Michael Edward Luckovich (born January 28, 1960) is an editorial cartoonist who has worked for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution since 1989. His cartoons typically present liberal viewpoints. He is the 2005 winner of the Reuben, the National Cartoonists Society's top award for cartoonist of the year, and is the recipient of two Pulitzer Prizes.
Early life
He was born in Seattle, Washington, attended Bishop Kelly High School in Boise, Idaho before transferring to Sheldon High School in Eugene, Oregon and graduated in 1982 from the University of Washington with a degree in political science. For two years after graduation, Luckovich sold cartoons on a freelance basis to the Everett, Washington newspaper while working as an insurance salesman.
Career
Luckovich began his career with The Greenville News in South Carolina in 1984, and moved to the New Orleans Times-Picayune later that year. In 1989 he began his career with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that continues to today.
In 2000, Luckovich started his comic-strip "SuperZeros", about a pair of dim-witted superheros. It was distributed by Tribune Media Service and lasted a year.
In a September 2001 interview, Luckovich commented on his style of cartooning and how it changed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks:
- Normally with my cartoons I try to use humor to get across my point. After Sept. 11th, you just couldn't use humor. The tragedy was so enormous, you couldn't be funny. It's almost like you have to come up with cartoons using a different part of your brain. I was just trying to come up with images that expressed the emotions that I was feeling and tried to focus in on different aspects of the tragedy that I thought were important.
In that same interview Luckovich cited Jeff MacNelly as his "biggest editorial cartoonist role model" and Mort Drucker as his "first hero."
Awards
While at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Mike Luckovich won the following awards. He won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize and 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning. He also received the National Cartoonists Society Editorial Cartoon Award for 2001, with additional nominations for 1998 and 2002. He won the 2008 National Journalism Awards, for Editorial Cartooning.
Controversy
Luckovich attracted a great deal of backlash when the newspaper cartoonist drew a cartoon depicting Michael Jackson's death one day after his death. The comic strip illustrated the leaders Heaven and Hell flipping a coin to see where the late King of Pop would be after his demise. Many people, including Jackson's family, friends, and fans deemed the cartoon offensive.[1]
External links and references
- 1995 biography from the Pulitzer Prize website
- Drawing Attention, a September 1995 article from Columns Magazine, hosted on the University of Washington website
- Bio in New Georgia Encyclopedia
- 2001 interview from JournalismJobs.com, a website "operated in partnership with Columbia Journalism Review"
- NCS Awards
