Comedy This Morning: Oh no, the great Mike Lane is calling it quits!

by Ken

The good news is that Mike Lane, the great cartoonist of the Baltimore Sun, has come through open-heart surgery with great success. The bad news, reported yesterday by Daryl Cagle on his invaluable political-cartoon site cagle.com, is that he has no intention of resuming his editorial cartooning -- not because of his health, he stresses, but because he feels he's done enough of it. Daryl reprints this note from Mike in his blogpost:

My quitting editorial cartooning comes because it’s time, not because of my health. Which is quite good, notwithstanding. The operation was a terrific success, my recovery is rapid (as can be) and my repaired heart promises a long and robust future.

When I was with The (Baltimore) Sun, I used to refer to my old cartooning pal Tommy Flannery (The Sun) and me (The Evening Sun) as the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of The Sunpapers.

R. and G. were minor characters in Hamlet, plotting and conniving and generally being a nuisance, not part of the aristocracy but always there. That is a fair description of the role of the editorial cartoonist , don’t you think? In the end Shakespeare kills them off: “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead!”

Well, Rosencrantz (Tommy) is dead but Guildenstern (me) lives on! And it’s time for different plays, acts and so, I’ve drawn my last political/editorial cartoon. Time for watercolors, greeting cards, perhaps, whatever.

I'm in shock, but what can we do except wish the guy well? And make sure he knows how much his work is going to be missed. The cagle.com website has a gallery of his work.

It now appears that this cartoon from August 6 will be Mike Lane's editorial-cartooning swan song:


Not a bad way to go out! Good luck, Mike. (And if you should decide to change your mind . . . )

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