Dick Moores

Richard Arnold Moores (December 12, 1909 – April 22, 1986) was an American cartoonist whose best known work was the comic strip Gasoline Alley, which he worked on for nearly three decades.

Moores was born in Lincoln, Nebraska on December 12, 1909. After graduating from high school in Fort Wayne, Indiana, he attended Fort Wayne Art School. He also received a year of training at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts before spending five years working for Chester Gould on Dick Tracy. While working for Gould in Chicago, he met and married Gretchen, a musician.

He met Frank King while in Chicago, sharing a studio with him while drawing his own strip from 1936 to 1942: initially known as Jim Hardy, it later focused on a cowboy supporting character, Windy, and his horse, Paddles.

That was followed by 14 years working for Disney, drawing Uncle Remus and later Scamp and a short period in the 1950s at Western Publishing drawing funny animal comic books. The best known of these is the Mickey Mouse story "The Wonderful Whizzix" (Four Color #427, Oct. 1952), which some regard as the inspiration for the Disney's The Love Bug.

Moores moved to Florida when he was hired by Frank King in 1956 to assist him on the Gasoline Alley dailies. King's former assistant Bill Perry had taken over doing the Sunday strip in 1951. Moores' signature began to appear on the strip in 1964, and when King died in 1969, Moores assumed writing and drawing duties for the daily strip. When Perry retired in 1975, Moores added the Sunday strip to his workload and combined the stories into one continuing story.

Moores relocated near Asheville, North Carolina, where he spent the rest of his life. In his later years, Moores composed stories, penciled faces and sketched the action, and then sent the strips to another artist for inking, such as his assistant, Jim Scancarelli, who took over the strip upon his death. Moores died of liver and kidney failure.

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