Bruce Quast
Comic Strip and Editorial Cartoonist
For 24 years, Bruce Quast scoured the latest goings-ons in and around Rockford for opportunities to make people laugh — or think.
The political cartoons he produced for the Register Star picked apart the news under four Rockford mayors and five Illinois governors. He once depicted video gambling excitement in one frame — and money being flushed down a toilet in another. He could take a lighter tone, too, as in his cartoon featuring Cher look-alikes hunting for Sharefest, which mobilizes thousands of volunteers each year to spruce up the community.
“My cartoons reflect the way the average reader would react in a funny way,” Quast said of the cartoons that started appearing on the newspaper’s Opinion page in 1994. “I want to make the reader think and consider a different point of view, or maybe I am reflecting their point of view.”
Quast’s last weekly cartoon will appear Sunday on the Opinion page.
Quast, 61, produced 1,500 to 1,600 cartoons over the years, most of which he has saved in his home office.
