Doug Marlette; won Pulitzer as cartoonist
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Doug Marlette tweaked authority for more than three decades, from his brazen and prize-winning cartoons and popular syndicated comic strip, to the Charlotte Observer parking lot, where the young cartoonist habitually stole the publisher's space.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Doug Marlette tweaked authority for more than three decades, from his brazen and prize-winning cartoons and popular syndicated comic strip, to the Charlotte Observer parking lot, where the young cartoonist habitually stole the publisher's space.
Mr. Marlette, 57, died in a single-car accident yesterday in Mississippi. He was traveling from Memphis to Oxford, where he was planning to see friends and help a high school with a production of his musical Kudzu. The car, driven by the school's drama director, hydroplaned in heavy rain and struck a tree, the Marshall County coroner said. The driver was injured but survived.
He was a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1988 for editorial cartoons he drew at the Observer and the Atlanta Constitution. He was author of the comic strip Kudzu, syndicated worldwide. He was a two-time novelist, a composer, and a journalism professor.
Born in Greensboro, N.C., he was raised in Durham before moving to Mississippi and Florida. He began his newspaper career in 1972 at the Observer.
Friends say he was fueled by a genuine distaste for injustice - "a frustration with the unrightness of things," said former Observer managing editor Mark Ethridge.
He left the Observer for the Constitution in 1987, then later took his confrontational and consistently award-winning cartooning to New York Newsday, the Tallahassee Democrat, and the Tulsa (Okla.) World. Throughout, he kept his primary home in Hillsborough, N.C.
In 2001, he turned to writing fiction with The Bridge, a novel set against the backdrop of a Southern labor dispute in which his grandmother participated. His second novel, Magic Time, came out last fall and tells the story of a New York columnist from Mississippi whose life was altered by a civil rights crime in his youth.
Last week, Mr. Marlette delivered the eulogy at his father's funeral.
He is survived by his wife, Melinda, and adult son, Jackson.
Visit Marlette's Web
site for an archive of cartoons, interviews via http://go.philly.com/marlette EndText