32. Tom Wilson II has been working on his father's Sunday strip "Ziggy" since 1987. Wilson graduated from Boston University with a BFA, after studying graphic design at Miami University. He began working for the New York toy company Amtoy as a director of new projects. His first comic strip was called "UG!," and later he took over "Ziggy." He was employed at Richard Sanders International, a gathering of creative minds. Wilson has worked on branding for many powerful companies, including Disney, AT&T, Hallmark, Ford, Chrysler, Johnson & Johnson, and American Express. Then he started his own company named Character Matters, specifically for developing branding characters to be licensed.
31. Mort Walker was born on March 10, 1923. At 11, he sold a cartoon to an area newspaper, and four years later he was drawing a weekly strip for the Kansas City Journal. At age 18, he reached the station of chief designer in Hallmark Cards. He took literature classes at Washington University and journalism classes at the University of Missouri before spending a short time in the army. He was an editor for Dell, where he invented his most famous work "Beetle Bailey." The comic is still going strong, published in roughly 200 newspapers worldwide. Though he has assistants, Walker still oversees production of his strip in his Connecticut studio, nicknamed the "laugh factory." He was awarded a Rueben in 1954, and opened a museum dedicated to the history of cartoons in 1974. He is also a published cartoon historian and dabbles in children's books, too.
30. Alec Stevens is from Brazil, but he attended school at several U.S. locations such as the Joe Kubert School of Cartooning, the Art Institute, the Art Students League, and the Don Stacy Studio. His first job in comics came when he was twenty; he adapted "The Sphinx Without a Secret," an Oscar Wilde tale. He began working for Fantagraphics, producing many titles. A couple years later he made his own graphic novels "The Sinners" and "Hardcore" at Piranha Press. He was in the hospital for a time and wound up becoming a Christian during that time. His work became Christian, and he became an instructor at Joe Kubert School in 1992. In 1993 he met Neil Gaiman and drew some of his series "Sandman." He continues to do illustrations and comics to date.
29. Patrick McDonnell was born March 17, 1957 in New York. He attended the School of Visual Arts and graduated in 1979. From there, he worked as a freelance illustrator for magazines like Sports Illustrated, The New York Times, and Reader's Digest. Also during this time, he made his first comic strip called "Bad Baby" that lasted for a decade. In 1994, he decided to start the comic "Mutts," which enjoyed enormous success. Part of this was because Bill Watterson was discontinuing "Calvin and Hobbes," leaving a Mutts-sized hole in the Sunday funnies. McDonnell is a cartoon historian, and helped to write "Krazy Kat: The Art of George Herriman," published in 1986. More recently, McDonnell has been creating children's books.
28. Gerald "Jerry" Dumas was born in 1930. Though comics were a childhood passion, he studied English in college, before editing text for Mort Walker's "Hi and Lois." He started drawing for a strip called "Boner's Ark," then co-created and drew "Sam's Strip" with Walker. "Sam's Strip" was essentially a talkshow strip where the main character interviewed other characters from other strips. During the two years that Sam's show ran, Dumas did editorial illustrations for the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the Post. About a decade later, Dumas and Walker started a new strip with Sam called "Sam and Silo." Dumas continued with English, writing for strips like "Rabbits Rafferty" and "Benchley." He has also published a novel called "An Afternoon in Waterloo Park," based on his childhood memories.
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