Frank Willard

Frank Henry Willard (September 21, 1893, Anna, Illinois–January 11, 1958, Los Angeles, California) was a cartoonist best known for his comic strip Moon Mullins which ran from 1923 to 1991. He sometimes went by the nickname Dok Willard.

As a youth, Willard dropped out of several schools. In addition to jobs at county fairs, he worked in a mental institution. In 1909, he moved with his family to Chicago. He went to Union Academy, where he illustrated the Reflector yearbook in 1912. After attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago in 1913, he was a cartoonist with the Chicago Herald (1914–18), where he drew the Sunday comic strips Tom, Dick and Harry and Mister and Mrs. Pippen/Mrs. Pippin's Husband and a daily comic strip which used various titles. At the Herald, he got to know cartoonists E. C. Segar and Billy DeBeck.

Entering the U.S. Army in 1917, Willard served with the American Expeditionary Force in France (1918–19). "Our unit built roads and did no fighting," he said. Unemployed on his return, he was given a place to stay by DeBeck and worked briefly on DeBeck's Barney Google in 1920. Through DeBeck's influence, he landed a job that year in the King Features Syndicate bullpen where he did just "about everything but carry water for the elephants." He next wrote and drew The Outta Luck Club for King Features (1919–23), where he also substituted for cartoonist Jean Knott on his Penny Ante poker panel.

In 1923, Joseph Patterson of the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate wanted a lowlife strip to compete with Barney Google. The curious chain of events that brought Willard, Patterson and Moon Mullins together began because Willard and other King Features cartoonists had to show their planned panels in advance to the King editor, who usually rejected Willard's ideas. Willard was angry, but he exploded when he saw some of his gags surface in George McManus' Bringing Up Father. As Willard's assistant Ferd Johnson recalled:

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