Quino - Quino (Joaquin Salvador Lavardo) is a god among cartooning mortals. His work is a true testament to the universal nature of cartooning. He hails from another continent, speaks a foreign language and is the product of a different culture but still communicates masterfully with this insular American through his unique and inventive visual storytelling. Technically, he’s not an editorial cartoonist, but in my mind, no cartoonist captures the politics of the human condition better than does Quino.

Charles Addams - My parents had one cartoon book in the house when I was a kid. It was a collection of Charles Addams cartoons. I loved that book and must have leafed through its pages a thousand times. Through that exposure, Charles Addams became one of the earliest and most profound influences on my own cartoons. Like Quino, Addams demonstrates a wonderful visual sensibility in his work. His beautifully composed and rendered drawings always seem contrary to the dark, often macabre humor they contain. It was this paradox that always captivated me. His work, like Morticia Addams herself, is visually stunning, yet a little bit frightening, all at the same time.

Tex Avery - Tex Avery is the indisputable king of animated cartoons. He set the bar for every other animator with his work at Warner Brothers Studios in the 1930’s, only to best his efforts once he moved onto Metro Goldwyn Meyer a decade later. With his bizarre, over-the-top conceptual approach to animation, Tex Avery broke every boundary, tested every limit, and challenged every convention, with an inventiveness and imagination that remains unmatched.

Saul Steinberg - Saul Steinberg always seemed to be way ahead of his time. His simple line drawings and highly conceptual New Yorker cartoons were always a stark contrast in an era dominated by lavish renderings and conventional approaches. A native of Romania, Steinberg’s work always maintained its European flavor. His deceptively simple drawings conveyed surprisingly complex themes and established Steinberg as one of the most unique and talented cartoonists of his time.

Sam Gross - Sam Gross is great. His cartoons are always well conceived, and his drawings well composed. His drawing style is very loose and quick, but always methodical in its application. His ideas are direct and very humorous, but often border on disturbing (much like Addams). It’s the uncluttered nature of his work, in both form and content that most influenced my own approach to cartooning. If one of the lessons of cartooning is to make hours of hard work look like the product of a moment’s inspiration, Sam Gross should teach the class.

Ron Cobb - As a counterculture cartoonist of the 1960’s, Ron Cobb’s style and approach might have been more conventional than other ‘underground’ cartoonists of the era, but it never diminished the inventiveness of his work. With a beautifully ornate pen and ink style, and a deft visual approach, Cobb took on big issues. It was the issue-orientation of his work that most influenced me. Cobb always drew from the outside looking in. He depicted ordinary people (instead of their elected officials) dealing with a complex and unjust world, and in so doing appealed more to his readers’ sympathy than to their hostility. It’s an approach I’ve always admired in his work, and one I’ve always strived to achieve in my own.

Sergio Aragones - Like the other artists on this list, Sergio Aragones has always appealed to me because of his purely visual approach to cartooning. Like Sam Gross, his drawings are wonderfully loose and spontaneous (I must admire in others what I’m unable to achieve myself), and his concepts are beautifully simple and direct. I’ve always been a huge fan of all the cartoonists in MAD. Oddly, the one who had the biggest impact on me produced the smallest drawings in the magazine.

Peter Kuper - Profoundly visual in nature, Peter Kuper’s work is hard to pigeonhole. The artist defies labels and his art defies classification. The wordless approach in his ‘Eye of the Beholder’ series demonstrates his unique graphic sensibilities and his mastery of purely visual storytelling. Using a somber, often jarring aesthetic style to convey sobering messages, Kuper’s artwork is a wonderful blend of equal parts passion and intellect.

Pat Oliphant - No surprise here, I guess. Like every other editorial cartoonist of my generation, I rank Pat Oliphant as one of my main influences. When I was in my teens, Oliphant’s influence on me was so profound that I consciously tried to emulate his style and approach. Realizing that such an exercise was futile and could result in nothing more than a pale imitation of the master, his influence over me changed- I decided it was best to go in a completely different direction. Another path, I thought, might just lead to a place out from under Oliphant’s enormous shadow.

