Here's a theory that will never be proven or disproven: If you polled every person in this country who makes his or her living drawing funny pictures and asked them whose talent, of all the others still alive and sketching, they most admired…the winner would be Mort Drucker. I have seen some of the world's most admired cartoonists look at Mort's work, shake their heads and mutter, "How does he do that?"
And I have seen artists, when called upon to render a caricature of some famous person, rush to see what Mort did when he had to draw that person. Even if their eventual drawing will not be in the Drucker style, seeing how Mort handled them is educational. His eye always catches the salient points to exaggerate, the basic personality and key features of the face. A celebrity never looks so much like themselves as when Mort draws them.
Last week at the National Cartoonists Society's annual gathering — held this year in Washington, D.C. — Mort was honored with the group's Medal of Honor. This is the first time it's been given out and as Tom Richmond explains, they seem to have invented the honor just so they could bestow it on Mort. Who better?