Frank O'Neal (May 9, 1921 – October 10, 1986)
at the

Lambiek Comiclopedia Galerie Lambiek is a Dutch comic book store and art gallery in Amsterdam, founded on November 8, 1968 by Kees Kousemaker (, – Bussum, ). His son Boris Kousemaker has been the owner since 2007. From 1968 to 2015, it was located in the Ke ...

. Retrieved on June 3, 2017
Archived
from the original on May 6, 2012. was an American cartoonist best known for his

comic strip A comic strip is a Comics, sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often Serial (literature), serialized, with text in Speech balloon, balloons and Glossary of comics terminology#Captio ...

''Short Ribs'', which he wrote and drew from 1958 to 1973.

Early life and career

Born in

Springfield, Missouri Springfield is the List of cities in Missouri, third most populous city in the U.S. state of Missouri and the county seat of Greene County, Missouri, Greene County. The city's population was 169,176 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 censu ...

, O'Neal was kept on the move by his traveling father, and the youth grew up in Arkansas, California, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Tennessee and Washington, D.C. He studied for three years at the Jefferson Machamer School of Art in

Santa Monica, California Santa Monica (; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast (California), South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 United Sta ...

and sold his first cartoon professionally in 1950, to the ''

Saturday Evening Post ''The Saturday Evening Post'' is an American magazine published six times a year. It was published weekly from 1897 until 1963, and then every other week until 1969. From the 1920s to the 1960s, it was one of the most widely circulated and influ ...

''. After six years of

freelance ''Freelance'' (sometimes spelled ''free-lance'' or ''free lance''), ''freelancer'', or ''freelance worker'', are terms commonly used for a person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Freelance w ...

cartooning, he spent a year and a half drawing

storyboard A storyboard is a graphic organizer that consists of simple illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence. The storyboarding proce ...

s. His feature "How to Bring Up Parents" ran in ''

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'' for three years.

Later career

The syndicate

Newspaper Enterprise Association The Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA) is an editorial column and comic strip newspaper syndication service based in the United States and established in 1902. The oldest syndicate still in operation, the NEA was originally a secondary new ...

(NEA) released his

''Short Ribs'' as a daily on November 17, 1958, and additionally as a Sunday comic on June 14, 1959.''Short Ribs''
at

Don Markstein's Toonopedia Don Markstein's Toonopedia (subtitled A Vast Repository of Toonological Knowledge) is an online encyclopedia of print cartoons, comic strips and animation, initiated February 13, 2001. Donald D. Markstein, the sole writer and editor of Toonopedi ...

Archived
from the original on June 3, 2017. The gag-a-day comic had no regular characters, but frequently featured such recurring settings as a medieval king's court and the American

Old West The American frontier, also known as the Old West, and popularly known as the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of American expansion in mainland North America that bega ...

. In 1973, O'Neal turned over the strip to his assistant, Frank Hill, while O'Neal focused on advertising-industry work, including an 18-month stint as advertising manager for the ''Carmel Pine Cone'', a weekly newspaper in

Carmel, California Carmel-by-the-Sea (), commonly known simply as Carmel, is a city in Monterey County, California, located on the Central Coast of California. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the city had a population of 3,220, down from 3,722 a ...

, beginning in 1974. The final ''Short Ribs'' strip ran Sunday, May 2, 1982.

Awards

He won the 1964

National Cartoonists Society The National Cartoonists Society (NCS) is an organization of professional cartoonists in the United States. It presents the National Cartoonists Society Awards. The Society was born in 1946 when groups of cartoonists got together to entertain the ...

's Division Award for Newspaper Strips: Humor for ''Short Ribs''. Requires hitting "See Winners" link in order to view.

Personal life

O'Neal and his wife Bettie had two children, John and Mollie. He was living in or near

Pacific Grove, California Pacific Grove is a city situated on the southern edge of Monterey Bay, on the Central Coast of California. Located in Monterey County, the city had a population of 15,090 at the 2020 census. Pacific Grove is a popular tourist destination on ...

, at the time of his death at age 64.

References

External links

* American comic strip cartoonists 1921 births 1986 deaths Artists from Carmel-by-the-Sea, California {{US-cartoonist-stub