Dik Browne (1917–1989)

Dik Browne was born in Manhattan on August 11, 1917. He spent a year at the Cooper Union Art School before taking his first job with a newspaper in 1936. As a copy boy with the New York Journal, he tried to become a reporter but accepted a transfer to the art department. There, he drew maps and show more charts, and went on to do the same for more money at Newsweek magazine. In 1942, he joined the army becoming a staff sergeant, and drawing more maps and charts for an engineering unit. After the war, Browne went into advertising illustration at Johnstone & Cushing art service and became well known in the field for such creations as the Birdseye bird, Chiquita Banana, and a revitalized version of the Campbell Soup kids. From 1950 to 1960, he also drew The Tracy Twins, a humorous adventure strip, for Boys Life. His work for this strip, and for a candy ad, brought him to the attention of King Features Syndicate. He was asked to collaborate with Mort Walker on a comic strip called "Hi and Lois." His art for Hi and Lois went on to earn him the National Cartoonists Society's Best Humor Strip plaque in 1959, 1960, and 1972, and its Reuben as Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year in 1962. He was the NCS president in 1963. In 1973, Browne created "Hagar the Horrible," a strip about a barbarian with the problems of a henpecked suburbanite. Hagar, also distributed by King, experienced one of the fastest increases in readership in comics history, selling to over 600 papers in its first two years.The NCS voted Browne a second Reuben for Hagar in 1973, and three more Best-Humor Strip awards in 1977, 1984, and 1986. Robert and Chris, Brownes two sons, assisted with the Hagar strip for a number of years before Brownes death in 1989, and have continued the strip since that time. (Bowker Author Biography) show less