The kid in me is romping and playing today.

Oaky Doaks was my favorite cartoon as a child.  It’s the reason I’m a cartoonist today.

Cartoonist R. B. Fuller was an accomplished artist. His work is so perfectly executed, unlike the hastily done stuff of at least half the stuff on the comics pages these days.  As a child in West Virginia in the late 1940s, I came across the daily strip “Oaky Doaks” and fell in love with it.  In the strip, Oaky was a farm boy who, using some equipment from the barn, hammered himself some armor and went off riding his plow-horse Nellie to do battle with dragons, rescue damsels in distress, and confront evil everywhere.  I loved everything about this strip.

When I would read the strip each day–remember, I was 8 or 9 years old at the time–my mind went into overdrive.  I seriously entered that tiny world of the medieval knight with his silly sidekick King Cedric.  It was delightful in every way.  And, may I say, Mr. Fuller sure could draw beautiful women!

Then, when I was 11, we moved back to the Alabama farm where our newspapers did not carry that strip.  I hardly noticed, I realize now, as I was involved in a hundred things.  Only years later did I look back and remember my old friend Oaky and find that something inside me was treasuring him and missing him. 

So, I went online.