V.C. Rogers — known to his friends as Cullum — is a paradigm of local cartooning, having spent his career working for a trio of regional newspapers covering the triangle of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Recently pushed into early retirement by the elimination of his position at the alt-weekly Indy Week, at least Rogers went out on top: taking First Place in for his cartoons from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia.
Rogers is also known as a dogged academic of comics art, having amassed one of the largest private libraries of cartoon books in the world. He is the author of the Golden Notebook, the complete story of the AAEC, and is currently working on his magnum opus, a history of magazine parodies by college humor magazines.
[Throughout his life, Rex Babin championed those who focused on state and local issues in editorial cartoons, a field that he and other cartoonists felt was regularly overlooked by journalism contests. The "Rex Babin Memorial Award for Excellence in Local Cartooning" was launched in 2017 to celebrate those working in this niche. To that end, we will be showcasing each cartoonist who entered the contest this year, one or two each day in alphabetical order (more or less), leading up to the AAEC Convention in Sacramento, CA, and the announcement of the award winner on Saturday, Sept. 22.]
