Tom Toles, the editorial cartoonist for the Washington Post, finally returned from his vacation today. But for those of you who’ve been missing him these past weeks, that single dose might not be enough to assuage your withdrawal symptoms. So to help out, I thought I’d share this image from long ago and far away.

Back in 1973, as a freshman at the State University of New Your at Buffalo, I worked on the student newspaper. That was when what I wanted to be when I grew up was a journalist of the Pete Hamill or Jimmy Breslin mold, handing in three opinionated slice-of-life columns each week. (I never had to desire to be a writer of fiction when I grew up because I always was a writer of fiction; it wasn’t anything I ever thought I had to become.) Tom Toles was also on the staff of the paper, the resident genius. And even though he was brilliant, he was also a nice, sweet guy with no ego. How often do you see that? So he was loved by all, and everybody wanted to get him to illustrate their stories.

I got lucky once. I crossed the border into Canada to attend Cosmic-Con, a Toronto comic-book convention, and convinced my editor at the paper to let me do a feature on the event. (That boss? Howard Kurtz, whose name you may recognize now that he’s a political talking head and the host of CNN’s Reliable Sources.) Tom drew this piece to go with the article.

So for one brief (very brief), shining moment, Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Tom Toles was also a superhero artist.