conrad's rendition of a Republican elephant humping a Democrat donkey, but just as often what has been squelched is surprisingly benign. Historical examples include a 1952 Herblock cartoon excoriating McCarthy and Nixon and a 1968 Norman Rockwell illustration for Look, but "old" in this book means 1982 or 1991. Most selections are recent, attesting to increased media cowardice and irrelevance. But not all cartoon killers are daily papers or otherwise corporate-owned. A handful have been such purportedly open-minded publications as the Nation, the New Yorker, and Mother Jones. Gordon Flagg

Soft Cover

Published 2007