Artists’ dearly departed

This year saw the last acts of showbiz notables Army Archerd, Bea Arthur, David Carradine, Dom DeLuise, Farrah Fawcett, John Hughes, Michael Jackson, Ricardo Montalban, Brittany Murphy, Soupy Sales, Patrick Swayze, Ed McMahon, Koko Taylor, Mary Travers and many others. Journalism wrote obits for Paul Harvey, Don Hewitt, Irving Kristol, Robert Novak and William Safire. Politics lost Corazon C. Aquino, Jack Kemp, Edward M. Kennedy, Robert S. McNamara, Claiborne Pell and Cornelia Wallace. We noted the passing of writers, artists, activists, athletes, scientists, scholars and the final survivor of the Titanic. When the ones doing the memorializing are cartoonists, the departed have really arrived.

-- Joel Pett

Joel Pett is the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist at the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky. His work is also published in USA Today.