The begetter of Barney Google and Snuffy Smith died last week in Manhattan.
In many ways Billy De Beck lived a life as unreal as the comic-strip characters he fathered. When he was at high school in Chicago he drew imitation Charles Dana Gibson pictures, peddled them for profit. He did cartoons for a theatrical weekly and for several newspapers. But he stayed poor until he turned out a correspondence course on "How to be a cartoonist and make big money." He sold thousands of copies for $1 apiece. He was doing a so-so successful strip, "Married Life," for the Chicago Herald...
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