It seems like the question "who invented modern political satire?" can be refined to "at what point does political satire become modern?" Dante's Divine Comedy and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar both offered satirical perspectives on their politician contemporaries, but we aren't considering those to be modern. The article offers:
>differentiated from earlier political prints by iconography, audience, critical function, and the status of the satirist
As it continues we find that the late-17th-century Dutch satirist de Hooghe used a style that moves towards the modern political cartoon on some dimensions, but sticks to a stuffy didactic-prosaic formula in other ways. The conclusion can be inferred: nobody invented modern political satire; it slowly evolved from traditional humor-in-critique by innovations contributed from various people and at various times.
Yeah, I'm unpersuaded as to the definition of "modern" here. A lot of Aristophanes' work (c. 405-423 BC) still holds up today, if one understands the politics of the time.
You usually don't call the antique classicists modern, just after the resurrection of the antique in the renaissance and despisal of all unscientific myths, ghosts and religious rubbish you can call them so.
>differentiated from earlier political prints by iconography, audience, critical function, and the status of the satirist
As it continues we find that the late-17th-century Dutch satirist de Hooghe used a style that moves towards the modern political cartoon on some dimensions, but sticks to a stuffy didactic-prosaic formula in other ways. The conclusion can be inferred: nobody invented modern political satire; it slowly evolved from traditional humor-in-critique by innovations contributed from various people and at various times.