{"id":18408,"date":"2010-06-06T19:34:23","date_gmt":"2010-06-06T23:34:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=18408"},"modified":"2015-02-01T20:38:40","modified_gmt":"2015-02-02T01:38:40","slug":"tony-dipreta-1921-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2010\/06\/06\/tony-dipreta-1921-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony DiPreta 1921-2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Evanier reports<\/a> that Tony DiPreta, best known (to me at least) as the artist of the Joe Palooka<\/i> comic strip from 1959-1984, has died at the age of 88. I don’t think Palooka<\/i> is much remembered today outside of comics aficionados, but it was once one of the top newspaper strips in the country, and I enjoyed it as a kid when New York had far more newspapers than it does today.<\/p>\n

I only met DiPreta once, on September 26, 1971, at the same 75th anniversary celebration for the U.S. comic strip at which I also met Sy Barry<\/a>. One reason I’m so sure of the date can be seen in the sketch I obtained from him that day. <\/p>\n

If you click on the image below to view it at a larger size, you’ll be able to see that Joe Palooka’s right eye (well, his left actually, but it’s to your right) looks a bit … odd.<\/p>\n

\"JoepalookaTonyDiPreta\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That’s because as we stood in front of the Central Park bandshell, a few raindrops fell. Two landed to smudge DiPreta’s name, and the third got the old prizefighter right in the eye. Since that event was the only time I ever begged for sketches outdoors, there can be no doubt as to the date.<\/p>\n

I share this tidbit of info not only so you’ll take a moment to remember DiPreta … but also to show that, as some of you have hinted, why, yes, I have<\/i> met almost everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Evanier reports that Tony DiPreta, best known (to me at least) as the artist of the Joe Palooka comic strip from 1959-1984, has died at the age of 88. I don’t think Palooka is much remembered today outside of comics aficionados, but it was once one of the top newspaper strips in the country, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[18,85,623],"class_list":["post-18408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-comics","tag-obituaries","tag-tony-dipreta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18408"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18411,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18408\/revisions\/18411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}