McCutcheon, John T.

John T. McCutcheon (1870-1949) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist, known as the "Dean of American Cartoonists". McCutcheon came from a long line of Hoosier cartoonists, including folks like Gaar Williams and Kin Hubbard. I appreciate McCutcheon's editorial work, but sometimes find the line a bit too lightweight for my liking. I ran across this set of four 1920 Cosmopolitan magazine cartoons by McCutcheon and find them to be pretty wonderful examples of his cartooning when it was at its best. The variation in line weight, the characters, and the blue washes to signify where the shading screens would go, all add up to some tremendous work. The four pieces accompanied a funny short story by H.C. Witwer. Titled "The Stung Visitors", the story relates the doings in smalltown Hicksville, New Jersey, where a crooked judge dreams up a plot to put Hicksville on the map, staging an elaborate bank robbery story and offering a staggering award. The story gets picked up nationwide and brings all sorts of folks to Hicksville, eventually winding up in the sting of a detective agency who arrived to collect said reward.