Editorial cartooning Obituary

Ken Crook – RIP

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D. D. Degg Published: December 5, 2025 Updated: December 5, 2025 1 minute 0 comments

Editorial cartoonist, sculptor, and painter Ken Crook has passed away.

Carl MacGowan at Newsday is reporting the death of their former editorial cartoonist Ken Crook (or here):

Kenneth Crook, who drew cartoons for Newsday for more than a decade before leaving in 1970 to pursue a freelance art career, died Sunday at a hospital near his home in Green Valley, Arizona, his family said. He was 96.

A sampling of Crook’s cartoons from the Newsday archives shows he tackled some of the hottest button topics of the time, including the Cold War, Cuba and Fidel Castro, Vietnam and the civil rights movement.

Newsday hired him in the 1950s to work in its advertising and design department, his family said. He was promoted in 1959 by Newsday founders Alicia Patterson and Harry F. Guggenheim to be the paper’s editorial cartoonist.

Ken Crook joined Newsday in late 1955 or early 1956 as a staff artist and right from the beginning the newspaper and its editors were enamored with Crook’s caricature and portrait talents.

The local police department was also taken with Ken’s ability to capture likenesses.

In 1959 Ken added editorial cartoonist to his Newsday duties following the departure of Tom Darcy.

Below is a selection of Ken Crook editorial cartoons from the 1960s.

Like Darcy before him Crook illustrated the editorial column of the day. Ken eventually broke from that. In 1968 Crook was replaced as the major editorial cartoonist when Darcy returned to the paper. Ken continued with the paper for a couple years as a staff artist and occasional ed-op cartoonist.

By the time Crook was displaced by Darcy Ken was already moving on to another medium.

After his career in journalism Ken went full on into sculpture and painting (portraits and landscape).

As mentioned in the Newsday obituary Ken Crook was an editorial cartoonist during the height of the Cold War. Ken came out of cartoon retirement with the election of Donald Trump as President in 2016 and then again gave up on political commentary with the end of Trump’s first term.

A selection of his Cold War cartoons, his Trump cartoons, his 3D sculptures, and his paintings can be seen at the Ken Crook Facebook page.