An editorial cartoon, also known as a non cartoon, is an illustration containing a commentary that usually relates to current events or personalities.

They typically combine artistic skill, hyperbole and biting humour in order to question authority and draw attention to corruption and other social ills.

Notable editorial cartoons include Benjamin Franklin's "Join, or Die" (1754), on the need for unity in the American colonies; "The Thinkers Club" (1819), a response to the surveillance and censorship of universities in Germany under the Carlsbad Decrees; and E. H. Shepard's "The Goose-Step" (1936), on the rearmament of Germany under Hitler. "The Goose-Step" is one of a number of notable cartoons first published in the British Punch magazine.

Institutions which archive and document editorial cartoons include the Center for the Study of Political Graphics in the United States, and the British Cartoon Archive in the United Kingdom.

Editorial cartoons and editorial cartoonists are recognised by a number of awards, for example the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning (for US cartoonists, since 1922) and the British Press Awards' "Cartoonist of the Year".