For 24 years, Bruce Quast scoured the latest goings-ons in and around Rockford for opportunities to make people laugh — or think.
The political cartoons he produced for the Register Star picked apart the news under four Rockford mayors and five Illinois governors.
Bruce Quast‘s editorial cartoon has appeared weekly on the opinion page of the Sunday Rockford Register Star since 1994, this weekend, on October 7, will be his last regular cartoon.
Quast may occasionally produce a political cartoon for the newspaper, but his regular local Sunday cartoon won’t be replaced, said Wally Haas, the Register Star’s opinion editor.
“It’s hard to replace a legend,” Haas said. Submissions from other cartoonists haven’t measured up, he said.
The Register Star does a nice farewell piece on Bruce and features a few of his cartoons.
But Bruce is not giving up cartooning.
Quast, who is married and has two sons and a grandchild, works full time as exhibits director at the Discovery Center Museum. In his spare time, he draws caricatures of people at parties and festivals. He plans to try to get his cartoons syndicated for a national audience, and he expects to draw more frequently for his Faron Square comic strip.
Faron Square is a comic strip about workers at a troubled mall in this age of online shopping.
An archive of the Sunday format strip is available.