I’m sorry to write that George Cratcha, the editor of the Funny Times, the newspaper tabloid monthly, has died. George got to know the editorial cartoonists by coming to the AAEC conventions and kept in touch with scores of cartoonists that he published. The Funny Times runs a wide selection of editorial cartoons every month and is on all the editorial cartoonists e-mail lists for pay per use cartoon sales.

George was the manager (he loved to call himself the mangler) of Funny Times for over 14 years. His emails always had his title as mangler too. The owner of Funny Times is Ray Lesser who started the publication over 20 years ago.

George died unexpectedly in September. He was only 53 years old and everyone close to him is still in shock. George leaves behind his two teenage sons, Andrew, 16 and Tyler, 18. A small notice of George’s passing ran in the Funny Times, but I guess we all missed it.

Sandee, the new editor at the Funny Times, is doing George’s job for now and she tells us that the whole staff is missing him, saying “George was really gregarious and funny and lived life in a big way. He made working at the publication a lot of fun.”