Steve Benson has died. Benson was the longtime political cartoonist for The Arizona Republic — he joined the paper in 1981.
After being laid off from the Republic in 2019, he became the cartoonist for The Arizona Mirror until he retired last year. Benson won the Pulitzer Prize for his work in 1993, and was a finalist for the award a few other times. He was 71 years old.
David Fitzsimmons, the retired cartoonist and columnist for The Arizona Daily Star, joined The Show to remember Steve Benson.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: So when you think of your friend and fellow cartoonist Steve Benson, I'm sure a million things come to mind. What kind of floats to the top of the list for you?
DAVID FITZSIMMONS: His wonderful mind, his imagination, his good sense of humor. Yeah, and also, you know, his, his irreverence for just about everything, which was a trait we cartoonists tend to share in common, but also this wonderful reverence for the Constitution and the idea of America, which you would see in his cartoons day after day, even though his cartoons tended to have a negative, critical nature, as all of our cartoonists work tend to have.
Underneath that was a great love for the American idea, and that's a quality I really loved about Steve because, you know, I accused him sometimes of being, as corny as Andy, Sheriff Andy Griffith from Mayberry because it you know, I got to know him well after he was disgracefully jettisoned from The Republic.
I invited him down to our home for a couple of weeks to get his stuff together and I just sort of fell in love with my friend all over again, because of his wonderful sense of humor, his kindness and particularly his stories about being a cop in Gilbert. He was such a curiously virtuous guy, I just really enjoyed him.
BRODIE: Yeah. So how would you describe his, his drawing style, his artistic style?
FITZSIMMONS: Oh, I would describe — did you hear that sound? Oh, that was — I would describe his sound, I mean his sound — I would describe his drawing style as visually gorgeous. It was rich. He could, I would watch, we would watch each other draw. That's, you know, strange things cartoonists do, right, when we get together. And, he would, his brushwork and his line work was flawless and patient and he had such a steady hand. It was almost like watching a 18th century Japanese calligrapher work with the brush, the way he could vary the width of the line from thin to thick to visually describe what was in his mind.
And what's really impressed me about Steve is I tend to use a light table and trace up my drawings until they get better and better and perfect. But, he would do it on one sheet of paper without tracing. So, he was, yeah, he was very patient, with his imagery, and it showed his work.
It was beautiful. He would sometimes spend up to 12 hours on a drawing. And you know, I would taunt and tease him about that, about, you know, “You're spending your life at the drawing board, brother,” and only you notice the difference, but that is because, you know, he had such high standards for himself, as well as those of us around the dear man.
BRODIE: Right. Well, so, David, you wrote a very touching tribute to to your friend on on your Substack, and one of the things that that you talked about was the fact that you both received a lot of, let's say not terribly favorable responses from from readers and viewers, people who weren't super thrilled with what you had, what you had drawn.
Like, how did you guys talk about that? Like what is, because obviously like if you're a political cartoonist, you're gonna get some amount of that. Like what it was like, how did, and maybe how did he help you evolve in your thinking about getting that kind of mail?
FITZSIMMONS: Oh, here's my story. So I met him at an American Association of Editorial Cartoonists conference when I was just a young punk kid. I am nearly 70 now, but this is about 35 years ago. And I remember walking up to the bar where a group of cartoonists were enjoying each other and I was in a whiny mood and I lamented that, “Oh, I'm getting hate mail. Oh, it's awful.”
And they looked at me like I was crazy, and Steve said, “Brother, you know that is how you judge your effectiveness by the hate mail.” And he also advised me, you know, “Don't take it personally. They're upset about your, your public opinions, and that's sort of your public persona. That's not truly your, your, your most private self.”
I mean it's a kind of a curious distinction, but that sort of helped me to lighten up and in fact, begin to chase that kind of mail by creating more provocative cartoons. Because, the cartoonists want to discourage me from being shy about presenting my honest sentiments just because some people might disagree with them, because, as Steve would point out, that is the job of a political cartoonist, to provoke conversation.
BRODIE: Yeah. So just about a minute or so left, David. I want to ask like when you think back on maybe what you learned besides how to, how to embrace the hate mail, what would you say that that you learned from your friend Steve Benson?
FITZSIMMONS: Oh, what I learned from my friend Steve Benson, is, it is, I learned from Steve that myself and he are both, we were both so fortunate in our lives to have this curious gift of the ability to draw and to comment on events of the day with a good sense of humor, with clear provocative thoughts, and just to and we, we constantly talk about this.
Steve had mentioned how, and you know, the man was a heathen like myself, but we would use the word blessed from time, how blessed we were to have this curious skill set, and Steve would remind me of this obligation we have to use it for good.
That's the corny man again, you know, recently, I made this quick. I recently saw the movie "Superman" and I thought of my friend Steve. Truth, justice and the American way, and I thought, “Man, that's you, brother Steve. That's you.”
