Editorial Cartooning
David Catrow / Springfield News-Sun

David Catrow proved to be a giant-killer in this year's Best of Cox Awards.

The Community Division illustration winner also triumphed in the combined category of editorial cartooning. That is no small feat in a news group that employs four Pulitzer prize-winning cartoonists — Mike Luckovich, Mike Peters, Ben Sargent and Don Wright.

"It was very gratifying," Catrow said. "In fact, I didn't even know about it at first. I was gone that Friday when the awards were announced. Steve Cooper, my editor, left me a message. I wound up reading it in our [Springfiled News-Sun] Sunday paper.

"Hearing that you have won is certainly a lot better than reading bad news about yourself."

Catrow's Cox Award-winning illustration of the Virgin Mary is delicate and ethereal. After drawing a work like that, he was asked, how is he able to work himself into a froth to do the day's editorial cartoon?

"It's almost schizophrenic, you know, and thankfully I'm not at the point where I have to be medicated yet,' Catrow said.

"It's like mental aerobics, almost. You're working different muscles in your head. Sometimes they all work in unison."

Do ideas pop into his head while driving to work, or at other unexpected moments?

"Yes, they do, and I'm not disciplined enough to have a pad of paper with me," he said.

"I wish I could remember all the ideas I've had. We talk in computer terms these days, and there are so many things that I've trashed, that aren't on the hard drive anymore, so to speak.

"I've had days when I use a formula to come up with a cartoon. Those are OK, but the best ideas are those that just sort of hit me automatically."