Herblock - Influences come in many forms. Although Herblock never influenced my cartoons, he definitely influenced me as a cartoonist. Herb was completely devoted to his craft. He gave his job everything he had for as long as he had. It was his devotion to this profession, his passion for politics and his commitment to excellence that always inspired me. I’ve always appreciated the importance of hard work and dedication in cartooning. To me, Herblock was the personification of those virtues.

Frank King - Frank King’s gentle magic continually amazes me. His work lives and breathes like real life, reflecting the society in which it was created. I wish I knew his trick of aging his characters right before the reader’s eyes.

Stan Lee - I went to Kent State, but while I was there I was attending the college of Stan Lee. Stan’s school of story telling taught me so much about getting readers to invest in your characters and keeping them engaged with masterful story telling.

Milton Caniff - I don’t know what I could say about Caniff that hasn’t been said a hundred times over. Elegant art over elegant story telling. The thing that sometimes gets overlooked is the humanity of his characters. Very emotionally real treatments.

Chet Gould - Allow me to completely contradict myself. Gould’s art on Tracy in the fifties was almost abstract (check out the way he drew trees). The characters were beyond belief and the plots were insane. Totally worked for me.

Roger Bollen - His work on Animal Crackers always made me laugh. Plus Rog was just a really nice guy. I went to him as a young cartoonist and he told me the secret of how to get syndicated.

Jim Childress - Jim’s strip Conchy was a sadly unheralded masterpiece. It was quite possibly the most brilliant humor strip I’ve ever seen. I’d give five hundred Krazy Kats for one Conchy.

Mac Raboy - From captain Marvel Jr., to The Green Lama, to Flash Gordon. Some of the most gorgeous art that’s ever been laid to bristol board. Thank God we live in the age of great reprint books.

Burne Horgarth - Now some folks swear by Hal Foster’s Tarzen, but, for my money, Horgarth takes the gold medal. The sequence where Tarzan is fighting the giant gorilla on the wing of the twin engined plane as it dives through the air pretty much says it all.

Jim Meddic - One of today’s cartoonist’s who consistently amuses me. It reminds me sometimes of things that I used to do in Funky except that Jim does them better.

Charles Schulz - As Stan Lee was wont to say: ’nuff said.

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Charles Schulz: Everyone cites him, but it’s with good reason. He taught me timing, tone, character development, practically everything.

Gary Larson: The funniest cartoonist I’ve ever seen. His two-volume set (The Complete Far Side) should be the textbook in any course taught on how to be funny on the comics page.

Berke Breathed and Garry Trudeau: Even when I didn’t understand the politics, I appreciated that these two were mavericks that revolutionized what could go on a comics page. Also, Trudeau’s relevance and sharpness some 38 years after he first created the strip is an inspiration in and of itself.

Scott Adams: From him, I learned how to write a three-panel comic. Probably the best pure writer on the comics page.

Darby Conley: Such well developed characters and brilliant artwork. Reminds me of Krazy Kat in that both strips fundamentally revolve around just 3 core characters, and yet still manage to be creative and funny. A seemingly impossible task, especially when you consider that Rob, Bucky and Satchel practically never leave their living room.

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Let me preface this by apologizing for so much of this being repetitive from others’ lists. On reflection, it also looks pretty provincial, but what can I say, most of these people were childhood influences.

Charles Schulz - Sparky was my all-time hero. I love looking at his pen work. From reading Peanuts, I think I absorbed pathos, especially as expressed through the face. And simple staging.

Bill Watterson - More than anything, I learned from C&H was how you can imply so much within a drawing without having to actually draw it. I still can’t do it, but I aspire to it. I came to that realization once when I was enlarging one of his strips to give to my wife because it reminded me of a story from her childhood. When I saw the drawing so big, I realized that what I thought was detail, really wasn’t. It was only the merest suggestion of detail. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the magic of Bill Watterson.

