The New York Times obituary of Dondi cartoonist Irwin Hasen:
Irwin Hasen, the cartoonist and comic-book artist who drew, and helped create, ?Dondi,? the widely syndicated comic strip about a lovable, wide-eyed World War II orphan, died on Friday in Manhattan. He was 96.
The Times describes his life as an iconic or stereotypical New York City cartoonist of a different era. I’m also shocked that Dondi “at its peak appeared in more than 100 newspapers” – seems like a small number of papers.
Maybe a small number, but the right papers.
“We didn’t have a lot of newspapers, but we had the best. In other words, the highest priced. We started out with 46, and we went crazy, we were so happy. Because in those days, when you had the right 46 papers, you had 46 capital cities. Frank Robbins used to joke that we made as much as he made with 500 papers on Johnny Hazard, because King Features blanketed every small town paper. Unfortunately, then, when you lost a paper, you lost a lot of income. We had to split it three ways–me, Edson, and the syndicate.”
— — Alter Ego Magazine, Vol. 3 No. 1 “So I Took The Subway And There Was Shelly Mayer…”An Interview with Golden Age artist Irwin Hasen, conducted by Roy Thomas, transcribed by Carla Conway.
Link: http://twomorrows.com/alterego/articles/01hasen.html