Tom Toles

Tom Toles
Toles at the University at Buffalo's student newspaper, The Spectrum (1970)
Born	Thomas Gregory Toles (1951-10-22) October 22, 1951 (age 65) Buffalo, New York, U.S.
Nationality	American
Area(s)	cartoonist
Notable works	Editorial cartoons

Thomas Gregory "Tom" Toles (born October 22, 1951) is an American political cartoonist. He is the winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning. His cartoons typically present progressive viewpoints. Similar to Oliphant's use of his character Punk, Toles also tends to include a small doodle, usually a small caricature of himself at his desk, in the margin of his strip.

Toles wrote for The Buffalo Courier-Express, The Buffalo News and The Washington Post. He left The Buffalo News in 2002, accepting an offer from The Washington Post to replace their cartoonist Herblock, and is under contract by Universal Press Syndicate. Part of his acceptance of his new job required him to give up his United Feature-distributed daily and Sunday cartoon panel Randolph Itch 2 AM, a cartoon based on Toles' thoughts while battling insomnia. Toles was replaced at the Buffalo News by Adam Zyglis. In addition to Randolph Itch 2 AM, Toles also created a daily and Sunday comic strip about small children called Curious Avenue. It ran 1992-1994 through his future editorial cartooning syndicate, Universal Press Syndicate. A collection of the strip was published in 1993 through the publisher Andrews McMeel Publishing.

Toles' cartoons appear in more than 200 newspapers throughout the country. He received the National Cartoonist Society Editorial Cartoon Award for 2003 and the Herblock Prize for 2011.

Toles graduated magna cum laude from the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. He married Gretchen Saarnijoki in 1973; together they have two children, Amanda and Seth.