Jerry Scott - He is the most innately talented cartoonist I know. He can draw anything and make it look funny and effortless. If only I could be as loose with my drawings and as disciplined in my work habits…(sigh)

Garry Trudeau - He’s more than a cartoonist hero to me, just as Doonesbury is more than a comic strip. Ranging from viciously funny to heartbreaking, Garry has created something that’s not only always relevant to its time, but important and necessary as impetus for debate. I also admire his ability to maintain his razor-thin deadline for such a long time and survive

Bill Mayer - A fantastic freelance illustrator who spawned dozens of imitators. He switched to an airbrush (now digital) style and had an influence on me by opening up my eyes to unconventional anatomy-sort of like a cartoonist’s Picasso to me.

Johnny Hart - I went through a long period of trying to channel his style of drawing-that wispy, spontaneous line. And I loved the snappy dialogue.

Bill Plympton - I think his animation is so inspiring. It’s like watching visual free association. His stuff looks like it just pumped out of his brain right onto the screen.

Walt Kelly - was a childhood (and come to think of it, adulthood) inspiration with drawings you can lose yourself in.

(cheating) Mad magazine: Sergio Aragones -just sheer fun of drawing and playfulness; Don Martin - crazy,crazy,crazy and dark; Paul Coker,Jr. - clean style and character shapes; and Al Jaffee - the whole package.

(cheating again) Jack Ziegler and George Booth - I group them together because my exposure to them was in the same period. They’re able to go that one step extra into goofiness, but still keep a foot in reality.

(cheating yet again-I can’t help it!) - three men who showed me that a guy like me could make it in this business: Chuck Vadun - who died too young; Jared Lee - who took me under his wing in NYC and showed me the possibilities in freelance illustration; and the late Irv Phillips - who showed me how to make a buck at this.

Unfortunately, this list has to leave out a bunch-like Jay Ward, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, B. Kliban, Sam Gross, Theodor Geisel, Peter Arno, James Thurber, Al Capp, Tom K. Ryan, Roz Chast, John Caldwell, who all had a shot at the list, but I had to draw the line somewhere (and I’ve cheated so much already).

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Arron Mcgruder- I first discovered The Boondocks on the pages of the Source magazine and I’ve been a fan ever since. My favorite comic strips prior to my discovery of The Boondocks had always been fairly abstract, but McGruder’s work was more tangible and recognizable. His characters were angry and relevant in a non-juvenile kind of way.

Frank Cho- Every panel in a Liberty Meadows comic strip is a work of art. The way he combines cartoon animals with classically rendered human characters immediately stands out. Frank Cho makes cartooning look easy.

Bill Watterson - He’s the Michael Jordan of cartooning. Charles Schulz is Dr. J, but Watterson is Mike (I guess that would make McGruder LeBron James). Everything about Calvin and Hobbes is genius.

Juanjo Guarnido - is my favorite artist. His work on the Blacksad books is phenomenal. Nobody can capture mood or expression as masterfully as Guarnido.

Keith Knight- I think K Chronicles is the funniest comic strip actively being published. I don’t know how he manages to get away with most of his material, but I’m glad he does. He has a loose, frantic way of drawing that matches perfectly with the informal, irreverent feel of his comic.

Charles Schulz - For me, the genius of Peanuts was in its ability to capture and depict the sublime melancholy in a way that left readers pensive instead of depressed. That’s a nearly impossible feat, but Schulz managed to do it every day for fifty years. If I can capture a fraction of what he had, I’ll be a’ight.

Al Hirschfeld - He’s not a necessarily a cartoonist, but I chase after his aesthetic more than anyone else when it comes to my cartooning work. Hirschfeld got more out of line than anyone before or since. His caricatures didn’t just look like the subject, they were often the definitive interpretation of the subject. While I’m not crazy about his questionable use of blackface, I love his work overall.

