It would depend on which type of cartooning we're talking about.
Favourite long-form cartoonist: This would actually be a duo. Albert Uderzo did the drawing and Rene Goscinny did the writing for the Asterix comics.
Favourite newspaper-style cartoonist would have to be Bill Waterson (Calvin and Hobbes), though he stopped the strip in the mid 1990's. Favourite that is still going would be Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman, who write/draw Zits.
Favourite author? I couldn't even begin to pick one. My favourite book, though, is Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, the book the movie Secret of NIMH was based on. Yes, it's a book written for teens, but it's been my favourite since the early 1980's, back when I was a teen.
