Cartoonist DOUG MARLETTE has been killed in a car crash in Mississippi. He was 57.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning illustrator was a passenger in a pickup truck which skidded in heavy rain before ploughing into a tree on Tuesday (10Jul07).

The driver, John P. Davenport, was treated at Baptist Memorial Hospital-North Mississippi in Oxford and has since been released.

Marlette had been on his way to visit friends in Oxford, after attending the funeral of his father last Friday (06Jul07) in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The popular artist began his cartooning career in 1972 at local paper The Charlotte Observer, and worked most recently at the newspaper Tulsa World.

His editorial cartoons and his comic strip Kudzu were syndicated worldwide and he won a host of prizes for his professional work, including the Pulitzer in 1988.

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?"

Robert E. Lorton III, publisher and president of Tulsa World, says 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."

He is survived by his wife Melinda and son, Jackson.