10.29.2005

Editorial Cartoon Asks 'WHY?'

Mike Luckovich marked the tragic milestone of 2,000 American servicemen and women killed in Iraq by hand-writing the name of each one in his Wednesday editorial cartoon. Together, their names spell out the question: WHY?"

I was trying to think of a way to make the point that this whole war is such a waste," said Luckovich, of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Creators Syndicate. "But I also wanted to honor the troops I believe our government wrongly sent to Iraq."

Luckovich told E&P that he spent 12 or 13 hours this past weekend writing in most of the names -- roughly in the order of when the soldiers died. The Journal-Constitution's publisher and various editors were also involved in the effort -- checking that all 2,000 names were there, looking for spelling errors, doing a test printing to see if the names would be readable in the paper, and, when it looked like the names might not be readable, giving permission for the cartoon to be published much larger than Luckovich's drawings usually appear in the Journal-Constitution.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001390467

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