Dick Hodgins Jr. (May 9, 1931 – April 3, 2016) was an American

cartoonist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comic book illustrators in that they produce both the literary and ...

whose work included illustration,

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

s, and

political cartoon A political cartoon, a form of editorial cartoon, is a cartoon graphic with caricatures of public figures, expressing the artist's opinion. An artist who writes and draws such images is known as an editorial cartoonist. They typically combine a ...

Career

Born in

Binghamton, NY Binghamton () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, and serves as the county seat of Broome County. Surrounded by rolling hills, it lies in the state's Southern Tier region near the Pennsylvania border, in a bowl-shaped valley at the conflue ...

, the Hodgins family moved to Queens, NY. Dick, the son of

Orlando Sentinel The ''Orlando Sentinel'' is the primary newspaper of Orlando, Florida, and the Central Florida region. It was founded in 1876 and is currently owned by Tribune Publishing Company. The ''Orlando Sentinel'' is owned by parent company, '' Tribune P ...

cartoonist, Dick Hodgins Sr., was twelve years old when a sale to the now defunct

New York Mirror The ''New-York Mirror'' was a weekly newspaper published in New York City from 1823 to 1842, succeeded by ''The New Mirror'' in 1843 and 1844. Its producers then launched a daily newspaper named ''The Evening Mirror'', which published from 1844 ...

for one dollar spurred him to a cartoon career. After attending the School of Visual Arts and Military Service (editing and drawing for a base newspaper in Osaka, Japan and contributing to

Pacific Stars and Stripes ''Stars and Stripes'' is a daily American military newspaper reporting on matters concerning the members of the United States Armed Forces and their communities, with an emphasis on those serving outside the United States. It operates from insi ...

) Hodgins returned to the educational film industry. He then joined the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...

illustrating feature news stories. Hank Ketcham, creator of Dennis the Menace, selected Hodgins to draw his second comic strip " Half Hitch" for

King Features Syndicate King Features Syndicate, Inc. is a American content distribution and animation studio, consumer product licensing and print syndication company owned by Hearst Communications that distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editoria ...

. Hodgins also created editorial cartoons for the

New York Daily News The New York ''Daily News'', officially titled the ''Daily News'', is an American newspaper based in Jersey City, NJ. It was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson as the ''Illustrated Daily News''. It was the first U.S. daily printed in ta ...

. After cancellation of "Half Hitch" he took on the production of King Features iconic comic strip " Henry". Hodgins is named in the end-credits of the episode entitled "The Dead File" in Season 9 of

Murder, She Wrote ''Murder, She Wrote'' is an American crime drama television series, created by Peter S. Fischer, Richard Levinson and William Link, starring Angela Lansbury, and produced and distributed by Universal Television for the CBS network. The series f ...

for the original comic strips featuring "Jessica Fox." This is also acknowledged on

imdb.com IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, p ...

. Hodgins drew cartoons for Pigmeat Markham's autobiography Here Comes the Judge. Hodgins worked full-time preparing and renovating the end-product art of

Dik Browne Richard Arthur Allan Browne (August 11, 1917 – June 4, 1989) was an American cartoonist, best known for writing and drawing ''Hägar the Horrible'' and ''Hi and Lois''. Biography Browne attended Cooper Union and got his start at the ''New York ...

's popular comic strip " Hägar the Horrible" and continued to create editorial cartoons for several Connecticut newspapers along with the occasional advertising assignment.

Family

A widower with two sons, Hodgins lived in

Wilton, CT Wilton is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. As of the 2020 census, the town population was 18,503. In 2017, it was the sixth-wealthiest town per capita in Connecticut, the wealthiest U.S. state per capita. Officially recog ...

until his passing on April 3, 2016.

Awards

Hodgins won the

National Cartoonist Society The National Cartoonists Society (NCS) is an organization of professional cartoonists in the United States. It presents the National Cartoonists Society Awards. The Society was born in 1946 when groups of cartoonists got together to entertain the ...

Advertising and Illustration Award for 1964 and 1966, and their Editorial Cartoon Award for 1972 and 1976.

References

External links

NCS Awards
American cartoonists 1931 births 2016 deaths School of Visual Arts alumni {{US-cartoonist-stub