Annual Convention

Annual Convention October 5-8

The AAEC and Association of Canadian Cartoonists will be joining with the Cartoon Art Museum in San Franscisco for a 3-day celebration of editorial art and political cartoonists, October 5-8, 2023.

Online registration is now open!


Remembering Tony Auth

Signe Wilkinson recently posted a remembrance of fellow Philly cartoonist Tony Auth, using the occasion of the 10th anniversary of his retirement to note what the city — and newspapers in general — have lost over the years. She also recalls the impact Auth had on other cartoonists and the news industry. “Before he became […]

Ward Sutton named 2022 Berryman Award Winner

Boston Globe cartoonist Ward Sutton has won the 2022 Clifford K. and James T. Berryman Award for Editorial Cartoons, according to the National Press Foundation. “Ward Sutton’s cartoons all illustrate the power of direct impact, but the more you look at them, the more you see their nuance and complexity,” NPF’s judges said.  They called […]

2022 Ink Bottle Award goes to Steve Sack

Cartoonist extraordinaire Steve Sack is this year’s recipient of the Ink Bottle Award from the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. The award is presented by the AAEC to individuals or groups for dedication to the spirit of the profession and significant contribution to the art of editorial cartooning. Sack, the long-time staff cartoonist for the […]

This Saturday, the AAEC presents “Bill Mauldin: If It’s Big, Hit It.”

This Saturday, Oct. 8, the AAEC is proud to present a free showing of the 2021 documentary on cartoonist Bill Mauldin: “If It’s Big, Hit It.” This feature-length film on one of the most important political cartoonists of the 20th century will be part of the CXC Festival in Columbus, Ohio, from 1-3 pm in […]

See you at CXC next week!

The final schedule for Cartoon Crossroads Columbus 2022 is now online, with locations and floor maps. The AAEC will be teaming up with the CXC Festival once again for their annual convention. In addition to “A Night with Keith Knight,” the AAEC is sponsoring panels on “Do Awards Still Matter?” with Clay Jones, Signe Wilkinson, […]

2022 Locher Award Winner Announced

A big congratulations to cartoonist Masha Zhdanova (@mashazart), this year’s winner of the John Locher Memorial Award. The jury noted “her short comics lend insight into authoritarianism and provide intimate viewpoints from the war in Ukraine.” Congrats too to Alexandra Bowman (@scripta_bene) for being named Runner-up for the editorial cartoonist award. Bowman is a recent […]

Preliminary AAEC Convention Schedule is Here

Hello everyone! We hope you’re doing well and staying safe in another nutty summer. The AAEC has been working closely with CXC on this fall’s gathering in Ohio, and we now have a preliminary schedule for our convention. As we hinted at earlier, we’re going with a slow rollout this year as we come out […]

The Green Eyeshade Abides

State and regional journalism awards — especially for niche categories like editorial cartooning — have become increasingly rare over the years as the Great Contraction for newspapers continued through the second decade of the 21st century. So it’s always nice to see the Southern Chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists hand out their annual […]

Stegelin On Cartooning

Cartoonist Steve Stegelin is celebrating these days: First as part of the 25th anniversary of his alt-weekly, the Charleston City Paper, and second with a recent Second Place win in the AAN Awards. In interviews with the newspaper, the political cartoonist picks some of his favorite published pieces over the last two decades, and talks […]

Alt-weekly Awards Announced

Congratulations to editorial cartoonists Tim Newcomb, Steve Stegelin and Robert Ariail—this year’s winners of the Cartooning Award from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia (AAN). First place went to Seven Days‘ Tim Newcomb, who the judge’s cited for his “newsy and relevant angle to geographic region and a wider audience.” Second and Third place went to […]

CALL FOR ENTRIES: The 2022 Rex Babin Memorial Award

SACRAMENTO, CA — The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists has long championed those cartoonists who work for small and local newspapers, and once again in 2022 the AAEC is looking for the best in political cartooning. Named after the late Pulitzer Prize-nominated cartoonist, The Rex Babin Memorial Award for Excellence in Local Cartooning focuses on […]

Keeping R.C. Harvey’s Legacy Alive

Cartoonist and comics historian R.C. Harvey was a prolific writer, and left behind a treasure trove of material. The following was posted by Bob’s friend Jeremy Lambros over on facebook, and we’re passing along his requests: “We have lost one of the most unique and lively voices in comics and cartooning. R.C. Harvey passed away […]

