Sometimes It's Hard to Find the 'Funny Part'

By: Dave Astor Within a week of doing a memorable anti-Iraq War cartoon, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Mike Luckovich had the support that eludes President Bush. More than 83% of 7,193 people casting votes on AJC.com praised the Oct. 26 drawing, in which Luckovich marked the tragic milestone of 2,000 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq by hand-writing their names in a big "WHY?"

Luckovich, who says this might be the most reaction he's ever gotten to a cartoon, wanted to honor the fallen soldiers while questioning the war that caused their deaths. He spent more than 12 hours inking in their names, which became readable when the Journal-Constitution devoted a half-page to it.

Can a cartoon like that influence public opinion? "I had this maybe naive hope that it would make people think and focus on what's going on," replies Luckovich, who says the United States didn't need to invade Iraq. "The reasons why we did it all proved false. It just sickens me. There are young men and women being sacrificed for no-one-knows-what for."

His editorial page editor, Cynthia Tucker, tells E&P that Luckovich made a "powerful" statement. "It wasn't really a cartoon or illustration. I thought it was an editorial ? and a very, very effective one," adds Tucker, who's also a columnist for the newspaper and Universal Press Syndicate.

Luckovich, 45, whose work runs in 150 newspapers via Creators Syndicate, doubts Bush will change his mind about the war. But the 1995 Pulitzer Prize winner hopes a critical mass of American citizens and members of Congress will "become angry enough" to force the president to start withdrawing troops.

Given that Bush and other Republicans control the federal government, Luckovich has aimed most of his barbs at them in recent years. "The Democrats are sort of bit players in this whole thing," says the cartoonist, who took his share of swipes at President Clinton in the 1990s.

Criticizing Bush, who Luckovich calls "out of the mainstream" and says is more interested in helping "cronies" than the American people, does have its drawbacks. He says his best cartoons tend to be both hard-hitting and humorous, but Bush gets him so mad that he often has to work harder ? and closer to deadline ? to get the funny part right.

Luckovich enjoys the adrenaline rush of just beating a deadline, and says this meshes with his "loose" style of art. He achieves this look by skipping the preliminary pencil sketches many cartoonists do. Instead, Luckovich draws quickly with a pen, using correction fluid as an "eraser."

Another reason for his anger with Bush is the president's response to Hurricane Katrina. "I have friends in New Orleans," says Luckovich, who spent four years at The Times-Picayune before joining the Journal-Constitution in 1989. "It's a city I care a lot about. It was very sad to watch folks suffer needlessly when a little competence would have gone a long way." For several weeks after Katrina, a family from the Big Easy lived with the Luckovichs (the cartoonist and his wife have four children).

Whether the news is about a hurricane, war, or other topics, the cartoonist keeps up with it by reading media outlets such as the Journal-Constitution and The New York Times, Slate.com and Salon.com, and the Americablog, Daily Kos, and Talking Points Memo blogs.

Luckovich launched his own blog in October. For more on that and other blogs by syndicated creators, see the story in this issue on page 51.