Jim Scancarelli

Having also collaborated with NCS president George Breisacher on Mutt and Jeff, Scancarelli became the only cartoonist to be involved with two strips on their 75th anniversaries. Scancarelli had said he hoped to shepherd Gasoline Alley to its 100th anniversary (which came in 2018), and he successfully reached and continued past that milestone.

Scancarelli received the 1988 National Cartoonists Society's Story Comic Strip Award. Since the "Newspaper Comic Strips (Humor)" Category (created in 1957) and the "Newspaper Comic Strips (Story)" Category (created in 1960) were combined in 1989, Scancarelli was the last winner of the separate story strip awards. Scancarelli used Skeezix Wallet's fictional past as a veteran, with Army service from 1942–45, as a springboard for storylines supporting military memorials in the daily strip. In 2000, Scancarelli brought attention to construction of the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. by having the characters Skeezix and Nina laud the project in the strip. Then, beginning January 11, 2010, he increased awareness of the proposed National Museum of the United States Army with seven weeks of continuity based on the topic. The Foundation responded by compiling a “Sgt. Wallet” entry in the Museum’s Registry of the American Soldier.

Scancarelli spoke about EC Comics and his other early influences in a 1997 interview with Jeffrey Lindenblatt:

When Moores died in 1986, Scancarelli succeeded him as creator. In 1988, Scancarelli created a sequence wherein Walt Wallet made copies of the Wallet Family Tree. Walt then broke the fourth wall and offered a copy to each reader who sent a self-addressed stamped envelope. It was Scancarelli himself who had to fulfill the requests, which numbered almost 100,000, with copies printed at his personal expense.

Scancarelli began his professional association with Gasoline Alley as an assistant to Dick Moores in 1979. Moores sent him the strips fully penciled with the faces inked, and Scancarelli would finish the inking. Although other artists had auditioned for the role, Scancarelli claims his advantage was that he was "the only one who read the strip and knew the characters."

After serving in the U.S. Navy, he went into radio and television, including a position as art director for The Johnny Cash Show, creating scenery and writing cue cards. In the early 1960s he also worked as an artist in WBTV’s (the CBS-affiliated television station in Charlotte, North Carolina) graphics department, where he would design sets and props, and draw images on the weather maps. He also would act on occasion, and wrote and voiced episodes of The Yellowjacket, a regular five-minute drive-time radio segment on WBT-FM influenced by the Batman show. Scancarelli had a successful career as a freelance magazine illustrator, and he did slide transparency art until computers made that job obsolete.

James Scancarelli (born August 24, 1941), known professionally as Jim Scancarelli, is an American cartoonist and musician. Since 1986, he has been writing and drawing the syndicated comic strip Gasoline Alley for Tribune Media Services. In that role, his predecessors were Frank King, Bill Perry and Dick Moores. He had served as an assistant to the latter for several years before taking over. Scancarelli is also a prizewinning bluegrass fiddler.

Scancarelli is an accomplished model railroader and model builder. His HO scale Cliffside Railroad is a detailed tribute to the North Carolina railroad of the 1930s-40s.