Tom Moore discovered his flair for cartooning while serving in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War. Moore had drawn a cartoon of his captain for fun, which lead to him being called into the captain’s office. Expecting to get in trouble he was actually reassigned to be a staff cartoonist. Moore took advantage of the opportunity and created the popular "Chick Call" strip, which ran in military service publications.
After the war, Moore used the GI Bill to attend a school in New York for cartoonists, and illustrators. While there he studied under “Tarzan” comic strip illustrator Burne Hogarth.
A year later he joined Archie Comics best known for its many series featuring the fictional teenagers Archie Andrews, Betty Cooper, Veronica Lodge, Reggie Mantle, and Jughead Jones. Moore took over
for Archie co-creator Bob Montana in 1953. He would work on Archie on and off until he retired in the late 1980s. In an interview with The El Paso Times back in 1996 Moore told his hometown paper.
“I did one comic book a month, I did everything. We always worked six months ahead. I’d be doing Christmas issues in June and beach stories with a foot of snow outside my window.”
According to the El Paso Times, Annual sales of the comic regularly surpassed half a million during the 1960s.
Archie Comics’ editor in chief, Victor Gorelick, who has worked at the company for more than 50 years, had this to say about Moore.
“Tom was very funny and had a knack for putting together really great, hilarious gags and special pages when he worked at Archie,” Gorelick said. “He was probably best known here for inking our ’Jughead’ relaunch decades ago. We’re all sad to hear this news and wish his family the very best during this time.”
After retiring, Moore kept tabs on Archie, and disagreed when the company decided to kill off the character. So it is unfortunate that he won’t get to see the upcoming relaunch of the company’s flagship title.
A celebration of Tom Moore will be scheduled in the coming weeks. He was 86.