Frank Stack obit

 

Frank Stack – RIP

He was not on the list.

Frank Stack, artist, cartoonist, educator, and pioneer of underground comics, passed away on April 12, 2026, at MU’s University Hospital.

Stack is widely recognized as one of the founders of the underground comics movement. Working under the pseudonym Foolbert Sturgeon, he published The Adventures of Jesus in 1964, a work regarded by many as the first underground comic. A comic strip, Dorman’s Doggie, was syndicated nationally by the Underground Press Syndicate from 1976 to 1978. From 1986 to 2001, he was a regular contributor to Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor and illustrated Our Cancer Year, written by Pekar and Joyce Brabner, which won the 1995 Harvey Award for Best Original Graphic Novel. In 2025 he was inducted into the Comic-Con’s Hall of Fame as a founder of the underground comics movement.

Stack devoted nearly four decades to teaching art and printmaking at the University of Missouri, where he taught from 1963 until his retirement in 2001 and was later named professor emeritus. He was a lifelong mentor to hundreds of young artists, remembered for his intellectual rigor, generosity, and unwavering commitment to personal vision. Until his stroke a few years ago he could regularly be seen, sketching local people and places, or sitting cross-legged with watercolor materials on his lap, capturing the landscapes of mid-Missouri in his imaginative and distinctive style. In the studio, his skillfully rendered figure drawings and paintings demonstrated a rare versatility.

Word on social media is that Professor of Art, University of Missouri-Columbia, Frank Stack has passed away. Stack was more widely known as an underground cartoonist under his pseudonym Foolbert Sturgeon.

Frank Stack’s career in art, humor, and comix began at the Texas Ranger, University of Texas-Austin. Comixjoint tells of Frank’s work at the college humor magazine:

in the mid ’50s, the Texas Ranger was suffering from low circulation and staff turmoil, resulting in three editors leaving the magazine within one year for various reasons. Enter Frank Stack. He enrolled at UT in 1956 as an art student and almost immediately joined the Ranger as a staff member and cartoonist. He experienced the magazine hitting its low point and contributed to its resurrection in 1957 and ’58. Stack became editor of the Ranger for the 1958-59 school year and published Gilbert Shelton’s first cartoons in the magazine in 1959, when he was a sophomore majoring in social sciences.

Stack tried to put out a mag with sharp but factual satire in the manner of the New Yorker and The Harvard Lampoon, as opposed to the bawdy tone of Playboy, but good intentions wouldn’t keep him out of trouble with the Texas Student Publications Office at the university. In an interview with Richard Holland, author of The Texas Book, Stack said, “Under my editorship I tried to work around the censors, and was annoyed by the censorship system…. But there were some staffers, then and later, who relished the challenge of sneaking dirty stuff through.”

After graduation and serving two years of active duty in the army Stack began drawing comics about Jesus. A little later he began his career as an art teacher.

From the University of Missouri:

Stack has been on the faculty of the University of Missouri since 1963/1964: 1963/1964 to1967/1968, Instructor of Art; 1968/1969 to 1947/1974, Assistant Professor of Art; 1974/1975 to 1977/1978, Associate Professor of Art; and 1978/1979 to 2001, Professor of Art. Stack is currently Professor Emeritus.

Back to M. Steven Fox and Comixjoint:

He began drawing his satirical comics about Jesus Christ and the New Testament in 1961, but back then the comics were too controversial (read blasphemous) to be published in any college-sanctioned humor magazine.

By 1964, Stack had earned his master’s degree and landed a job as an art professor at the University of Missouri. But he kept drawing the Jesus comics and would send copies of the strips to his buddy and former fellow student in Austin, Gilbert Shelton, who had also served as the editor of The Texas Ranger. After Shelton had received a dozen Jesus strips, he arranged to have about 40 sets of the comics photocopied and stapled into a booklet to share with friends on campus. Shelton drew a simple front cover for the booklet and entitled it The Adventures of Jesus, with a byline that stated “Written and Illustrated by F.S.”

Of course, the “F.S.” in the byline stood for Frank Stack, but as a college professor with some standing in the community, Stack was not eager to associate his name with such nefarious comic strips. He devised the pseudonym Foolbert Sturgeon to obscure the identity of “F.S.”, at least for a few years.

So began the underground (ug) comix legend known as Foolbert Sturgeon. And according to that above Comixjoint article it would result in “three of the funniest social and religious satire comic books in history during the golden age of underground comics.”

With the emerging popularity of underground comix in the late 1960s Foolbert Sturgeon returned with The New Adventures of Jesus. That popularity led to more characters and comix like Dr. Feelgood, and Dorman’s Doggie, both of which would star in comic strips syndicated to ug newspapers by the Rip Off Press Syndicate from 1977 to 1979.

Denis Kitchen expands on Stack’s career as Professor and cartoonist:

So for many years he drew his cartoons under the unlikely nom de plume of Foolbert Sturgeon. His early comix work included The Adventures of Jesus(1962), Amazon Comics(1972), Dorman’s Doggie (1979), Feelgood Funnies (1972), The New Adventures of Jesus(1969), Jesus Meets the Armed Services[#2](1972) and Jesus Comics #3. Stack also contributed to such anthologies as Blab!, Hydrogen Bomb Funnies, Radical America Komiks, Rip Off Comix, Rip Off Review of Western Culture and Snarf. Some, including his old Texas friend Gilbert Shelton, regard Stack’s Adventures of Jesus in 1962 to be the very first underground comic, though it was a 14-page Xerox zine circulated only among a small group of friends and never offered for sale. Nonetheless, Stack’s status as one of the pioneer underground cartoonists is unquestioned.

More recently (2022) Cayli Yanagida for The Columbia Missourian profiled Frank.

When Frank Stack arrived in Columbia in 1963 to teach art at MU, he did not plan to stay, let alone build a career and family in Missouri.

Now, nearly 60 years after he moved here, Stack, 85, has built a rich history as an artist and is credited with pioneering the graphic novel. He was among the first to create the underground comic genre with cartoons well-known for their relevance and satirical content.

“He pushed boundaries,” said his daughter, Joan Stack. “I’m not sure he even knew how much he was pushing them.”

Over the years, Stack has also confronted multiple health complications.