Doug Marlette, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist who created the syndicated strip Kudzu, has died in a car accident in Mississippi.

The 57-year-old cartoonist was a passenger in a car that struck a tree after the vehicle skidded on wet road.

Marlette was on his way home from working with a high school group that was doing a musical version of his Kudzu strip. Syndicated worldwide, Kudzu deals humorously with Southern life.

"Cartoons are windows into the human condition," Marlette said last year after joining the Tulsa World newspaper. "It's about life."

Born in Greensboro, N.C., Marlette began drawing political cartoons in 1972. He went on to work for the Charlotte Observer, the Atlanta Constitution, New York Newsday and the Tallahassee Democrat.

Marlette was highly regarded for his craft. His cartoons captured the National Headliner Award three times, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award for editorial cartooning twice and he has been the only cartoonist ever awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. The fellowship is usually awarded to a mid-career journalist.

He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1988. 

"He was more than a great cartoonist and author, he was a tremendous human being," said Robert E. Lorton III, the World's publisher and president, on the newspaper's website.

Lorton added Marlette's death was "a great tragedy, not only for the Tulsa World family, but for all who knew Doug."

Marlette's books include Shred This Book: The Scandalous Cartoons of Doug Marlette, In Your Face: A Cartoonist at Work and The Bridge, his first novel, published in 2001.