Cartoonist, Bil Keane, died Tuesday at 89 years old.
According to the Associated Press, he died in Paradise Valley, Arizona of congestive heart failure.
Keane is best known for his comic strip “Family Circus,” which is featured in nearly 1,500 newspapers across the country.
According to USA Today, Family Circus is a cartoon that featured the at-home adventures with Keane’s cartoon kids: Billy, Dolly, Jeffy and PJ.
He is survived by the five children he had with his wife Thelma “Thel” Keane, who died of Alzheimer’s disease in 2008, Gayle, and sons Glen, Jeff, Chris and Neal.
Keane was born Oct. 5, 1922 in Philadelphia, where he taught himself to draw while attending high school.
Associated Press reported that Keane started a one-panel comic in 1953 called “Channel Chuckles” that lampooned the up-and-coming medium of television—In one, a mom in front of a television, crying baby on her lap, tells husband: “She slept throught two gun fights and a barroom brawl — then the commercial woke her up.”
A few years later, he moved to Arizona and a few years after that started a comic about a family modeled after his own, with one more son than in his cartoon family.
With Associated Press
