In a Gary Larson cartoon from The Far Side (1980–95), a pair of archeologists wearing pith helmets and short pants discover “the mummified remains of a prehistoric cave-painter—still clutching his brush!” The artist’s skeleton lies on the cave floor with a stone-tipped spear lodged in his ribcage. On the wall is the artist’s final work, a black-line drawing of a bison in the style of Lascaux but with the face of a slack-jawed caveman protruding from the bison’s ass. Our scientists offer their expert assessment: “Seems he made an enemy, though.” Maybe it is my own nostalgia for the twentieth century’s printed “funny pages” in which I read The Far Side as a kid, but Larson’s violent origin story of the political cartoon provides clear insights into the history of cartoons. First, it shows that the cartoon is rooted in the oldest forms of human visual representation, such as cave paintings, pictographs, and hieroglyphics. Some scholars date the origin of the political cartoon to 1360 BCE with a caricature of the pharaoh Akhenaten protesting his effort to impose monotheism over Egypt. (The archive leaves no word on the fortunes of the satirist.) Second, Larson makes light of a very serious...