| Dick Moores | |
|---|---|
 Jim Scancarelli drew Dick Moores in thisGasoline Alley anniversary strip (November 24, 2008). | |
| Born | Richard Arnold Moores (1909-12-12)December 12, 1909 Lincoln, Nebraska, U.S. |
| Died | April 22, 1986(1986-04-22) (aged 76) |
Notable works | Gasoline Alley |
| Awards | National Cartoonists Society Story Comic Strip Awards (1973, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1985) Reuben Award (1974) |
| Spouse | Gretchen |
Richard Arnold Moores (December 12, 1909 – April 22, 1986) was an American cartoonist whose best known work was thecomic stripGasoline Alley, which he worked on for nearly three decades.
Moores was born inLincoln, Nebraska, on December 12, 1909. After graduating from high school inFort Wayne, Indiana, he attended Fort Wayne Art School. He also received a year of training at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts before spending five years working for Chester Gould onDick Tracy. While working for Gould in Chicago, he met and married Gretchen, a musician.[1]
He metFrank King while in Chicago, sharing a studio with him while drawing his own strip,Jim Hardy, from 1936 to 1942. The strip, distributed byUnited Features Syndicate, was about a young man, down on his luck. It was never a success, and in its later years, pivoted to focus on acowboy supporting character, Windy, and his horse Paddles. The title character left the strip in 1940, and it was retitledWindy and Paddles from 1941 to 1942.[2][3]
That was followed by 14 years working onDisney comics, inking theMickey Mouse comic strip, drawing theUncle Remus and His Tales of Br'er Rabbit strip and laterScamp, and a short period in the 1950s atWestern Publishing drawing funny animal comic books. The best known of these is theMickey Mouse story "The Wonderful Whizzix" (Four Color #427, Oct. 1952), which some regard as the inspiration for the Disney'sThe Love Bug.[4]
In 1942, Moores teamed up with Jack Boyd, an effects animator at Walt Disney Studios, to form the companyTelecomics, Inc. Their intention was to produce a television show that would present still panels from a comic strip on television, with a narrator and voice actors performing the characters' voices, including an adaptation ofJim Hardy.[5] The program finally reached the air in September 1950 asNBC Comics, which ran for six months, until March 1951.[6] After the cancellation, Moores and Boyd continued to try to pitch aTelecomics series to sponsors, but they were not successful.
Moores moved to Florida when he was hired by Frank King in 1956 to assist him on theGasoline Alleydailies. King's former assistantBill Perry had taken over doing theSunday strip in 1951. Moores' signature began to appear on the strip in 1964, and when King died in 1969, Moores assumed writing and drawing duties for the daily strip. When Perry retired in 1975, Moores added the Sunday strip to his workload and combined the stories into one continuing story.
Moores relocated nearAsheville, North Carolina, where he spent the rest of his life. In his later years, Moores composed stories, penciled faces and sketched the action, and then sent the strips to another artist for inking, such as his assistant,Jim Scancarelli, who took over the strip upon his death. Moores died of liver and kidney failure.
Although in other strips, children would mature into adults,Gasoline Alley was the first comic strip in which adults aged. Allison "Skeezix" Wallet started out at a foundling left on bachelor Walt's doorstep in 1921, grew up to fight in the Pacific during WWII, married Nina Clock, and they had a daughter, Clovia, in 1949, who married Slim, a mechanic at Skeezix'sGasoline Alley garage.
Moores introduced local events into the comic strip. At the same point that Fort Wayne residents were trying to raise money to save a grand old theatre, the Embassy, from the wrecker's ball, and to restore it, the characters inGasoline Alley were trying to do the same with theirEmboyd Theatre. Even many Fort Wayne residents were unaware that their theatre had been originally called the Emboyd, named after Emma Boyd, daughter of the owner. (For that matter, neither of the Fort Wayne newspapers carried the syndicatedGasoline Alley strip.)
Gasoline Alley had strong characters that were animals. Joel was always with his mule (Becky), and Rufus carried his cat (Kitty) under his arm. A Doberman Pinscher (Kleine) and a Great Dane (Sieg) comically shared Slim and Clovia's already too-small apartment. One memorable story introduced a baby donkey with a forked tail, which the neighbors accuse of being a demon. While theLos Angeles Times speculated that the use of animal characters may be due to his Disney experience, Moores did not market as Disney did, though Frank King licensed a Clovia doll and held a contest to name Clovia.[7]
Moores said that Walt Wallet was his alter ego. "I use Walt to create homey situations and for anybody who's feeling his age to identify with," Moores said two months before his death. "He's the father figure. He's what keeps them together. He's the one I go to when I want to pull the strip together."[8]
Moores received theNational Cartoonists Society Story Comic Strip Awards for 1973, 1980, 1981, 1982 and 1985, and theirReuben Award for 1974 for his work on this strip.[9]
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