
Editorial Cartoonist Stuart Carlson has passed away
Stuart Scott Carlson
September 1955 – June 10, 2022
Cartoonist Stuart Carlson has died at 66. The editorial cartoonist spent most of his career on the staff of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, drawing daily for the paper for 25 years. Our condolences to his friends and family.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting Stuart’s death:
Stuart Carlson, the former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel political cartoonist, died Friday at age 66.
Carlson, who was the cartoonist for the Milwaukee Sentinel and the Journal Sentinel from 1983 to 2008, was remembered for his incisive, humorous commentary on current events.
Stuart was born and raised in Wisconsin, and that is where he lived his life.
Wikipedia tells of Stuart before his 25 years on The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Carlson was raised in West Bend, Wisconsin and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1978 at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. After graduating, Carlson worked as a cartoonist for the West Allis Post/Star and as a reporter for the West Bend News.
In 2014 Urban Milwaukee talked to Stuart:
Stuart Carlson has a great sense of humor, something you’d expect from a professional cartoonist, but he could be forgiven for having a more downtrodden attitude considering he was one of casualties of the Journal Sentinel’s Great Purge of 2008.
So, why were political cartoonists the first to walk the plank?
“It’s not like they were going to cut back on their coverage of the Packers,” Carlson says, laughing. “And all a political cartoonist does is piss people off. I wasn’t coming from a conservative, right-wing perspective and I think that’s the demographic a lot of papers want to appeal to because that’s where the readership is growing.”
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a page of Carlson cartoons in memory.
Stuart’s editorial cartoons were syndicated by Universal Press/Andrews McMeel Syndication and there is a 25 year archive at their Stuart Carlson page. The last cartoon is dated May 31, 2022.
As mentioned in that Urban Milwaukee article Stuart teamed with Jerry Resler to create the Gray Matters comic strip, which they self-syndicated to a few Wisconsin newspapers.
Also was Beanie the Brownie, a Christmas comic strip by Stuart and his wife Mary.
News Courtesy: Association of American Editorial Cartoonists