Winsor Mccay - His work on Little Nemo and Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend is impressive even after all these years. Again, I’m not crazy about his penchant for using blackface characters, but I think he ranks among the all-time greats.

Joe Madureira - is my favorite comic book artist. I mostly know him from his work on The Uncanny X-Men and Deadpool. I especially like the way he draws hands.

Wiley Miller - I get the feeling that Wiley Miller knows he’s one of the best. His writing is on an entirely different level and, visually, he uses perspective more effectively than any other newspaper cartoonist. I read Non Sequitur everyday, but I wish he’d revive Homer, the Reluctant Soul. That strip was genius.

Jules Feiffer - directly addressed the absurd with an approach that reminds me of James Thurber (and Keith Knight). I love his monologues and the way his speakers always seem to be right on the edge of insanity. Great writer.

Kadir Nelson - another non-cartoonist, but his illustrations have had a profound impact on me. He has a way of elongating and exaggerating his figures that is reminiscent of El Greco.

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Marjane Satrapi: Her artwork is very simple and bold and fluid and makes for extremely powerful images. She is a skilled story teller and has made me both laugh and cry while reading her graphic novels. I particularly love her book, “Embroideries” about a group of Iranian women who share intimate life stories during an afternoon of tea. Aside from the cultural aspect of the content, it’s the kind of stuff I would love to try to write for the characters in my strip. (but couldn’t get away with in a newspaper) I love the gritty, honesty of her writing. I can’t wait to see the animated version of Persepolis. Extremely talented cartoonist.

Walt Kelly: I read his strip every day in the mid to late sixties as a kid and loved it without even understanding it. Couldn’t help being attracted to it for the gorgeous art, intricate backgrounds and even loved staring at the elaborate lettering. I’m looking forward to collecting the Fantagraphics volumes.

Lynn Johnston: I was very motivated by the fact that Lynn was a woman cartoonist and also that she was Canadian. I sent her some of my work years ago and she wrote in the margin of one strip, “Wha’ happened then?!” …and told me the “type” of strip I was writing was the kind where people wanted to know about the characters’ lives. I had already developed a set of characters but had no idea I writing a “character-driven strip”. It became much easier for me to write after that. Lynn is another very talented story teller, very honest in her writing and a wonderful artist.

Johnny Hart: Another cartoonist I read in the paper every night as a kid. I loved the way he had the clams and the ants communicating in B.C. I tried to copy this in a school project in grade six…I drew cartoon ants talking to each other about some historical event. Didn’t go over with the teacher. I loved the world Johnny Hart created and how individualistic the characters were.

Bill Watterson: His work is funny and original and his art is energetic. He makes it look so easy. I learned how to draw trees by looking at how Bill drew them.

Charles Schulz: I love how he exposed the human experience with such simplicity. The first time I noticed a sequential story line was in a little Peanuts paperback collection…about Linus talking about his teacher, Miss Othmar who was about to be married. When the series finished, I skimmed through the rest of the book looking for more of the story before I read any further. In hindsight, it shows how powerful a story line can be and how strongly a reader can connect to it.

Kim Warp: Kim’s cartoons are just so funny and her art is so quirky and fits her humour. I think she is my absolute favourite.

Kieran Meehan: I have come to be a huge fan of Kieran’s work. I can get a laugh just by looking at his art. He is extremely witty.

Sergio Aragones: His little pantomime cartoons in the margins of Mad Magazine were always the first ones I looked at when I was a kid. Sergio’s art is so expressive and funny.

Ben Wicks: Another Canadian cartoonist who drew a political cartoon called “Wicks”. He had a very loose, minimalist style. In fact, it was so loose and minimalist that you’d think he couldn’t draw at all…except for the fact that you knew exactly which political figure he was rendering. I especially loved the way he drew Pierre Trudeau with his long hair and prominent front teeth. His work was exceptionally unique.

