R. C. Harvey obit

Robert C. Harvey – RIP

 

He was not on the list.

Cartoonist and comics historian Bob Harvey has passed away.

Bob’s friends Tom Tanquary and Carolyn Weller have informed the comics world

that R.C. Harvey has passed away due to complications following a fall.

From Bob’s Amazon biography:

    After graduating from the University of Colorado in 1959, Harvey served in the U.S. Navy then taught English in Wyandotte High School in Kansas City, Kansas, in the late 1960s, and for over 25 years he was the convention manager of the National Council of Teachers of English. Harvey is a member of the National Cartoonists Society and the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.

Harv regularly attended, and reported on, the NCS and AAEC conventions.

From People Pill:

    For 4-5 years in the late 1970s, he freelanced magazine cartoons in his spare time, specializing in girlie cartoons for men’s magazines.

From RC’s auto-profile for The Comics Journal:

    Harv’s first foray into expository text was with a column in the fondly recalled Menomonee Falls Gazette (a weekly newspaper of comic strips) in the fall of 1973. A couple years later, he launched his Comicopia column in No.130 of the Rocket’s Blast – ComiCollector, which, by then, had been taken over by James Van Hise from Gordon Love, the founder. For RB-CC, he created a mock comicbook superhero, Zero Hero.

    In March 1980, Harvey abandoned early columns and started writing for The Comics Journal, with a new effort, The Reticulated Rainbow, starting in No. 54 and continuing regularly under various titles for an insufferably long time. By the time he was in his eighties, Harv’d become, probably, the Journal contributor with the greatest longevity.

Bob also was a longtime contributor to Jud Hurd’s Cartoonist PROfiles magazine, The Thompson’s Comics Buyer’s Guide, Hogan’s Alley, and Nemo, the Classic Comics Library, among others. He also contributed to the early version of the scholarly comics publication Ink.

In 1973, Harvey began writing about comics and cartooning for The Menomonee Falls Gazette. In 1976, Harvey's columns began appearing in The Comics Journal, where he has a regular column to this day. The 1990s saw publication of Fantagraphics Books' Cartoons of the Roaring Twenties in two volumes, collected and edited by Harvey. Harvey was also a contributor to Oxford University Press' American National Biography, providing biographies of a couple dozen cartoonists. In 1994, Harvey's first work of comics scholarship The Art of the Funnies was published by the University Press of Mississippi with The Art of the Comic Book following in 1996. He served as an associate editor for the journal Inks: Cartoon and Comic Art Studies, taking responsibility for submissions related to the comic strip. In 1998, Harvey was guest curator for the Children of the Yellow Kid exhibition at the Frye Museum in Seattle, for which he also provided the catalogue.

Harvey has written or collected and edited thirteen books on comics and cartooning, including his Milton Caniff: Conversations (2002) from the University Press of Mississippi, followed by a full biography of Caniff, Meanwhile... A Biography of Milton Caniff, Creator of Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon (2007) published by Fantagraphics. His most recent book is Insider Histories of Cartooning: Rediscovering Forgotten Famous Comics and Their Creators (2014) from UPM. A complete list of his books appears at his website. Harvey also interviewed cartoonists for the long-running quarterly magazine Cartoonist PROfiles, and he contributed a column for a brief time to the Comics Buyer's Guide.

Harvey is a member of the National Cartoonists Society (NCS) as well as an associate member of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists (AAEC).

He has received the following awards: All-Navy Cartoonist, 1960; the AAEC Ink Bottle Award "in recognition of dedicated service to the Association and distinguished efforts to promote the art of editorial cartooning," 2013; the San Diego Comic-Con International Inkpot Award "for achievement in comic arts," 2018.