This Week's Sneak Peek

The cartooning world lost one of its finest practitioners Sunday with the sudden passing of Mike Ritter, 48, in Atlanta. He was hospitalized for emergency open heart surgery over the weekend.

Editorial cartoonist for the Scottsdale Tribune and East Valley Tribune of Arizona from 1992 to 2005 and later for the Georgia Voice, he was president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists in 2003-04 and a charter member of the Arizona chapter of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association. His meticulously composed and witty cartoons garnered him first place honors in the Best of the West journalism contest in 2001 and 2003. At the time of his death, he was the Georgia Voice's Art Director. (See one example of his Arizona era work here, and several later cartoons at this Georgia Voice obituary)

I regret that I never got a chance to get to know Ritter; I joined the AAEC after he allowed his membership to lapse and have not been active in the NLGJ. I have long admired his work, though; and everyone seems to have stories about what a swell guy he was.

This week's sneak peek has nothing to do with any of that.