Letter to the editor: Al Scaduto

When cartoonist Al Scaduto (writer and artist for They'll Do It Every Time) died last Saturday, a number of people at The Comics Curmudgeon pointed out that the mainstream media had not taken any notice of his passing. The few articles that have appeared since then, for the most part, direct readers to the Comics Curmudgeon entry or the entry on Mike Lynch's blog that broke the news.

Since my own local paper, the Wilkes-Barre Citizens' Voice, carries Al Scaduto's comic, I thought it was only proper that his passing should be noted. I wrote up a combination death announcement and scathing criticism of the mainstream media and sent it in as a letter to the editor. It was published today. Unfortunately the letter was bowdlerized, emasculated, by the removal of a few key sentences. Here is the letter as it was submitted; the parts that have been removed are in red.

Al Scaduto died on Saturday, December 8 at the age of 79.

If you don't know who Al Scaduto is, turn to the comics section of the weekday version of the Citizens' Voice and look at the lower left-hand corner. Al Scaduto has single-handedly written and illustrated the one-panel comic They'll Do It Every Time for the past eighteen years, and prior to that co-wrote it as part of the team of Dunn and Scaduto.

Al Scaduto was a gem of a man, gentle, kind, and polite, as noted on the blog The Comics Curmudgeon (joshreads.com) in comments by his many fans, correspondents, and even several family members. Sadly, his passing has gone almost completely unnoticed by the mainstream media. He was loved, and will be missed.