Cartoon writer and cartoonist Jack Enyart died at home on Sunday October 13, taken from us by pancreatic cancer. He was 69 years old and one of the cheeriest, friendliest people I ever met.
That first meeting was around 1976, give or take a year. He'd been drawing gag cartoons for magazines that didn't pay all that well and decided to try writing comic book scripts for Western Publishing's Gold Key line. After many a rejection, he appealed to one of the editors to tell him what he was doing wrong. The editor there gave him copies of a couple of my old scripts and said something like "This is what we're looking for." My phone number was on them so Jack called and asked if he could pay me to tutor him.
I wouldn't do this today but back then, no one had ever asked me for any kind of advice…and Jack seemed so nice on the phone that I invited him over. I think he insisted on stopping on the way over at my favorite pizzeria and picking up a pie we shared as I told him whatever I could. I didn't think I told him anything he didn't already know but after that, he began selling scripts to Gold Key and that somehow led to work writing cartoons.
Warner Brothers was doing a lot of what they called "paste-up" shows for CBS — half-hour Bugs Bunny specials that contained a few minutes of new animation wrapped-around judiciously chosen clips from the classic era. So he was the writer of the 1979 Bugs Bunny Thanksgiving Diet special and the 1980 Bugs Bunny Mystery Special and the 1982 Bugs Bunny's Mad World of Television and so on. He also wrote for all the local cartoon studios on shows including Scooby Doo, Heathcliff, Bionic Six, Fraggle Rock, Duck Tales and Alvin and the Chipmunks and occasionally did voices as well. He worked for me on Richie Rich and on some of the Hanna-Barbera comics I edited in the seventies.
Jack — a notorious snappy dresser — billed himself as "Man About Toon" and taught the craft of animation writing for many years in many venues, including online. You can watch a one-hour video interview with him on this page over on his website. While you're there, take a look at some of the other pages.
He was smart and funny and he really loved cartoons…though not as much as he loved Kay, his darling wife/partner of 36 years. She says there will be a "bang-up memorial celebration" some time next year. Just try and keep me away.