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Since I seem to have become a vague clearinghouse for comics-related news, and I’m getting this e-mailed to me left and right, I should probably say something about the untimely death of Doug Marlette. Marlette was the artist behind Kudzu, which I was always kind of ambivalent-to-negative about, but he was also a Pulitzer-prize winning editorial cartoonist; though I often didn’t agree with the points he made in his political cartoons, I found their art and attitude to be pleasingly nasty in the best possible way that a political cartoon can be. He died aged 57 in a car crash on a rainy road, which is tragic no matter what you think of his cartoons. Every comic artist deserves to go out at a ripe old age at their drawing board like Johnny Hart.

In memoriam, I offer a link to the thing Kudzu did that I perversely liked best: jokes about the difference between varying Protestant denominations. Find me one other nationally syndicated cartoonist ready to make Episcopalian jokes, hun? I also am eternally grateful for him for a cartoon he did a few years ago: I didn’t like all that much, but it did allow me to set up what may have been my most offensive Family Circus joke ever.