Put down your pencils. Our political cartoonist contest is a wrap

The entries in our 2024 political cartoonist contest are in and the winner is Will Caron, a Hawaiʻi journalist and communications professional who has been drawing for more than a decade.

Like many good news professionals, Will’s first attempt to break into the business was rejected. This by the comics page editor at Ka Leo, the University of Hawaiʻi’s student-run newspaper where Will applied to be a cartoonist when he began attending the college. That was back in 2007 and by the time Will graduated in 2012 he’d taken over the comics page as editor and, in fact, had taken over the whole paper as editor-in-chief.

Will tells the Sunshine Blog he’s not had his work published in recent years, mainly because he’s been working as the communications director for the Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law & Economic Justice.

So what inspires you to take pen to paper (so to speak), The Blog asked?

“I’m inspired by the ability of art to say 1,000 words in one picture—the ability of a strong image to cut through the noise and illustrate the central point of a topic,” Will says.