Later Career and Death
By this time, one of MacNelly's friends and colleagues at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Gary Brookins, had assisted MacNelly in filling in doing finish work. Brookins loved Pluggers and could replicate MacNelly's style. Exhausted after his son's death, MacNelly simply gave the strip to Brookins to take over in early 1997. Pluggers is still being produced by Brookins today and is syndicated in more than 60 newspapers in the United States.
In the late 1990s, MacNelly began to also put more concentration into fine art painting and sculpture. By 1999, he had almost finished passing the task of creating Shoe onto Cassatt, Susie MacNelly and Brookins. But, in December 1999, MacNelly was diagnosed with lymphoma. He continued working in spite of his illness, producing "Shoe" and editorial cartoons and Dave Barry illustrations in his Johns Hopkins Hospital bed right up to the day he died, June 8, 2000. He also did a caricature of the Louisiana cartoonist Pap Dean.
Read more about this topic: Jeff MacNelly
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