Remembering RC Harvey

Word broke last week of the untimely passing of Robert C. Harvey. Bob was a prolific cartoon historian and critic who understood cartoonists because he had worked as one early in his career — drawing gag cartoons for girly magazines — before turning his passion and knowledge of the industry into a 40+ career as […]

Talking with Cartoonists x3

Three pulitzer prize-winning cartoonists sat down for interviews recently and looked back at their careers, the state of political discourse in America, the Iraq War, and the dumpster fire that is the Republican party. David Horsey notes how the Jan. 6 Committee has made it easer to talk about Trump’s crimes: https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/we-cannot-shy-away-from-hard-facts-about-trumps-betrayal/ Jim Morin talks […]

Daily Cartoon Update

Some of you may have noticed the “Today’s Cartoon” feed has disappeared from our website. Unfortunately, the old software that handled our member’s cartoon gallery recently developed a fatal bout of bad coding, and the cartoon slideshow was a casualty. Our web manager thought they could patch it, but it turns out a recent security […]

Uncle Sam vs Lady Liberty

On the 4th of July, Slate offered a deep dive into the history of two of America’s most popular mascots — Uncle Sam & Lady Liberty — and the ever-shifting use and symbolism of these two seminal icons by cartoonists and propagandists alike. Read all about it here: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/07/uncle-sam-lady-liberty-history-of-national-symbols.html

More Calls for the Pulitzer Prizes to Restore Cartooning as a Category

Another newspaper editor has come out against the Pulitzer Prizes (and Gannett) for their short-sighted decisions regarding editorial cartoons. The Chicago Tribune‘s Dennis Shere criticizes recent moves by the biggest award in journalism and the biggest newspaper chain in the country and says they are not doing themselves — or America — any favors. Read […]

Smith & Jones Win This Year’s SDX

A big congratulations to cartoonists Mike Smith and Clay Jones — this year’s recipients of the SDX Award for Editorial Cartooning from the Society of Professional Journalists. The Sigma Delta Chi Award honors outstanding work published or broadcast in print, radio, television and online. Mike Smith (Las Vegas Sun/Greenspun Media Group) won in the category […]

Deadline for Locher Award extended to July 15

[Editor’s note: Thanks in part to all the news over the last half of June, we know cartoonists might be, umm, a bit distracted. So the Locher Award is extending the deadline to submit entries to this year’s contest to FRIDAY, JULY 15, 2022.]   The AAEC’s John Locher Memorial Award is now accepting submissions […]

Remembering Stuart Carlson

Some sad news out of Wisconsin: Cartoonist Stuart Carlson has died at 66. The editorial cartoonist spent most of his career on the staff of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, drawing for the paper for 25 years. After being laid off in 2008, he continued to be syndicated through Universal/Andrews McMeel. The Journal Sentinel remembered Carlson […]

The NCS Joins the AAEC in Calling Out the Pulitzer Prizes

The National Cartoonist Society has weighed in on the recent controversy over the Pulitzer Prizes with an open letter to the Pulitzer Board in solidarity with editorial cartoonists nationwide: https://www.nationalcartoonists.com/2022/06/ncs-response-to-pulitzer-board-dissolving-editorial-cartooning-division/ “Combining editorial cartooning and illustrated reportage together into one category does a disservice to both genres. To us, the situation is like having a sprinter […]

An Open Letter to the Pulitzer Prize Board

The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists would like to congratulate illustrator Fahmida Azim and the other contributors to the team that created the illustrated article, “I Escaped a Chinese Internment Camp,” which won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in the recently renamed category of Illustrated Reporting and Commentary. We would like to also congratulate the finalists, […]

2022 Cartoon Contest Deadlines

PLEASE NOTE: Due to the (continued) uncertainty of the current state of the world, a number of contest details were unavailable as of this posting. As always, confirm any and all deadlines or entry fees on the appropriate website before submitting.   National Newspaper Awards (Canada) Deadline: January 9, 2022 Rules and entry form available […]

New cartoon award — SHORT DEADLINE!

While some editorial cartoonist contests have fallen by the wayside as newspaper readership continues to drop, one journalist association has stepped up to expand their annual award to include cartoonists. The National Society for Newspaper Columnists (NSNC) has just added a cartoon category to their annual contest list. Here’s the thing though: [low whisper] they […]

The AAEC announces its annual awards

This weekend saw the 2020 CXC Festival move ahead — online and virtual as with everything else this year — and the event acted as sort of a de facto gathering for the AAEC, which had to cancel their own convention back in May. AAEC President Kevin Siers made a pre-recorded appearance on Friday evening during […]

The year of hell refresher—now in cheeky animated form!

