Editorial Cartoons on the Web

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then an editorial cartoon may be worth an entire book. A good political cartoon fuses art and idea, and provides enjoyment to those who love to see villains and fools lampooned.

Considering how powerful editorial cartoons can be, it should come as no surprise that several Internet sites are devoted to them. Yahoo! Editorial Cartoons (http://www.yahoo.com/Entertainment/Comics_and_Animation/Editorial_Cartoons/) is a great place to start when looking for sites on political cartooning. A link to Buffalo's Pulitzer-Prizewinning Tom Toles can be found on the Yahoo! site. Toles by Tom Toles (http://www.uexpress.com/ups/opinion/cartoon/tt/) provides brief biographical data on the UB alumnus, his most recent cartoon, and a cartoon archive that dates back to March, 1997. Yahoo! also will lead you to Al Gore's Cartoon Gallery (http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/EOP/OVP/html/Cartoon.html), the Association of American Cartoonists Online (http://www.detnews.com/AAEC/AAEC.html), as well as to several American and foreign cartoon sites.

Daryl Cagle, a syndicated cartoonist and first vice president of the National Cartoonists Society, has created a very nice site at http://www.cagle.com. This site is dedicated entirely to editorial cartoons. The site also has lesson plans to help elementary and secondary teachers use political cartoons as a teaching tool. Cagle also provides Internet links and e-mail addresses to some of the best editorial cartoonists in the world.

Even though it isn't really considered an editorial cartoon, devotees of political satire will want to check out Doonesbury at (http://www.doonesbury.com).

For information on connecting to the World Wide Web via UB computer accounts, contact the CIT Help Desk at 645-3542.

-Gemma DeVinney and Don Hartman, University Libraries