Some of the people who sat down with us for this film are no longer with us. Their voices, and their work, live on here.
Remembered this month
Nick Armington
Director, The Folks Behind the Funnies
October 15, 1962 to October 18, 2003 · age 41
Portrait by Ron Ferdinand, 2003
Nick Armington followed his father, Hervey Foster Armington, into filmmaking. A New Yorker and Dartmouth graduate, he made corporate films for MeadWestvaco before founding Alchemedia with his wife, Sari, in 1996. He was also a composer and keyboard player. He was in production on The Funnies: Life in the Comics with KQED when he died in a diving accident off Anacapa Island, three days after his 41st birthday. The film that grew from it, The Folks Behind the Funnies, carries his name as director.
Bil Keane taught himself to draw by copying the cartoons in The New Yorker, and in 1960 launched The Family Circus, a single round panel drawn from life with his own wife and children. It grew into one of the most widely read features in the world. He won the Reuben Award as Cartoonist of the Year in 1982, and his son Jeff carries the panel on today.
Scott Adams turned his years in corporate offices into Dilbert, which first appeared in 1989 and made the cubicle a fixture of the comics page. He received the Reuben Award as Cartoonist of the Year in 1997.
Mort Walker grew up in Kansas and created Beetle Bailey in 1950, starting as a college humor strip before the lazy private enlisted in the Army. In 1954 he and Dik Browne launched Hi and Lois. He founded the International Museum of Cartoon Art in 1974 and drew his strips for nearly seven decades.
Chris Browne helped his father, Dik Browne, on Hagar the Horrible from its start in 1972, and wrote and drew the strip himself from 1989. Along the way he created two strips of his own, Chris Browne’s Comic Strip and Raising Duncan.
Brooklyn-born Mell Lazarus created Miss Peach in 1957 and Momma in 1970, drawing Momma until 2016. He won the Reuben Award in 1981, served two terms as president of the National Cartoonists Society, and wrote two novels.
John McMeel co-founded Universal Press Syndicate with Jim Andrews in 1970, the company that became Andrews McMeel Universal. It brought readers Calvin and Hobbes, Doonesbury, The Far Side, Garfield and Cathy.