Now he makes a living by skewering pompous public figures and politicians of every political stripe. Markstein, is an artist at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and was previously the cartoonist for the Tribune Newspapers in Arizona.

His many awards for cartoons and illustrations include the Milwaukee Press Club Award, Cox Newspapers' Best Editorial Cartoonist award, a second-place National Headliner Award, a third-place Berryman award from the National Press Foundation (both in 1997) and the 1997 John Fischetti Editorial Cartoonist Competition for 1997. He won the Global Media Award for Excellence in Population Reporting two years in a row (2001, 2002).