Mel Casson

He co-created It’s Me, Dilly with Alfred James (pseudonym for Alfred Andriola of Kerry Drake) and worked on the strip from 1958 to 1962. In the 1970s, Casson collaborated with William F. Brown on the comic strip Mixed Singles, later renamed Boomer. It was marketed by United Feature Syndicate until 1981. In 1988, when cartoonist Gordon Bess found himself unable to continue his internationally known Redeye daily comic for King Features Syndicate, he handed it over to a collaboration of Casson as illustrator and Bill Yates as writer. When Yates himself became ill in 1999, Casson took over both writing and art for the strip, a role he continued until his death in 2008.

Casson was married to Mary Lee Culver Casson, an opera singer and actress, from 1965 to his death. He had one daughter, Culver. He lived in Westport, Connecticut nearly all of his married life.

Casson served on the Board of Governors of the Newspaper Comics Council, where he was chairman of the 1964-65 World’s Fair Committee. He was also on the board of the National Cartoonists Society, whose Connecticut chapter honored him with its Legend Award in November 2003.

He was an actor, known for Draw Me a Laugh (1949).

After World War II, he returned to cartooning, drawing the comic strip Jeff Crockett from 1948 to 1952 for the New York Herald Tribune Syndicate. He was recalled to active military duty in 1952 for service in the Korean War. After a 1953 honorable discharge, he was back at the drawing board for the Publisher/Chicago Sun-Times Syndicate (1953–66) with the children’s strips Sparky and Angel.

Mel Casson was born on July 25, 1920 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.