RIP – BIL KEANE

EXPIRED: 11/08/11 – Bil Keane, 89, was a cartoonist who’s first regular comic strip was called Silly Philly which only ran in the Philadelphia Bulletin from 1946 to 1959. A syndicated strip, Channel Chuckles, premiered in 1954 and ran until 1977. But it was in 1960, when he moved from Pennsylvania to Arizona that he created the long-running newspaper comic The Family Circus. That makes it 51 years old and it’s still in syndication.

Believe it or not, Keane started by mimicking cartoons in The New Yorker, a magazine that would never touch The Family Circus.

Although he started out as “Bill Keane”, he dropped the second L from his name “to be distinctive.” What he should have done was to use his more distinctive middle name, Aloysius.

His son Jeff is expected to take over daily production of strip.

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RIP – TONY DIPRETA

EXPIRED: 06/02/10 – Tony DiPreta, 88, grew up in Stamford, Connecticut and didn’t know he liked to draw until he heard that a local comic strip artist made $50,000 a year. So he started drawing too. Eventually penning Joe Palooka.

The comic book industry was booming back then, and just about any hack could get a job sweeping floors or running errands for comic bigwigs and they were always in need of a story.

DiPreta’s first job was working in color separation and engraving for one of the many companies that prepped comic book art for publication, and he also picked up lettering work on Lyman Young’s newspaper strip, Tim Tyler’s Luck.

But with most books at the time, the needed filler – and eventually he was allowed a one page gag in National Comics #8, published in 1941.