'Freep' Site Posts Mike Thompson's Top 2007 Animations

By: Dave Astor It's not unusual for newspapers to rerun their staff editorial cartoonist's top 10 print cartoons at the end of the year. The Detroit Free Press is posting Mike Thompson's top 10 ANIMATED cartoons.

The Copley News Service-syndicated Thompson was a 2006 and 2007 Pulitzer Prize finalist whose animated political cartoons helped him get this year's finalist nod. (The winner, Walt Handelsman, and the other finalist, Nick Anderson, also do animations.)

Some of Thompson's top 10 animations cover politicians like George W. Bush and John Conyers. Others were inspired by things like the holidays and TV commercials.

"While I love doing the longer animations that can take up to one month to create, my focus this year was on breaking news animations -- short animations created on a tight deadline for publication the next day," said Thompson, when contacted this afternoon by E&P. "I work for a daily paper, after all."

The Free Press staffer added that he doesn't share "the pessimists' view that print is dead," but said Web readership "continues to explode and editorial cartoonists should be willing to stretch themselves to attract readers to their paper's site."

Thompson's best 2007 animations can be seen here: http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=BLOG24&template=best.