CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago Tribune cartoonist Jeff MacNelly, three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and creator of the daily comic strip "Shoe," died Thursday. He was 52.
He died at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore after battling lymphoma since late last year.
"Jeff was simply the most brilliant political cartoonist of the time," Tribune editor Howard Tyner said. "No one had an eye and a sense of humor like his."
MacNelly, who lived in Rappahannock County, Va., won the Pulitzer Prize for his editorial cartoons in 1972, 1978 and 1985. He won his first when he was only 24 and had worked at the Richmond News Leader just 16 months.
In 1977, MacNelly began the daily comic strip "Shoe," about a newspaper's cranky editor and its two-bit hacks, all of whom just happen to be birds.
He is survived by his wife, Susan, and sons Danny, 25, and Matt, 13.
Another son, Jeffrey Jr., died in 1996 of injuries received in a rock-climbing accident in Colorado. He was 24 and was editorial cartoonist for the Aspen Times.