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George McManus (Bringing up Father) The artwork was superb and the characters hilarious.

Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates) Probably the best story strip ever. I drew a strip called “The Limejuicers” when I was 15 and used a lot of Caniff’s techniques.

Walter Berndt (Smitty) I like the brevity and good humor in his gags.

Al Capp (Li’l Abner) The characters were strong and Capp’s imagination with the shmoos fascinated me.

Frank Willard (Moon Mullins) The slapstick humor made my father laugh till he cried. I thought, “I want to do that.”

E.C. Segar (Popeye) I like his fight scenes and used them in my conflicts with Beetle and Sarge.

Frank King (Gasoline Alley) The warm relationships appealed to me.

Chic Young (Blondie) His gags and his recurring themes are gimmicks I use.

John Held, Jr. His brevity in drawing style are similar to mine.

Walt Disney (Mickey Mouse) I used to draw the Disney cards when I worked for Hallmark and still use the thick and thin ink line he used.

Dave Coverly’s Speed Bump launched in 1994 and is now in over 250 newspapers. He has received the award for Best Newspaper Panel by the NCS twice (1995, 2003), and Best Greeting Cards (1998). His cartoons have also been published in The New Yorker and most recently, in Parade Magazine.

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Jim Borgman - There’s mastery in his brushwork, a deceptive gentleness in his skewering, and so much wisdom in his ideas. Every single drawing seems fully formed; every single thought seems fully dissected. I think he sees more clearly and renders more completely than almost anyone.

Sergio Aragones - He’s unbelievably prolific and remarkably fun to watch draw. His cartoons today are as great and original as they were three decades ago when I got hooked on Mad Marginals. He can do more with less, and does it over and over.

Quino (Joaquin Lavado) - This guy is a pantomime genius and his vision is staggering. Like Sergio, he’s working in the toughest possible style, creating visual gags, and his ability to direct the reader’s eye is the best in the business. He always knows just the right amount of detail needed to tell the joke, and has the draftsmanship to pull off whatever works best. There’s nothing he can’t draw, so his scope is unlimited.

George Booth - He’s seemingly oblivious to any cartoonist that came before him, and has created a brilliantly crazy parallel universe that is sort of recognizable but uniquely his own. Even his art has that quality - the linework looks like it was drawn on old typing paper on top of a bumpy wooden picnic table. I think he’s quite possibly the most natural cartoonist ever.

J.J. Sempé - His drawings just float off the page. On the one hand, they seem very simple, but when you start really looking at the execution and the layout and the balance, they’re incredibly beautiful. His color work kills me, too, because it’s a heady balance of light lines and weighty shadows held together by a perfect palette.

B. Kliban - Still the best oddball, single-panel cartoonist to put pen to paper. Kliban did so much work that defies description, and while it was much too dark and grimey for newspapers, he set the standard for all us panel people who followed. While we try to draw cartoons that come out of left field, he was in a different stadium altogether.

Virgil Partch - To me, the beauty of Partch isn’t so much the jokes, it’s the sensibility. His work is incredibly distinctive, and very much of a time. I’m also in love with his vaguely modernist lines and nonsensical shapes. There’s a sort of drunken whimsy to the cartoons that’s endearing and fun and totally his own.

Jim Unger - Jim was my first real influence. His drawing style appealed to me, but more than that, he was the first panel cartoonist that consistently made me laugh. And laugh hard. His “Herman” collections were the first cartoon books I ever bought with my own money, and my sister and I read them so often we nearly had them memorized. To this day we spontaneously quote them. “Don’t play with grandpa’s greasy hair before dinner” is a regular refrain during the holidays now…

Jack Ziegler/Arnie Levin - Two guys I can’t separate because their work came to me at the same time in high school when my journalism teacher gave me a stack of New Yorker magazines. Jack and Arnie quickly became a couple of favorites, in part because they both have an easy, quick style, but mainly because I found them to be the most consistent. Sometimes funny, sometimes witty, sometimes clever, they’re always simply excellent. And I still have the massive photo album full of their cartoons that I clipped way back then.

