Drawn

After a bookless decade, Mike Luckovich is back with a great new compilation of editorial cartoons. The book, Four More Wars, focuses mainly on the tragicomic years of the Bush presidency and, because it’s been so long in the making, the editors were able to be very selective about which cartoons were included – only printing very best stuff – which results in a very high laugh-to-page ratio.

I’m not even going to try to hide the fact that I’m a huge fan of Luckovich’s and I think this book is brilliant. Luckovich’s editorial process is fairly well-documented, so I thought I’d ask him a few questions that focused on illustration.

Q: Your last compilation was ten years ago. Why so long?
ML: The reason I’ve taken so long to do another book is because i’m a big
procrastinator.

Q: Can you tell us a bit about your process? What tools do you use, etc.?

ML: I mainly use Rotring Rapidiograph pens of various thicknesses. I don’t use pencil
when I draw, I go directly to inking, so I use a lot of whiteout, but I
draw quickly. For black areas, I use a foam marker called le plume, which
mimics brush strokes.

I wait until around 3pm to start thinking of ideas. Like I said, I’m a
procrastinator. At 3:15 or so, I show my ideas to a guy in the office named
Pete. He usually shoots them down, so that gets my adrenaline going and
I’ll come up with a couple more that I bring to Pete until he finds one he
likes.

Q: Which other editorial cartoonists do you follow?
ML: I see other people’s stuff when I’m reading a newspaper or magazine, but
I usually don’t go and look for it. the exception is This Modern World, by
Tom Tomorrow (AKA Dan Perkins). I look for his stuff, because it surprises
me.

Q: Which illustrators had a big influence on you and your style? For
instance, your Powells and Rumsfelds remind me a bit of Mort
Drucker and could that be a bit of Steve Bell in your George W?

ML: You’re right about my caricatures in general. Mort Drucker was a big
influence. when I draw a caricature, I find a picture on the Internet that
I like of the person I’m going to draw and draw from that. Again, I don’t
pencil anything in first, so I have to be careful not to screw up. Bush’s
caricature has developed as I’ve come to view him with greater and greater
disdain. I now draw him as a minute, big-eared idiot.

******

For more on Luckovich and his process, check out this interview and more at his Wikipedia page.

If I had read the Wikipedia article first, I would have learned that Drucker and Jeff MacNelly are well known to be two of his biggest influences; but instead, I wasted a question. Damn.

Mike Luckovich won the Pullitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1995 and 2006 as well as the National Cartoonist Society Editorial Cartoon Award for 2001. He Rocks.

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