Tom Moore, ‘Archie’ cartoonist, dies

Cartoonist Tom Moore, who brought to life the escapades of the freckle-faced, red-haired character Archie Andrews, has died. He was 86.

Moore, who began drawing cartoons while in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War, died early Monday morning while in hospice care in his hometown of El Paso, Texas, said his son, Lito Bujanda-Moore, on Tuesday. He said his father was diagnosed with throat cancer within the past week and chose not to undergo treatment.

Moore’s creation was enduringly recognizable, according to Bart Beaty, a professor at the University of Calgary who is an “Archie” specialist.

“When a character has been around for more than 70 years, it’s part of our culture, and so even people who haven’t read them for 30 or 40 years say, ‘Oh, yeah, of course I know Archie,’” he said in an interview with The Toronto Star in 2014.

Moore drew Archie and his friends on and off from 1953 until he retired in the late 1980s. Annual sales of the comic regularly surpassed half a million during the 1960s, according to The El Paso Times.

“I did one comic book a month,” he told the newspaper in 1996. “I did everything. We always worked six months ahead. I’d be doing Christmas issues in June and beach stories with a foot of snow outside my window.”

After the war, Moore used funding available through the GI Bill to attend a school in New York for cartoonists. He studied under “Tarzan” comic strip illustrator Burne Hogarth.

Soon after, Moore signed up with Archie Comics in New York. Bob Montana created “Archie” in 1941, and Moore took over in 1953.

But by 1961, Moore couldn’t ignore the itch to be closer to the mountains of far western Texas, according to his son. He and his family moved from Long Island in New York to his native El Paso that year, and he later took a break from comics and worked in public relations. “He always felt that his heart belonged at the foot of the Franklin Mountains,” Bujanda-Moore told the newspaper.

Bujanda-Moore said his father loved every aspect of nature — trees, rivers, mountains and deserts. One year the family cooked their Thanksgiving meal at home, then took all of it out to the desert just east of El Paso. “We would be able to have a great Thanksgiving dinner under the stars,” he said.

Archie Comics’ editor-in-chief, Victor Gorelick, who has worked at the company for more than 50 years, said Moore “was a cartoonist’s cartoonist.” He said Archie Comics invited Moore back to help revamp Archie’s friend Jughead and remained with the company until he retired.

“Tom was very funny and had a knack for putting together really great, hilarious gags and special pages when he worked at Archie,” Gorelick said. “He was probably best known here for inking our Jughead relaunch decades ago. We’re all sad to hear this news and wish his family the very best during this time.”

After retiring, Moore kept tabs on Archie — and disagreed when the comic book company decided to kill off the character.

The El Paso Museum of Art displayed some of Moore’s work and his vast comic collection about 20 years ago.

“I think it’s such a kick that my stuff is going to be hanging at the museum,” he said at the time. “Who knew ‘Archie’ would have such universal appeal?”

Al Jazeera with The Associated Press