McClatchy animator Sohail Al-Jamea and cartoonist Jack Ohman recently teamed up to create an animated reminder of all the shit that went down —so far— in 2020. Just in case you’ve forgotten. The animated short plays like a side-scrolling fighting game with an oblivious Trump strolling through the exploding video background. You can watch “Fear and […]

Live from their home studios—cartoonists online!

Live cartoonists live! Like musicians and comedians with no nightclub to perform in, cartoonists have taken to the internet to do live webscasts while sheltering in place.  CBS and New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly is doing a live drawing session every afternoon at 5pm on Periscope and her instagram feed: https://instagram.com/lizadonnelly/. If you miss it, […]

Merry Impeachment Day, everyone!

And a Happy Impeachment Day to all. The Daily Cartoonist has been looking back at how editorial cartoonists took on previous targets of impeachment, and the parallels between Nixon, Clinton and Trump. First up: the phenomenal Jules Feiffer. https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2020/01/19/feiffer-on-nixon-in-the-trump-era/ How did editorial cartoonists see previous violators of the Constitution? ComicDC’s Mike Rhode looks back at Paul Conrad’s […]

Host a Herblock show

From ComicsDC comes this offer to teachers everywhere: https://comicsdc.blogspot.com/2010/05/host-your-own-herblock-exhibit.html

Letter from the President

“Ask not what your AAEC can do for you, ask what you can do for your AAEC.” Some of you may remember the days when AAEC conventions were the place where major daily newspaper editors came to find talent. It seemed at every year’s convention, there was a buzz about at least one big job […]

Cartoonists overseas

Cartoonists from the AAEC and NCS were part of good will tours overseas in October, from Mike Peters & Michael Ramirez with the USO in Iraq, to Daryl Cagle in the Middle East and North Africa.

The Future of the AAEC

By V. Cullum Rogers, from notes taken by Ted Rall, Melinda Condon and JP Trostle A two-hour discussion of “The Future of the AAEC” was held in Seattle on July 4, 2009, just before the annual meeting. It was led by Ted Rall, Paul Fell and Milt Priggee, with many comments from the audience and […]

Awards: RFK to Jack Ohman

Jack Ohman, of The Oregonian, is this year's recipient of the RFK Journalism Award for Cartooning. In citing his work, the judges stated: “Ohman's cartoons tackle a range of difficult topics including poverty and unemployment in Oregon, the practice of shuffling Oregon teachers suspected of molesting children to other schools, rising college tuition costs, and […]

Briefly Put

In April, The Ohio State University received a gift of $1 million from Jean Schulz, the widow of Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz, to support the renovation of Sullivant Hall, the future home of the new Cartoon Library and Museum. Along with her generous gift, Mrs. Schulz issued a challenge: She will provide an additional […]

‘Toonists Visit Troops

by Bill Castanier Bob Hope, the dean of overseas USO tours to entertain troops, was famous for deadpan jokes. A recent USO trip to Germany by eight cartoonists could have been grist for one of the late comedians patented gags, which may have gone something like this: Hope goes on stage, sees a group of […]

Kartoonists for Kids Kaper 2009

If memory serves me, this was the 7th annual trek to Sick Kids, aka Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children. My wife Dawn is the dynamo behind the scenes, emailing, faxing, phoning, goading and reminding all those talented cartoonists who live within 50 miles to spend a couple of hours mesmerizing those little people whose health […]

Following Twitter-mania

By Michael Cavna Sitting expectantly at the taping of a late-night talk show, Bryan Brinkman was a near-anonymous New Yorker — literally just another face in the crowd. The 24-year-old cartoonist had a Web site and a day job, but he could count on two ink-stained hands how many people officially followed his work. By […]

OUR MISSION

The mission of the AAEC is to champion and defend editorial cartooning and free speech as essential to liberty in the United States and throughout the world.

The AAEC aims to be an international leader in support of the human, civil, and artistic rights of editorial cartoonists around the world, and to stand with other international groups in support of the profession.



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CARTOONS IN EDUCATION

Cartoons in Education

Every two weeks throughout the year, The Learning Forum and the AAEC offers CARTOONS FOR THE CLASSROOM, a free lesson resource for teachers discussing current events.  Visit NIEonline.com for more lesson plans.