Tom Moore, the cartoonist who brought to life the adventures of a freckled-face, red-haired character and his friends in the "Archie" comics, has passed away at the age of 86 in El Paso, Texas, according to The Associated Press.
Moore, who started drawing cartoons while serving in the U.S. Navy during the Korean war, died early Monday morning in hospice care in El Paso, said his son Lito Bujanda-Moore. Bujanda-Moore said his father had been diagnosed with throat cancer the week before and decided not to go through treatment.
Moore drew the character of Archie Andrews and his friends intermittently between 1953 and the late 1980s, after which he retired. The annual sales of the comic series exceeded a half-million dollars during the 1960s, according to The El Paso Times.
"I did one comic book a month," Moore said in an interview 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, which provided benefits to World War II veterans, to attend a New York school for cartoonists with "Tarzan" comic strip ilustrator Burne Hogarth as his mentor.
After his studies, Moore joined Archie Comics in New York. Bob Montana was responsible for creating the character of "Archie" in 1941, and Moore took over in 1953.
In 1961, Moore decided to move back to his hometown El Paso from Long Island with his family, and later took a break from comics and started working in public relations.
The editor-in-chief of Archie Comics, Victor Gorelick, who has been with the company for more than five decades, called Moore a "cartoonist's cartoonist." He noted that Archie Comics had invited Moore back to help re-vamp the character of Jughead, Archie's friend, and stayed with the company until his retirement. Even after he retired, Moore kept tabs on Archie - and disagreed with the comic book company's decision to kill off the character.
"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."
