Gag cartoonist
Dick Cavalli—whose work appeared in magazines including
The Saturday Evening Post and ''
Collier's—had achieved such popularity by 1956 that Writer's Digest'' observed he had "risen to the top faster than any other cartoonist in the business." On January 9 of that year, Cavalli launched
Newspaper Enterprise Association's syndicated comic strip
Morty Meekle, featuring the courtship of the title character and his girlfriend, Jill Wortle, as well as Morty's travails at his low-level office job under boss E.G. Boomer. The strip gradually deëmphasized the romance and work aspects in favor of what comics historian
Maurice Horn called its "background chorus of snide youngsters with a perceptive take on the human condition." After Cavalli had his second heart attack,
Sam and Silo cartoonist
Jerry Dumas substituted on
Winthrop for three months, taking old syndicate-provided strips and writing new dialog and re-lettering them in Cavalli's style. The strip ended on May 14, 1994. ==Cast==