Richard Thompson’s new feature, Cul de Sac was first published in the Washington Post Magazine in 2005 and was launched this summer to over 70 newspapers nationally. He is also author of Richard’s Poor Almanac which is a compilation of his feature by the same name that runs in the Washington Post.

• Go read Cul de Sac
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• Find books by these featured cartoonists

Mad Magazine: There, I cheated right off the bat, but I have to say that buying issue #108 of Mad Magazine when I was nine years old was a happy jolt to my system, and I loved every cartoonist in it and in all the subsequent issues I bought. What child-sized cartoonist wannabe hasn’t tried to draw a Mort Drucker face or a Don Martin shoe or a Jack Davis everything?

Honore Daumier: The other side of the art. The most perceptive caricaturist and the cartoonist with the most humanity, even after all this time. He’s influenced everyone from Degas to Pat Oliphant, and his work is still funny and angry.

George Booth: Maybe the funniest New Yorker cartoonist and one of the most atypical. I saw him do a chalk talk 23 years ago and I laughed so hard I got a stitch in my side that’s still there. If I could draw a simple thing, a chair or a dog maybe, with as much comic life as he does I’d be happy.

Ronald Searle: The greatest comic draftsman of the last hundred years easy. Just go look at his work, then try to draw some other way.

Charles Schulz: I remember him best from the sixties and early seventies when he was at his peak and the tension among his complex cast was at its most taut. Say what you want about the new biography but it’s pretty obvious he dealt his life out in those little tragicomic panels.

Bill Watterson: The utter elegance of his comic conceit, Hobbes coming alive in Calvin’s imagination, was so perfect for a strip and so well sustained by Watterson’s mighty sense of humor and drawing talent. And you can skip a rock off Calvin & Hobbes and it’ll also hit Peanuts, Barnaby & Skippy. I actually remember reading the first Calvin strip and thinking, hey, this is something!

Walt Kelly: And I remember the first time I read a collection of Pogo strips, at a friend’s house when I was in the fifth grade. I doubt I got half the references but I loved the vaudeville of those wonderfully drawn animals. Still my favorite strip of all time, the most vivid characters, the most characters, and the liveliest and widest range of any daily comic strip.

George Herriman: Everybody knows Krazy Kat is the daily comic strip raised to it’s greatest height, but go look at his editorial illustrations. Oh, to crosshatch like that.

Michael Leunig: I bought a book called the Penguin Leunig in the early 80s and I was instantly smitten by his poetic, angry, funny drawings with all his little marsupialian people. The Gift of the Magpie! I can still laugh at that! And he’s an official Living National Treasure in Australia.

Lynda Barry: The most honest, observant chronicler of childhood (and life in general). Unsparing, empathetic & hilarious.

Roz Chast: Maybe the other funniest New Yorker cartoonist and also atypical. She examines all the awkward pauses, anxious moments and mundane embarrassments that you’d prefer not to notice.

Edward Sorel: Look at his drawings, they’re carved into the paper with a line of such subtlety and velocity that you know he’s worked his heart out on every square inch of the page. And such a great combination of anger, elegance and charm! His book First Encounters, written with his wife, is my favorite work of comic illustration. Jeez, just look at his hands! Why can’t I draw hands like that?

Ralph Steadman: The first time I saw his work I hated it, which is often a warning sign that I’d love it later. The other greatest comic draftsman of the last hundred years and a force of nature.

Ruben Bolling: The smartest cartoonist now working and the best genre parodist, too. His comic sense is unexpected & wonderful and his logic is unassailable.

Pat Oliphant: His mental lens is so clear and his hand is so deft that, to quote someone, he draws five inches into the paper. Scathing & angry, sure, but also playful and endlessly inventive, and a serious artist who knows art history.