The Wall Street Journal, that bastion of boring, er, exceptional business reportage, rolled off the presses for the first time today in 1889. In its early years it was know for its fiercely independent streak—a novelty in the days of yellow journalism. Some of that objectivity has recently been called into question, with Rupert Murdoch, the uber-conservative owner of the News Corporation, purchasing the paper late in 2007. While the paper hasn't as yet turned into the kind of conservative mouthpiece that Murdoch's Fox News is known as, there's been plenty of strife and in-fighting over the new direction of the paper.

Despite all that, we still love the Journal, especially for its campy dot drawings of its writers and the subjects of their articles. They've got five illustrators on staff just to keep up—and they keep it real: