Saturday, July 23, 2016 the last Mary Worth newspaper strip drawn by Joe Giella appeared. I don't think it's a record but Joe has been drawing comics — books and strips — pretty continuously since 1946. Doing anything for seventy years is impressive but drawing comics is hard on the eyes…and on the lifestyle if you're as committed to meeting deadlines as Joe has always been.
Over the years, he worked on hundreds of different characters — in comic books, mostly for DC. He was associated with Batman for a long time…and I don't think there's anyone alive who worked on the Caped Crusader before Joe did. Often, he was miscast as an inker of other artists' work instead of doing it all himself. It was usually better when he did it all himself.
The Mary Worth strip continues without him. For some time now, June Brigman and her husband Roy have been doing the Sunday pages to lighten the burden on Joe. Now, they'll do the daily strips also while Joe takes it a bit easier. He is not retiring completely but will now focus mainly on commissions.
The history of Mary Worth probably begins with a strip called Apple Mary which began in 1934, the creation of cartoonist Martha Orr. Apple Mary was a good-hearted victim of the Depression who sold apples and didn't let her own meager life stop her from helping others. In 1939, Ms. Orr retired from cartooning, reportedly to devote all her time to her family. At that point, a new strip appeared in its spot in most newspapers. It was officially called Mary Worth's Family and the title character, though not a seller of apples, looked a lot like ol' Apple Mary and went around helping others the same way.
The new strip was written by Allen Saunders and drawn by artist Dale Connor, who had formerly assisted Martha Orr. It looked so much like the old strip that many of the newspapers that ran it didn't bother changing the name on their pages. Probably at the suggestion of lawyers, the syndicate (King Features) has always maintained that Mary Worth's Family was a replacement strip, not a continuation. Eventually, its name changed to Mary Worth.
Allen Saunders wrote it for a long, long time and later his son John wrote it. Ken Ernst drew it for a long time after Connor left. After Ernst died, the job went to a wonderful, unsung artist named Bill Ziegler who worked for years as a ghost/assistant for other artists and finally got to draw and sign the strip from 1986 to 1990. There were others in there too but it's been drawn by Giella since 1994 and written by Karen Moy since 2004.
It's amazing that at her age, Mary is still finding troubled people to help. I'm more impressed though by the longevity of Joe Giella, a fine gentleman and an amazing artist.