On Monday Mark Evanier reported the death of cartooning vet Howard Post. Post had worked as a writer and artist on just about every funny comic book character from the ’40s on, including Harvey (he probably created Spooky and Little Hot Stuff), DC (Bob Hope, Martin and Lewis, and creating Anthro), Marvel (in 1953 and again in the ’80s where he drew many, many comics for the Star line.) Spurge has a full obit.

The 1960s were stuffed with important comics assignments for Post. In addition to the ongoing Harvey gig, Post spent some time at Paramount as the head of their Cartoon Studios (1964-1965), worked briefly as an independent film producers, created the oddball Anthro comic for a DC in the throes of a post-Marvel identity crisis (it lasted six issues, the last with Wally Wood inking Post), and launched the comic strip Dropouts with United Feature Syndicate. The Dropouts ran from 1968 until 1981. With its archetypal cast, minimalist surroundings, dependency on verbal humor, Post’s surprisingly facile magazine-illustration style line, and the general sarcasm on display, it was one of the emblematic strips of the post-1950s, pre-1980s newspaper strip “sarcasm” era: a strip that could be reduced to a tiny size on the shrinking comics page, and that could be remembered for one or two lines of a verbal jab.


The local paper has a more formal obit, with a nice remembrance of the man and his family and other times:

Mr. Post, who spoke several languages and played several instruments, lived a Bohemian life in artsy Leonia. “My sister and I were raised in a very cultural world,” said Mr. Post’s daughter Andee Post. “Our parents were very talented people and I remember sitting at the top of the steps watching the parties they gave.” At one party, she said, Philippe Petit –who in 1974 walked a tightrope between the World Trade Center towers– did the same on the family’s Paulin Boulevard front lawn.



Craig Yoe has several posts of old Post comics, which show how natural and fluid he was…the very essence of cartooning, really.

Post is survived by two daughters, a sister, four grandchildren and his longtime companion, one-time Marvel publicist Pamela Rutt.

1 COMMENT

  1. So sad, Such a great artist. I remember when I did Art Returns for Marvel. One of the best things was to find artwork from the star comic line. Don’t get me wrong I love working on the super-heroes stuff but the Star Comic line was very fun and the art was great to look at. There was a lot of pages from these series a lot of books and titles. Great job.

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