Moon Mullins - Later Years

Later Years

Ferdinand "Ferd" Johnson (1905–1996) began as Willard's assistant a few months after the strip began in 1923. Starting with the lettering, then the backgrounds, Johnson gradually progressed to the point where he was handling the entire operation; but it was only after Willard's death that he began signing it. When Willard died suddenly on January 11, 1958, the Tribune Syndicate hired Johnson, who also had a natural gift for funny, slangy dialogue, to helm the strip as Willard's logical successor. (Frank Willard's tombstone at the Anna Cemetery in Anna, Illinois, is graced with an engraving of Moon Mullins.)

Ferd Johnson was born December 18, 1905, in Spring Creek, Pennsylvania. Johnson became interested in cartooning after winning the Erie (Pennsylvania) Dispatch-Herald cartoon contest at the age of 12. After finishing high school in 1923 he attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, but left school after only three months to take an assistant's job at the Chicago Tribune with Willard. While assisting on Moon Mullins, Johnson remained active with other Tribune projects. He created several comic strip features for the Syndicate—Texas Slim (1925–1928) and Lovey-Dovey (1932)—did sports illustration work, and produced advertising cartoons. In 1940, he revived Texas Slim in Texas Slim and Dirty Dalton (with the companion strip, Buzzy), which ran for 18 years.

After Willard's death in 1958, he took over full responsibility for Moon Mullins. By that time it had evolved from long story continuities to a gag-a-day strip, although the humor remained character-based, as always. Unlike many long-running newspaper comics, Moon Mullins did not have a period of decline; maintaining its high standard of humor and art for almost seven decades. In 1978, Ferd's son, Tom Johnson, signed on as his assistant. Ferd Johnson stayed with the strip until it came to an end upon his retirement in 1991. Johnson worked on Moon Mullins for 68 years—a stint that probably stands as the longest tenure of an artist on a single feature in the history of American comics.