Gary Brookins has worked with Chris Cassatt for 15 years on Jeff MacNelly’s Pluggers panel cartoon and then later on Shoe. I asked him his thoughts on the passing of his friend and colleague.
Gary writes:
When Jeff turned ?Pluggers? over to me in 1997, he put me in touch with Chris via telephone. Thus began a working relationship that started with Chris giving me lessons in drawing and coloring in Photoshop and Colorize using a Wacom tablet. In the years since then, we not only worked together on ?Shoe,? but for a couple of years ghosted the art for the ?Frank and Ernest? daily strips, and for several years following Jeff?s death, continued producing the illustrations for Dave Barry?s weekly humor column and his ?Year In Review? review.
Chris was not only a pioneer in computer cartooning, but also a great wit and terrific writer and editor. He was also a firm believer in all things ?Apple? . . . well, except perhaps for the Apple ?Newton.? His greatest pleasure, though, was working on ?Shoe,? which he poured himself into every day.
It was truly a privilege as well as great fun to work with him for the past 15 years, and I will greatly miss him.