John Cullen Murphy
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Image:Johncullenmurphy.jpg John Cullen Murphy (May 3, 1919 in New York City - July 2, 2004 in Greenwich, Connecticut) was a comics artist probably best known for his work on the Prince Valiant comic strip. He replaced the strip's creator, Hal Foster, full-time in 1982 after Foster's death (Foster invited Murphy to collaborate with him in 1970). He continued to draw Valiant (with his son writing the script, and his daughter doing the lettering/coloring) until he retired in March 2004, turning the strip over to his hand-picked successor, illustrator Gary Gianni.
He attended the Art Institute of Chicago, where his family lived for a time. He aspired to be a baseball player, and was playing baseball when a neighbor, Norman Rockwell, asked the 15 year old if he would like to model for him. Rockwell's "Starstruck", in which a forlorn Murphy sits on the floor, gazing at pictures of movie starlets, was the September 22, 1934 cover of the Saturday Evening Post. Rockwell became one of Murphy's mentors.
Image:Bigbenbolt.jpg Before his tenure on Prince Valiant, Murphy was the artist of Big Ben Bolt from 1950 to 1978.
Awards
For his work on Big Ben Bolt and Prince Valiant, he received the National Cartoonist Society Story Comic Strip Award for 1971, and, for Prince Valiant, in 1974, 1976, 1978, 1984, and 1987. He received the Elzie Segar Award in 1983.