Richard "Dik" Browne (1917-1989) American, Signed and Framed Comic Strip. Signed in last panel. Depicting answering the phone to a wrong number but winning dance lessons nonetheless. 

Overall: 10 1/4 x 20 1/4 in. 

Sight: 5 x 15 in.

#7353 . 

Richard Arthur Allan Browne was born August 11th, 1917 in Manhattan. He attended the private college Cooper Union for a year before starting work at the New York Journal-American as a copy boy, quickly working his way up to the art department drawing maps and charts. In 1936, photographers and artists were banned from the Lucky Luciano compulsory prostitution trial. Browne slipped in undetected, and his courtroom sketches gave the New York Journal-American a news exclusive on the story. In 1942 Browne joined the United States Army, and was assigned to draw maps and charts for an Army engineering unit throughout World War II, eventually rising to staff sergeant. It was during this time that he created the shorthand “Dik” as his signature, partially to avoid recognition if he was ever captured in battle. In his spare time he created the comic strip “Ginny Jeep” about the Women’s Army Corps, which appeared in Army and Air Force newspapers. Returning to the United States after the war he worked as an illustrator for Newsweek, where he met and married his wife, Joan, having two sons and a daughter together. He also worked freelance for Johnstone & Cushing, an advertising company, creating the Carmen-Miranda-inspired Miss Chiquita trademark logo for Chiquita. He later created additional marketing blockbusters, such as the Birds Eye bird, a Campbell’s Soup Kids redesign, and a Mounds candy bar ad. From 1950 to 1960 he drew “The Tracy Twins,” a comic strip for Boys’ Life Magazine. His work brought him to the attention of King Features Syndicate, an animation and licensing studio founded by William Randolph Hearst. Lead Cartoonist Mort Walker enlisted Browne to co-create the long-running strip “Hi and Lois,” a spin-off of Walker’s popular “Beetle Bailey” strip. Walker wrote the strip, which Browne illustrated the rest of his life. The series is now drawn by his son Chance and written by Walker’s sons. In 1973 Browne created “Hägar the Horrible,” a strip about an ill-mannered red-bearded medieval Viking. The comic was produced by his son Chris after Browne’s death until Chris passed away as well in 2023. Both strips are still in syndication, two of the longest running modern comics that have appeared in hundreds of newspapers for decades. Browne was awarded the National Cartoonists Society’s Best Humor Strip plaque in 1959, 1960, and 1972, and its Reuben Award as Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year in 1962. He was elected President of the Society in 1963, and remained an active part of it for the next decade. The National Cartoonists Society gave Browne a second Reuben Award in 1973, and three more Best-Humor Strip awards in 1977, 1984, and 1986, a record-breaking number for a single artist. Browne died of cancer on June 4th, 1989, in Sarasota, Florida.