Cartoonist

A cartoonist is a visual artist who creates both the words and pictures for cartoons—single images—or comics, which tell stories through a sequence of images. Unlike a comics writer or a comics illustrator, a cartoonist handles both the literary and graphic sides of the work. Their output can appear in many forms: booklets, comic strips, comic books, editorial cartoons, graphic novels, manuals, gag cartoons, storyboards, posters, shirts, books, advertisements, greeting cards, magazines, newspapers, webcomics, and video game packaging.

Terminology

The craft of a cartoonist blends writing and drawing, making it an interdisciplinary practice. While every cartoonist can be called a comics illustrator, artist, or comic book artist, the reverse is not true—those titles refer only to the picture-making part of cartooning. Confusion can arise when illustrators and writers share tasks on a project.

Editorial cartoons

The history of cartooning includes early editorial cartoons. In 18th-century England, William Hogarth satirized politics and customs, giving rise to the term "Hogarthian" for such work.

Later, James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson developed the political cartoon further; Gillray, who lampooned King George III and other leaders, is often called the father of the political cartoon. In 1841, Punch magazine introduced the modern meaning of "cartoon" as a humorous illustration. Punch artist John Tenniel produced over two thousand cartoons over 50 years starting in 1850.

In the United States, Benjamin Franklin is credited with the first published cartoon, Join, or Die, which appeared in The Pennsylvania Gazette in 1754 and showed the colonies as snake segments. In the 19th century, Thomas Nast, working for Harper's Weekly, created lasting political symbols like the Republican elephant.

English comic literature

Britain had illustrated humorous newspapers as early as the 19th century, beginning with the short-lived The Glasgow Looking Glass in 1825. Punch became the most popular, coining the term "cartoon" for its humorous caricatures. Some of these cartoons appeared in sequences; the character Ally Sloper featured in the earliest serialized comic strip when his own weekly newspaper launched in 1884.

Comic strips

Comic strips reached wide audiences through newspaper syndicates. Calum MacKenzie, in a 1979 exhibition catalog, compared the difference between a cartoonist and an illustrator to that between a comedian and a comedy actor: the cartoonist delivers their own lines and takes full responsibility, while the illustrator can hide behind another's creation. Many strips were actually the work of two people, though only one signature appeared. For example, Frank Willard hired Ferd Johnson as an assistant on Moon Mullins shortly after its 1923 debut, but Johnson received no credit for decades.

The two traveled and drew the strip together. By its peak in the 1940s and 1950s, Moon Mullins ran in 350 newspapers. Johnson later said he had been drawing the strip alone for at least ten years before Willard's death in 1958. When Johnson’s name finally appeared and Willard’s was removed, 25 papers dropped the strip, showing how much the credited name mattered.