Short answers, pulled from the story.
The word cartoon comes from the Italian cartone and the Dutch karton, both meaning strong, heavy paper or pasteboard. It originally described full-size preparatory drawings made on sturdy paper as designs for paintings, frescoes, tapestries, or stained glass windows.
The modern humorous sense of cartoon dates from 1843, when Punch magazine applied the term to satirical drawings in its pages, particularly sketches by John Leech. The first of these parodied the preparatory cartoons for grand historical frescoes in the then-new Palace of Westminster.
James Gillray, working in London in the latter part of the 18th century, has been referred to as the father of the political cartoon. His work included lampooning George III and ridiculing the ambitions of revolutionary France and Napoleon.
Thomas Nast produced 160 cartoons relentlessly exposing the criminal character of the Tweed machine in New York City, helping to bring it down. When William Tweed fled to Spain, police identified him from Nast's cartoons and arrested him.
In 1921, J. H. Thomas, the leader of the National Union of Railwaymen, brought libel proceedings against the magazine of the British Communist Party over cartoons depicting the events of "Black Friday." Thomas won the lawsuit, which was notable as the first successful case of its kind in Britain in more than a century.
DC Thomson issued the first Dandy Comic in December 1937. It featured a design that broke from the broadsheet-sized, muted children's comics of the era, and Thomson followed its success with The Beano in 1938.