You said a morphful

Harassed at home and on the run abroad, political cartoonists can only dream of being essential players. But they can call the shots in a pen-and-ink world by using a visual tool, the morph.

Peter Schrank sees Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as materiel for President Bush’s pre-Ahmadinejad nuclear nightmare. Kevin “KAL” Kallaugher expertly links Iraq to Vietnam through an intricate ‘toon maneuver, the 30-year reverse succession. Godfrey “GADO” Mwampembwa starkly illustrates the danger of climate change with a signature death morph: Earth-to-mankind’s-thick-skull (Is anyone listening?) The late Tom Darcy of New York Newsday, a Pulitzer Prize winner, shows how President Nixon’s final disappearing act of resignation left a Ford in our future. Finally, a Kafkaesque metamorphosis from Bob Vincke depicts a creature trying to survive in an increasingly toxic environment -- and that should bug us all.