One of the world's most-read cartoonists, Mort Walker died early this morning at the age of 94. He was a professional cartoonist for eighty years.
That's right. I said he was a professional cartoonist for eighty years. He was selling 'em from the age of 14 and drawing them years before then. In September of 1950, he launched his first of his many syndicated newspaper strips, Beetle Bailey. Originally set at a college, the feature didn't really take off until a few months later when he shifted it to an army setting, drawing on his own military experiences.
It soon became one of the most popular comic strips of all time and Mort could have had a very fine, lucrative life just producing it until he could draw no longer. Instead, he began expanding. He and his friend Dik Browne began Hi and Lois in 1954 and then he and Frank Roberge started Mrs. Fitz's Flats in 1957. In 1961, Mort and Jerry Dumas gave us Sam's Strip, which only lasted two years but which was revived (somewhat changed) as Sam & Silo in 1977.
There was also Boner's Ark, which Walker started in 1968, signing it with his real first name, Addison. There was also The Evermores, which he started in 1982 with Johnny Sajem. There was also Gamin & Patches which "Addison" launched in 1987. Some of these strips didn't last long but Mort still had an amazing track record…and Beetle Bailey, Hi and Lois and Sam & Silo still persist to this day.
They will not suffer the loss of Mort because for years, they were produced by a squadron of Walker friends and relatives, with Mort writing and drawing as his health allowed. King Features Syndicate distributed all but Gamin & Patches, and Mort's output was so much a part of King's offerings that the New York office referred to his Connecticut studio as "King Features North."
Mort himself was a cheery, affable fellow who was also very involved in the National Cartoonists Society (serving as an officer and winning many awards from it) and in 1974, he opened the Museum of Cartoon Art, said to be the first museum devoted to the art of comics. The times I encountered him, he was delightful to be around and always willing to draw Beetle or Sarge for any of his fans. He sure had a lot of them.
If you'd like to know more about this extraordinary fellow, I would recommend a book he wrote in 1974 called Backstage at the Strips. It's kind of an autobiography up to that point, and a look at how he and others produced their strips back then. Here's an Amazon link to a paperback version that's still in print. It's also a love letter to the cartooning profession — a profession that served him well (and vice-versa) for, like I said, eighty years. That's right: Eighty years!