Tom Moore, the cartoonist who brought to life the escapades of the freckled-face, red-haired character called "Archie', has died in Texas. He was 86.
Moore, who began drawing cartoons while in the US Navy during the Korean War, died early on Monday morning while in hospice care in his hometown of El Paso, his son Lito Bujanda-Moore said on Tuesday.
He said his father was diagnosed with throat cancer within the past week and chose not to undergo treatment.
Moore drew Archie Andrews and his friends on and off from 1953 until he retired in the late 1980s. Annual sales of the comic regularly surpassed half a million during the 1960s, according to the El Paso Times.
"I did one comic book a month," Moore told the newspaper in 1996. "I did everything. We always worked six months ahead. I'd be doing Christmas issues in June and beach stories with a foot of snow outside my window."
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After the war, Moore used funding available through the GI Bill to attend a school in New York for cartoonists. He studied under Tarzan comic strip illustrator Burne Hogarth.
Soon after, Moore signed up with Archie Comics in New York. Bob Montana created Archie in 1941, and Moore took over in 1953.
Archie Comics' editor in chief, Victor Gorelick, who has worked at the company for more than 50 years, said Moore "was a cartoonist's cartoonist". He noted that Archie Comics invited Moore back to help revamp Archie's friend, Jughead, and remained with the company until he retired.
After retiring, Moore kept tabs on Archie - and disagreed when the comic book company decided to kill off the character.
Moore and his wife of 63 years, Ruth, also had a daughter, Holly Mathew.
