Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year, 1984

Rating:
Summary: The world's cartoonists go after the Soviets for KAL 007
Review: "Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year, 1984" looks back at the events of 1983, which included Soviet fight planes shooting down a helpless Korean airliner with 269 persons aboard; this is the topic of the Jeff MacNelly cartoon that appears on the cover. MacNelly is my all-time favorite editorial cartoonist, but in 1983 the cream of the crop had to be another Chicago Tribune cartoonists, Dick Locher, who won three of the major cartoons awards in 1983: (1) The Pulitzer Prize for a cartoon showing President Reagan, decked out in full superhero attire, having tripped and fallen on his face getting out of the telephone booth of Diplomacy on his way to Central America; (2) the Overseas Press Club Award for a cartoon showing the Soviet Union returning a bird named Poland to a birdcage where birds labeled East Germany and Hungary ask, "How was it out there?"; and (3) Sigma Delta Chi Award for a cartoon showing Tip O'Neill walking away with the propeller from the bi-plane representing the U.S. Budget being worked on by R. Reagan, Barnstormer. Sweeping the three major awards like that is pretty impressive.

This volume contains several hundred cartoons representing the works of more than 135 cartoonists from the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Europe (more recent volumes have only focused on the U.S. and Canada). In addition to ten pages of editorial cartoons condemning the shooting down of KAL Flight 007 there are punches and jabs at Reaganomics and the President's proposed budget, Walter Mondale and John Glenn going after each other in their quest for the Democratic nomination, the quest of Poland for freedom, the success of the U.S. invasion of Grenada, the failure of peacekeeping efforts in Lebanon, the debate over making Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day a federal holiday, the broadcast of "The Day After," and the controversial James Watt (remember him?). The only potentially depressing thing about taking this walk down memory lane to see what issues amused and outraged us in 1983 is that you might get caught up with how little some things have changed over the years. Terrorism, Congress, drugs, nuclear weapons, so on and so forth, just change the names and faces and the concerns and fears are still there. Still, I always find that editorial cartoons engender the issues and feelings of the times more so than flipping through an old magazine or update history book.