New Yorker Cartoonist Dies at 68

The New Yorker lost one of its greatest cartoonists Saturday when Leo Cullum died in his California home at the age of 68. Cullum drew 819 cartoons for The New Yorker, most of them expressing his classic dry wit through animal characters. After graduating from College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, Cullum joined the Marines in 1966 and flew 200 missions in Vietnam. When he came back to the U.S., he worked as a commercial airline pilot, but became intrigued by drawing during his layovers. He eventually worked his way up to The New Yorker, with his first cartoon published January 3, 1977. One of Cullum’s drawings was also the first cartoon to appear in The New Yorker after the September 11th attacks. The cartoon shows a woman telling a man at bar, “I thought I’d never laugh again. Then I saw your jacket.”