Pulitzer Winner Cartoonist Marlette Dies

[Brownian Motion]

Filed at 2:34 p.m. ET

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- Doug Marlette, the North Carolina-born cartoonist who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1988, was killed in a single-car accident Tuesday morning in Mississippi, authorities said. He was 57.

Marlette was the passenger in the car, which struck a tree after skidding on a rain-slicked road, said John Garrison, the coroner in Mississippi's Marshall County.

''Evidently, it hydroplaned, left the highway and struck the tree,'' Garrison said.

Marlette's editorial cartoons and his comic strip, ''Kudzu,'' are syndicated worldwide.

Marlette began drawing political cartoons for The Charlotte Observer in 1972.

He won the Pulitzer in 1988 for his editorial cartooning in both Charlotte and at the Atlanta Constitution, which he had joined the year before.

He said at the time that his biting approach could be traced in part to ''a grandmother bayoneted by a guardsman during a mill strike in the Carolinas. There are some rebellious genes floating around in me.''

He joined New York Newsday in 1989. He has also worked for newspapers in Florida and Tulsa, Okla.

''Cartoons are windows into the human condition,'' he said when he joined the Tulsa World last year. ''It's about life.''

[BruceH]

Sad news.

[Jazzmoose]

Wow...one of my favorites, both for his editorial cartoons and his Kudzu strip.