Truthout has been publishing Matt Bors‘ cartoons for more than a year now, and we’re not the only ones who have taken notice of him. Bors has won awards for his editorial cartooning including the Herblock Prize and the Society of Professional Journalists‘ Sigma Delta Chi Award, and he was a 2012 Pulitzer Prize finalist.

The acclaim is deserved. Bors combines an instinctively hilarious wit (that comes across in person, prose and art) with an unwillingness to pull punches. His cartoons almost always seem playful and clever, rather than bitter and cruel, even when he’s dealing with the grimmest topics. And his eye for detail means he can add something new even to an already-common observation: For example, the double standard evident in Rick Perry‘s attitudes toward the death penalty and abortion rights is made even more appalling by the nonchalance with which the Texas governor administers a lethal injection in a recent Bors cartoon [see above].

Nevertheless, to publish his collection of cartoons and essays, Life Begins At Incorporation – which he says “represents my life’s work” thus far – Bors turned to crowd-funding, raising money via Kickstarter. Full disclosure! I was one of the 725 people who chipped in a little to get Life Begins At Incorporation out into the world, and I have the postcard – featuring a perky little billionaire fertilized egg in a top hat – to prove it.

I talked to Bors about his approach to cartooning and writing, his political perspective, the evils of unpaid internships and “design competitions,” the future of the Avenging Uterus and more.

via Matt Bors: Drawing Terrible Things Without Causing Despair.