The man behind Denver’s iconic sports cartoons

CENTENNIAL, Colo. — Drew Litton, 67, wanted to be two things when he grew up. He yearned to shoot like “Pistol Pete” Maravich and to play the guitar like Eric Clapton.  

“I instead ended up playing basketball like Eric Clapton and guitar like Pete Maravich,” said Litton, laughing as he sat in his studio chair working on a cartoon depicting the Colorado Rockies’ string of losses in May. 

Litton didn’t become a professional athlete, but he turned his love of sports to cartooning, becoming the National Cartoonists Society Best Sports Cartoonist in 1993, a title he technically still holds since they discontinued the award the following year. 

He’s built a four-decade-long career that has become the cornerstone for sports cartoons in Denver as the city’s major sports teams produce superstars and bring home championships.

Drew Litton poses for a portrait. Photo: Peter Vo, Rocky Mountain PBS

Comic collections including Bill Waterson’s “Calvin and Hobbes” populate the shelves of his studio in the home he shares with his wife, Dianne, and their two dogs, Finnegan and Reilly. Cartoon figures lay meticulously placed on display throughout the room. 

Litton said he likes to work with inspiring art around him. 

Comics fascinated Litton from a young age. He remembers sitting with his grandfather, looking over the Sunday funnies as they pored over full-page comic strips in color; Litton, in awe of the artwork, while his grandfather chuckled at the jokes. 

“There was something incredibly unique about that experience, a seven-year-old me and my grandfather in his late 60s bridging that lifetime of experience over reading the comics,” Litton said.

“There’s something magical about that that doesn’t always happen with everything else in life.” 

Litton grew up in El Paso, Texas, where Friday night high school football games were like a religion to the community. Litton recalled a regular season game at his high school with 30,000 people in attendance. 

Win, Lose & Drew, is Litton’s own weekly comic strip and it often features Litton as a character. Photo: Peter Vo, Rocky Mountain PBS

At the same time, he attended the University of Texas at El Paso. Litton finally got an opportunity to work in the graphics department and started drawing cartoons for the paper, pulling inspiration from influential cartoonists such as Charles Schulz of Snoopy fame, and Walt Kelly, who drew the daily comic strip “Pogo”.

In 1982, Litton moved to Denver and started working for the Rocky Mountain News as a cartoonist. 

“Next thing you know, I’m sitting in Mile High Stadium watching my first NFL football game,” he said. 

When Litton first arrived in Colorado, Denver’s sports scene wasn’t as triumphant as it would later become. Denver had just two major league teams, the Denver Broncos (who had just finished an underwhelming season, going 2-7 in the regular season) and the Denver Nuggets (who had lost in the first round of their playoff series).

Litton was no stranger to mediocre teams. During his tenure at the University of Texas at El Paso, the football team had an overall record of 4-52.

“We had the single worst college football team in El Paso,” he said. “They were abysmal, but that’s where I kind of got my sense of humor from because when you’re down by 30, you just have to laugh through some stuff.” 

His sense of humor came through in his comics as he developed his own style, drawing players, coaches and fans in his own way, often exaggerating certain games, events and even characteristics of players. Litton draws with bold black lines that zig-zag and curve in imperfect ways, feeding into the highs and lows of Colorado sports. 

He said his role as a cartoonist was to march down the hill and shoot the wounded, metaphorically speaking. It was much easier to do that when the teams he covered were underperforming. 

“I always had a trick that I learned from another cartoonist that if you wanted to get a cartoon printed that was pushing the edge of the envelope, just draw the most outrageous thing you could possibly think of and show it first,” Litton said. 

“Make it where when you show it to your editor, they’d clutch their heart and go, ‘oh my God, no,’ and that’s when the one you really wanted would be accepted.” 

Litton would often attend games and draw cartoons in time for the following day’s daily Rocky Mountain News edition. 

The deadlines were often one to two hours after the game. 

Litton’s drawing of John Elway and Joe Sakic after the Colorado Avalanche won the Stanley Cup in 1996. Simpson has a framed print in his office. Photo courtesy Drew Litton

Litton’s art pays close attention to the games’ stories, singling out memorable moments, standout players and sometimes even reactions from fans across social media. 

