Donald G. Addis, 1935-2009



Don Addis, a Playboy cartoonist, syndicated cartoonist and an editorial cartoonist at the St. Petersburg newspapers Evening Independent and the St. Petersburg Times, died on Sunday. The cause of death was lung cancer. Addis was 74 years old.

Addis started full-time editorial cartooning relatively late, taking a position with the Evening Independent when he was in his late 20s. He had been a freelancer before that, was the student editorial cartoonist at the University of Florida before that, and served in the US Army before that. He also published in the university's humor magazine, Orange Peel. While at the Independent Addis carved a place for himself in a then-competitive local newspaper market, and was one of the signature employees at the paper during the late 1960s and 1970s. His obituary in the St. Petersburg Times notes that Addis received four awards from the Florida Education Association during his time at the Independent, and that he beat out the Times' Jack Barrett in a 1974 statewide contest.

An archive of later work, for the St. Petersburg Times can be found here. Addis joined the Times in 1986 and worked there until August 2004. A fellow member of the paper's editorial board, Philip Gailey, wrote this one-paragraph portrait of the cartoonist among many more paragraphs full of praise and admiration.

"I got the picture. This guy is an original, a little strange in some ways, but one of a kind. Nothing phony about him. He was never very good at playing the role of a curmudgeon, though he tried. He has no use for political correctness and poseurs. Unlike other cartoonists I have known, Don doesn't have an ego problem. Can you imagine an editorial cartoonist using his talent -- and a Magic Marker -- to illustrate the menu board in the company cafeteria? Don has been doing that for years, getting free meals for his work."

Addis was a freelancer for several years before taking the Independent job, and remained an active cartoonist in several markets throughout his time at the Independent and then the Times. Addis sold his first Playboy cartoon in the late 1950s, and continued serving that market for four decades. He would later trying to syndicate some comics work, with work on Briny Deep Babyman and The Great John L, the latter for which the Times obit claims over 700 clients at its height. The single panel Bent Offerings, perhaps his best-known national work, was launched in 1988 and won the Reuben divisional award for panel cartoons in 1993.

A collection of the John L work came out from Ballantine in 1983. A book called Cartoons By Don Addis was published by the University Of Florida Press in 1963. Bent Offerings was collected at least once, in 1997.

Don Addis is survived by three daughters, a son, a brother and four grandchildren.
 
posted 6:00 am PST | Permalink
 

---

 
Daily Blog Archives
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
 
Full Archives