When Henry Payne IV was growing up in Charleston, he assumed he would one day work for the family business, Payne Engineering.

Instead, he became the Detroit News political cartoonist, putting visual exclamation points on the news.

"A cartoonist is just a chronicler of the passing scene," he said over the phone from his newsroom. "Sometimes it's satire, sometimes it's a bold image, sometimes it's a catchy punch line.

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Henry Payne IV by Henry Payne IV.

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The younger Payne, now 45, thought his future lay with the company until he struggled with calculus his senior year at boarding school.

By the time he graduated from Princeton University in 1984, he had been editorial cartoonist for two student newspapers and was the winner of the Tribune Company Syndicate's National College Cartoonist's Contest.

"I always tell him that even though I think with a different side of the brain than he does, I'm still in the manufacturing business," Payne said. "Every day I start with a blank sheet of paper and have to come up with a finished product by the end of the day."

After Princeton, he worked a year and a half as staff artist and editorial cartoonist at the Charleston Daily Mail, where he had served two summer internships while in college.

Before coming to Detroit in 2000, he lived in the nation's capitol, working as political cartoonist and wire cartoon editor for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain. Ten cartoonists funneled their work to him. "I'd go through and select what we wanted to use on the wire."

Journalists are by nature skeptical, he said. They listen to what politicians say, then scrutinize what they do. "I always say hypocrisy is the mother's milk of satire."    

In addition to the political cartoons, Payne does a once-a-week feature cartoon for the News about cars and their place in America.

When Henry Payne IV was growing up in Charleston, he assumed he would one day work for the family business, Payne Engineering.

Instead, he became the Detroit News political cartoonist, putting visual exclamation points on the news.

"A cartoonist is just a chronicler of the passing scene," he said over the phone from his newsroom. "Sometimes it's satire, sometimes it's a bold image, sometimes it's a catchy punch line.

Payne's father, Henry Payne III, runs Payne Engineering, which makes solid-state power controls that monitor the heat and speed of big industrial machines.

The younger Payne, now 45, thought his future lay with the company until he struggled with calculus his senior year at boarding school.

By the time he graduated from Princeton University in 1984, he had been editorial cartoonist for two student newspapers and was the winner of the Tribune Company Syndicate's National College Cartoonist's Contest.

"I always tell him that even though I think with a different side of the brain than he does, I'm still in the manufacturing business," Payne said. "Every day I start with a blank sheet of paper and have to come up with a finished product by the end of the day."

After Princeton, he worked a year and a half as staff artist and editorial cartoonist at the Charleston Daily Mail, where he had served two summer internships while in college.

Before coming to Detroit in 2000, he lived in the nation's capitol, working as political cartoonist and wire cartoon editor for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain. Ten cartoonists funneled their work to him. "I'd go through and select what we wanted to use on the wire."

Journalists are by nature skeptical, he said. They listen to what politicians say, then scrutinize what they do. "I always say hypocrisy is the mother's milk of satire."    

In addition to the political cartoons, Payne does a once-a-week feature cartoon for the News about cars and their place in America.

Cars run up front in the Payne family ethos.

"He and I have raced together often at major race tracks," Payne said. "We've done 160 miles per hour at Daytona."

Payne races vintage sports cars from the late 1960s and early 1970s. "It's equivalent to the seniors tour. Once the cars are too old for the regular tour, amateurs like us buy them and continue to race them." 

Payne and his wife of 22 years, Talbot, are the parents of two boys, Henry, 17, and Sam, 15. Talbot has been a homemaker since coming to Detroit, but in Washington the former art history major worked for art galleries.

Payne does a rare double for a cartoonist, reporting and writing stories for the News as well. "I found that there are a lot of stories that weren't being covered. I do a lot of reporting on environmental issues, automotive issues."

He also writes for The Wall Street Journal and the conservative National Review.

His father writes occasional letters and op-ed pieces for the Gazette and Sunday Gazette-Mail, decrying what he regards as the media's premature embrace of global warming theory. The younger Payne agrees with his father that human-caused global warming is far from proven.

"No one denies that the planet is in a warming cycle, has been since 1850," the younger Payne said.

What does the future hold?

"I love this business, the newspaper business. I think I'll be in it for life, whether as a writer, editor or cartoonist. Hopefully all three. Editorial cartooning is a marvelous medium. It can be whimsical and off the cuff on sports and entertainment issues, and the next day you capture a somber issue like Middle East politics."

To contact staff writer Bob Schwarz, use e-mail or call 348-1249.