Ed Dodd; Cartoonist Created ‘Mark Trail’

GAINESVILLE, Ga. — Cartoonist Ed Dodd, who created the environmentally conscious comic strip character Mark Trail, died Monday at 88.

The Associated Press reported Tuesday that he died at Northeast Georgia Medical Center a few hours after entering the hospital. Hospital spokeswoman Blanche Barrett said he had been ill for some time, but she declined to specify a cause of death.

Dodd started the comic strip “Mark Trail” in 1946. Its title character is a clean-cut, pipe-smoking photojournalist for Woods and Wildlife magazine who fights an assortment of polluters and other despoilers of nature.

When the Washington Post dropped the award-winning strip in February, readers protested by the thousands and the newspaper not only reinstated it, but devoted two full pages to reprint the 40 episodes that its outraged readers missed.

The fray extended to Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee, who personally responded to a big “Bring Back Mark Trail” sign posted across from his office. “OK,” said Bradlee, posting his own sign.

In 1978, as his eyesight failed, Dodd turned the comic strip over to Gainesville artist Jack Elrod, who continues to draw it under both their names. Through Publishers-Hall Syndicate, it is carried by more than 200 newspapers.

Dodd, whose full name was Edward Benton Dodd, began his career as a cartoonist in 1929 in New York drawing a humor panel, “Back Home Again,” from 1930 to 1945.

Among his books are “Mark Trail’s Book of North American Mammals,” “Mark Trail’s Outdoor Tips” and “Today’s World of Conservation.”

Gainesville residents held a weeklong celebration honoring Dodd in 1986, the 40th anniversary of “Mark Trail.”

“He was one of nature’s noblemen,” said Jack Spalding, former editor of the Atlanta Journal, who was a neighbor of Dodd when the artist lived in Atlanta. Dodd later moved to Gainesville.