Eldon Dedini, R.I.P.

A great magazine cartoonist — whose style is familar to everyone who ever opened a Playboy and got past the breasts — has passed away at the age of 84. Eldon Dedini put in several years at Disney as a gagman (on Donald Duck shorts, Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Fun and Fancy Free and a few others) before he began selling cartoons to Esquire. They liked his work enough to not only fill their pages with his drawings but also to hire him to write gags for other artists. In 1959, he segued to Playboy and became one of their most prolific and valuable cartoonists. The National Cartoonists Society gave him their award for gag cartooning four times, which should give you some idea of how respected he was by his peers. Here's a link to the New York Times obit.