Brad Anderson, 1924-2015



Bradley J. Anderson, the creator and longtime cartoonist of the weekday/panel sunday/strip feature Marmaduke, has died. Anderson was one of the last World War 2 veteran cartoonists, having served in the Navy from 1943 to 1946. He attended Syracuse University thereafter, graduating in 1951 with a BFA. Anderson cartooned throughout those years via opportunities provided by both institutions and on a freelance basis since his mid-teens. He was a significant contributor the the SU publication The Syracusan during his time there.

After a couple of years in Utica at an advertising firm plying his talent as a commercial artist in a manner for which he was explicitly trained by schooling, Anderson shifted full-time to freelancing for magazines in 1953. He had already gained some elements of notoreity and market penetration there for clients like Saturday Evening Post, mostly do panel cartoons of the kind that sold best. He was particularly known for cartoons about family life, which led him to develop two syndicated feature, each one built a classic fount for domestic comedy: a child known for outsized behavior (Grandpa's Boy) and a family dog (Marmaduke).

Anderson's skill set was well suited to the post-war transformation of the comic strip, where dimnishing strip sizes required a strong visual sense conveyed with a minimum of fuss and flattered gag writers whose cartoons could be consumed in a hurry as one swallow on an hors d'oeuvres table of sunny moments. Grandpa's Boy seem likely to have benefited from the market taking to Dennis The Menace. Grandpa's Boy, could look almost dashed off in its directness, and Anderson the gag writer didn't always do Anderson the artist the favor of a compelling visual to go along with that day's joke. Still, Anderson's visual chops held the strip together.

Anderson worked on Grandpa's Boy from 1954 to 1966, concurrent to the first dozen years or so of his creation Marmaduke. Marmaduke would become an undeniable foundational hit for the comics page in the second half of the 20th Century, and would carry the bulk of Anderson's career. It was also the source of the first of his two major cartooning award wins, a category acknowledgment for best panel at the 1978 Reubens. He would in 2013 take home the Milton Caniff lifetime achievement award.

Marmaduke shared with Dennis The Menace one major element that Grandpa's Boy did not: it was a panel, with a Sunday strip attached. It could therefore be placed on different parts of the page by editors who were looking to more creative ways to build a rewarding comics page. The character Marmaduke boasted a great design, a great dane breaking with shaggier, smaller dogs.

Anderson's final choice of breed allowed the cartoonist to work with Marmaduke's expressive, accessible face. The running gag in Marmaduke was that Marmaduke's size and boisterous canine energy frequently made his forays into areas where a dog might break with acceptable behavior an overwhelming hazard. Anderson and his assistants worked every last bit of juice out of that fairly basic set up and learned to walk a fine line so that the dog's affection and boisterousness were never overwhelmed by the physical aspects of the humor. By the end of the 1960s the feature was a more than solid hit, and reports suggest still enjoyed approximately 500 clients at the time of Anderson's passing.

The success of Marmaduke was very much focused on its lead; it's in question whether even a majority of the strip's admirers could identify the family as the Winslows.

Marmaduke enjoyed collection runs with Scholastic, Signet and Tor. A 50th anniversary book was released in 2004 and a live action comedy film pulled in $85 million in worldwide box office in 2010. By that time Anderson had shifted into a partnership with son Paul on the feature. By virtue of its ubiquity and easy to explain nature of its set-up, Anderson's comic creation has also been a target of those satirizing the comics page in general. The relative minor dip in its client base from a top number somewhere in the 600s testifies to its endurance.

A run of 300 Grandpa's Boy strips constitutes the Brad Anderson Cartoon Collection held by Syracuse University. In addition to his NCS honors, Anderson won a George Arents Pioneer Medal from his alma mater in 1999. His work was shown at the University, and also in San Francisco at their Museum of Fine Arts.

Brad Anderson was 91 years old. He is surved by three sons and a daughter.


 
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