During the heyday of Pat Oliphant‘s career editorial cartoonists numbered in the hundreds, down from a high count of thousands, today the population of staff editorial cartoonists maybe a couple dozen. Newspapers these days go with the much cheaper syndicated editoons where they do not have to pay salary or benefits or contribute to retirement funds. In Oliphant’s day newspapers ran syndicated cartoons on the one or two days a week their staff cartoonist took the day off – or the inbetween times when one cartoonist left and the paper was looking for a successor.
So it is a bit of a surprise to see the love showered on the Pat Oliphant documentary.
A Savage Art: The life and cartoons of Pat Oliphant. Bill Banowsky (dir.). Magnolia Pictures, 2025. (documentary, not rated, 88 minutes) https://asavageart.com/
No surprise is Peter Kuper’s praise at the International Journal of Comic Art review:…