Bill Keane

Bil Keane
Keane at work in his studio in 1990
Born	William Aloysius Keane (1922-10-05)October 5, 1922 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died	November 8, 2011(2011-11-08) (aged 89) Paradise Valley, Arizona, U.S.
Nationality	American
Area(s)	Cartoonist
Notable works	Family Circus Channel Chuckles
Awards	full list

William Aloysius Keane (October 5, 1922 – November 8, 2011), better known as Bil Keane, was an American cartoonist most notable for his work on the newspaper comic The Family Circus. It began in 1960 and continues in syndication, drawn by his son Jeff Keane.

Keane was born in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania neighborhood of Crescentville and attended parochial school at St. William Parish and Northeast Catholic High School. While a schoolboy, he taught himself to draw by mimicking the style of the cartoons published in The New Yorker. His first cartoon was published on May 21, 1936 on the amateur page of the Philadelphia Daily News. While in high school, his in-comic signature was spelled "Bill Keane", but early in his career, he omitted the second L from his first name "to be distinctive".

Keane served in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1945, drawing for Yank and creating the "At Ease with the Japanese" feature for the Pacific edition of Stars and Stripes.

Keane worked for the Philadelphia Bulletin as a staff artist from 1946 to 1959, where he launched his first regular comic strip Silly Philly. His first syndicated strip, Channel Chuckles, a series of jokes related to television, premiered in 1954 and ran until 1977. In 1959, the Keane family moved to Paradise Valley, Arizona. Keane's daily newspaper panel The Family Circus premiered on February 29, 1960. Keane was the president of the National Cartoonists Society from 1981 to 1983 and was the emcee of the Society's annual awards banquet for 16 years.