Looking back on The Library of American Comics backlist, one series I wish we had been given the opportunity to further explore was Dick Moores’s run on Gasoline Alley. We released one volume of that material …
… But under-performance in the marketplace meant we were not in a position to go further with the strip.
Still and all, Gasoline Alley remains a singular high point in the history of newspaper comics. It was first brought to life by Frank King in November of 1918 and next continued by Moores — after a period of “apprenticeship” as King’s assistant, getting the feel of Walt Wallet, Skeezix, and the whole Alley bunch — from 1964 until his death, in 1986.
Moores lived in Florida while working as Frank King’s assistant (visitors to Kissimmee, Florida may travel King’s Highway, named in honor of the Alley creator). Dick moved to Fairview, North Carolina — near the larger town of Asheville — once he had his feet on the ground as the feature’s full-time cartoonist. The articles below span a decade from the end of the 1970s to the late ’80s and they indicate the high esteem in which Moores was held by Southerners, and by newspaper comics fans across the nation. Let’s begin with this full-page profile piece on Moores, published in the Dayton, Ohio Journal Herald in 1979:
Late in 1981, the St. Lucie, Florida News Tribune dropped Gasoline Alley from its comics pages, only to receive enough irate letters to force the paper to run a mail-in ballot to determine the comic-strip preferences of its readership. The response was so strong, claimed an article in the November 8th edition, that it took two staffers thirty-three hours to sort and tabulate the voting. The results showed that Moores’s strip, in the words of the News Trib‘s Executive Editor, had ” … a very loyal following, so we are happily returning Gasoline Alley to our pages, in accordance with the wishes of our readers.”
The artist was quoted as saying, “That’s really wonderful. It makes me pretty happy. This is where it is, you know — when readers come out and say they like you.” Moores also produced the special promotional piece below to help the News Tribune welcome back the Wallets and their many supporting players to its comics section. Also below, a lengthy overview of Gasoline Alley and Moores’s approach to the series, as it appeared in the Charlotte Observer in March, 1986:
Fans of Dick Moores reading the above realize that the Observer profile ran a little more than a month before the cartoonist passed away, on April 22nd. The Asheville Times and the Roanoke, Virginia Times both found ways to honor this gentle talent:
Asheville was not so quick to forget its local celebrity — two years after his death, the area’s Art Museum sponsored a showing of his original artwork.
Only a medium like the newspaper comics strip could allow a story to unfold in “real time” over a span of decades, with characters aging and changing alongside the audience. Only creators like Frank King and Dick Moores — along with Bill Perry (who spent a decade producing the Sunday page before turning it over to Moores upon his, Perry’s, retirement) and Jim Scancarelli (who has carried the torch since Moore’s death) — could bring this audacious concept to life in the unique style that generations have come to associate with Gasoline Alley.
