Cartoonist Doug Marlette Dies in Crash

This undated photo provided by North Carolina Festival of the Book shows Doug Marlette. Marlette, a Pulitzer-winning cartoonist and North Carolina native who once worked at The Charlotte Observer, who was killed in a single-car accident Tuesday, July 10, 2007, in Mississippi. He was 57. Marlette was the passenger in the car, which struck a tree in wet conditions, said John Garrison, the coroner in Mississippi's Marshall County. (AP Photo/Festival of the Book) (AP)

"The Bridge" wasn't exactly a hit in Hillsborough, the small town west of Raleigh that is home to several well-known writers. They felt Marlette based some of the book's less-than-admirable characters on local residents.

"He was an opinionated man and he would get in trouble for it," Crichton said. "Part of the great spirit of Doug was that he was both full of opinions and full of kindness."

Marlette received death threats for a cartoon he drew in 2002 that depicted a Muslim driving a rental truck with a nuclear weapon on board. Above were the words, "What Would Muhammad Drive?"

Such criticism was unlikely to dissuade Marlette, whom friend and writer Will Blythe described as a "fearless guy with a big heart. ... I never heard him say anything boring." Blythe got an e-mail from Marlette on Monday with the first chapter of his new book.

"I used to say to him that it was criminal that somebody so good at drawing should be able to write so well," Blythe said. "As great as he was at drawing, as great as he was at writing, as a conversationalist, he was equally great."

Last week, Marlette delivered the eulogy for his father, Elmer Monroe Marlette, a World War II veteran whose son registered as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War.

"There were many tearful confrontations, arguments and shouting matches between my father and me over that abominable war, and many harsh words we wished we could retrieve," Marlette said in the eulogy.

"But when the time came for me to face my draft board, and make my case, collect the letters and testimony to my anti-war commitment from teachers, ministers and family, my father wrote the draft board the most eloquent letter one could hope for, not only testifying to the sincerity of his son's beliefs, but offering to volunteer himself to go to Vietnam in my place."

Born in Greensboro, Marlette grew up in North Carolina, Mississippi and Florida. He graduated from Florida State in 1971 and joined the Observer the next year. After more than a decade in Charlotte, he moved to the Atlanta Constitution before stops at New York Newsday and the Tallahassee Democrat.

"Cartoons are windows into the human condition," Marlette said in 2006 after joining the staff at the Tulsa World. "It's about life."

Marlette was a distinguished visiting professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's journalism school, and was inducted into the school's Hall of Fame in 2002.

Robert E. Lorton III, publisher and president of the Tulsa World, told the newspaper's Web site that Marlette's death was "a great tragedy, not only for the Tulsa World family, but for all who knew Doug."

"He was more than a great cartoonist and author, he was a tremendous human being," Lorton said. "Words cannot express the grief that we are all feeling today."

Survivors include his wife, Melinda, and an adult son, Jackson.

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Associated Press writers Shelia Byrd in Jackson, Miss., and Allen G. Breed in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.