Story Editor & Writer Jack Mendelsohn ("Dennis the Menace", TMNT) 1926-2017

[Zoneboy]

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died a few hours ago. He was 90 and the cause was lung cancer…and though his friends all knew it was imminent, the news was still a jolt. Jack was a very sweet, very funny man who had a glorious career in comic books, a glorious career in newspaper strips, a glorious career in animation and a glorious career writing for live-action TV shows. Let me go through these and the biographical stuff and then I'll tell you about the man himself. And I apologize but he did so much, I am unable to do all this strict chronological order…

Jack was born November 8, 1926. His father was an agent for many cartoonists and newspaper columnists including the legendary Winsor McKay and Jack, growing up in Brooklyn, watched cartoons avidly and filled notebooks with his cartoons. In his teen years, he lived next door to two men who became famous cartoonists. On one side was David Levine, soon to be among America's great caricaturists. On the other side was Norman Maurer, who was already making what then seemed like vast sums of money drawing comic books. Three or four decades later in Hollywood, Jack would replace Norman as the story editor of the Richie Rich cartoon show for Hanna-Barbera.

Being around so much cartooning determined Jack's future. He did some assistant work on comic books for the Jerry Iger shop in 1942 while still in high school. Then he quit high school to join in the Navy and fight in World War II…though even in the service, he dabbled in silly pictures. When he got out, he began selling gag cartoons to magazines and scripts to comic books.

His earliest known comic book work was for DC's More Fun Comics in 1946 and Animal Antics in 1947. He worked for dozens of publishers, mostly writing but occasionally drawing teen comics and funny animal titles. Among the "name" comic books he did over the years were Nancy and Sluggo, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Miss Peach, Beetle Bailey and Felix the Cat. He also wrote the Felix the Cat newspaper strip for a time and ghosted for other strips.

And I'll mention two other credits of many: When EC Comics decided to put out its own imitation of its hit funnybook, MAD, Jack was the main writer for that imitation, which they called Panic. And when Tower Comics put out its imitation of Archie, Jack wrote most of the issues of Tippy Teen.

Jack also wrote for MAD and for a time, worked as an artist at Famous Studios in New York, the animation outfit owned by Paramount. There, he met cartoonist Howard Post and they formed a longtime friendship and collaboration. Most of the funny animal comics drawn by Post for various publishers were written by Mendelsohn. Years later, when Jack's newspaper strip Jacky's Diary became popular, Famous/Paramount brought him back to write TV cartoons for Beetle Bailey and Krazy Kat the studio let him write and direct several short theatrical cartoons. For King Features, he wrote the Saturday morning cartoons of The Beatles and co-wrote the animated Beatles feature, Yellow Submarine.

Jacky's Diary started in 1959. Drawn in a childlike art style by Jack and signed "by Jacky Mendelsohn, Age 32½" (or whatever age he was each year of its run), it was enormously popular for a time. Jack called it the fastest sale in the history of newspaper strips. He submitted it one afternoon to King Features Syndicate and they bought it on the spot. The run was recently collected in a beautiful hardcover book from IDW Publishing.

I am bouncing around in his career here because for a long time, Jack bounced around. In the late fifties, he lived for a few years in Mexico where he became friendly with a Mexican cartoonist named Sergio Aragonés. This was well before Sergio came to America and joined the Usual Gang of Idiots (including Jack) at MAD.

Around 1966, he moved from New York to Los Angeles to work for Hanna-Barbera and contributed to most of their shows for the next decade or so including Abbott & Costello, Scooby Doo, The Flintstones Comedy Hour and Hong Kong Phooey. He snuck over to Jay Ward's studio and wrote George of the Jungle, Super Chicken and many of the Cap'n Crunch commercials. He went over to Filmation and wrote Shazam! and Will the Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down? and he created and wrote The Groovy Goolies. He also for an independent studio wrote Hey, Hey, Hey, It's Fat Albert!, the first animation of Bill Cosby's character.

Somewhere amidst all this animation work, Jack segued into writing for live-action, prime-time TV shows. The list included Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, The Carol Burnett Show, Three's Company, Van Dyke and Company, Chico and the Man and The Love Boat.

His later animation credits included Richie Rich, Muppet Babies, Dennis the Menace, Beverly Hills Teens, Camp Candy, The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin and a huge number of episodes of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He story-edited most of these shows, as well.

He was nominated for three Emmy awards. In 2005, the Writers Guild of America presented him with its Lifetime Achievement Award for his work in animation. And in 2014, he appeared at the Comic-Con International in San Diego to accept the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. I will embed video of that ceremony below.

This is a very incomplete list of Jack's achievements and honors.

I'll post more about him in a few days because he really was an amazing man. Right now, I need to tell you he was one of my favorite people…a very dear, compassionate man who loved writing and cartoons and creativity. I was aware of his work and a fan of it well before I met him. When I met him, he became one of my closest friends within a matter of minutes. That was the kind of guy Jack was. He had a wonderful career (and a wonderful wife, Carole) and he sure deserved both.