Cartoonist Ed Dodd (MARK TRAIL) Died 23 Years Ago Today

Twenty-three years ago today, May 27, 1991  cartoonist Ed Dodd died.  Sometime before he died he turned the Mark Trail comic strip over to Jack Elrod.  Ed lived in Georgia .  I know two people who were college students at UGA at the time, who worked for him:  My first cousin Jo.  One time over at her house she showed me an original signed and framed Mark Trail comic strip hanging in her dining room.    And the other one Jack Davis, the most well-known of the MAD artists and also the most well known drawer University of Georgia's  mascot UGA.

Back in my youth I was a fan of Mark Trail.  He was always on a high outside adventure, plus about once a week, on Sunday, he would have an educational illustration on something about nature beings surviving or building a dam or something; always interesting.

I thought it was interesting that Jack Davis, who once worked for Dodd, did a lampoon on Mark Trail in MAD comicbook.

click on image to enlarge and read, wala!

A nature cartoon.  Ed Dodd carefully laid out ecology with nature to show how living things depended on other living things to survive.  A detailed master plan laid out for life to instinctively follow. 

Mark had a dog named Andy.  I remember one time there was some kind of contest about Andy that  Andy's puppies, that looked just like Andy, was offered as a contest prize.  I just knew I was going to get one of those puppies..... I just knew it.  That was about 65 years ago, there is a still a chance that Andy Jr. was lost in shipping and he'll show up any day.

By the way, the above Mark Trail/Andy panel was drawn by Jack Elrod who took over Ed Dodd's position.  You can tell by what Andy is up to, attacking mary-jane growers the political climate of the strip.