All the ideas circulate in his head during the games as he brainstorms, so that when the game ends he can finish a cartoon in just an hour or two.

Litton said that the unemployment line and the possibility of eating packaged ramen for the rest of his life fueled his ideas to draw cartoons for the paper consistently. 

Litton’s run at the Rocky Mountain News ended in 2009 when the paper closed its doors. 

He has since worked for outlets including the Chicago Tribune, ESPN, 9News and more recently, The Colorado Sun. He’s also a nationally syndicated cartoonist through Andrews McMeel. 

At one point in his career, Litton juggled 12 cartoons a week. 

“There were times where I was going a little nutso, but at least I still have my ear,” Litton said. “I didn’t chop it off like Van Gogh did, though I’ve thought about it a few times.” 

In the decades following Litton’s first year in Denver, the Broncos have won three Super Bowls, the Nuggets won a national championship and the city now has four major professional sports teams including the Colorado Avalanche (who are also three-time Stanley Cup champions) and the Colorado Rockies, who Litton jokes is still a minor league team.

Almost nothing in the Denver sports scene is left undrawn by Litton, who has caricatured former Broncos quarterback John Elway and recently-fired Nuggets head coach Michael Malone.

“[Litton’s] caricatures are legendary. John Elway — who I believe wasn’t terribly thrilled with the way Drew depicted him — is such an iconic figure in his cartoons,” said Kevin Simpson, co-founder of The Colorado Sun. 

Simpson, who has known Litton since they both worked at the Rocky Mountain News newsroom,  has a framed Litton print of Elway haunting Joe Sakic, the leading scorer in the Colorado Avalanche’s 1996 championship season, hanging on his office wall. 

“My colleagues and I felt strongly that editorial cartoons deserved a spot in the paper,” said Simpson about contacting Litton to draw for the digital publication. 

“And so I remembered the fantastic work that Drew did and the tremendous learning curve that he navigated to understand Colorado’s sports scene and so my first call for a cartoonist was to Drew.” 

Simpson was adamant about The Colorado Sun having cartoonists because of the medium’s historical significance in newspapers. Editorial cartoons serve as a way to document the country’s history in a larger-than-life way, he said. 

“Single-panel cartoons like the ones that Drew draws, encapsulate Colorado sports history,” Simpson said.

Since 2018, The Colorado Sun has published Litton’s single-panel cartoons weekly every Friday.

Litton's artistic process has changed over the decades as well. What used to be a pen, paper and acetate ink process is now created on a  27-inch Wacom tablet.  

“There are good and bad things with technology, but [the tablet] has enabled me to keep up with deadlines,” Litton said.

Litton’s 1984 drawing of Broncos placekicker Rich Karlis attempting a field goal. Litton credits this as one of his most memorable comics. Photo courtesy Drew Litton

He likens the new technology to having an arsenal of tools at his disposal. The tablet allows him to resize his cartoons, add in layers and send in files electronically, something that the pen and paper process couldn’t allow. 

Technology isn’t always a good thing to Litton, however. With advancements in digital art, — along with the surge of artificial intelligence — becoming a cartoonist has never been more difficult. 

Litton said that there are programs that can churn out comic strips in any art style the user wants, as long as you feed it with someone else’s work. 

“It’s blatant plagiarism, [AI] takes the image, the idea, the labeling and just steals everything,” Litton said.

When parents and kids come to Litton wondering if cartooning is something they want to pursue, Litton tells them to tread carefully. 

Unless aspiring cartoonists are working directly for an animation company such as Pixar or an editorial publication, it’s hard to just make cartoons, he said. Cartoons have to compete with social media and artists, he said, deal with the ups and downs of freelancing and AI. 

“It’s more difficult than it ever was to become a cartoonist, and it was never easy in the first place,” Litton said. 

Litton now has his eyes set on drawing graphic novels for kids in the hopes of introducing the medium to a younger generation and creating a legacy in a medium that he loves. 

“I’m the luckiest guy in the world, married to the most wonderful woman in the world, living in the most beautiful state, where I get to make a living as a cartoonist,” Litton said. “When I played the 'Wheel of Fortune,' I guess I hit it all.”