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AMS Scrubs Graffiti From Site – revised and updated

Published: January 18, 2026 1 minute 13 comments

Andrews McMeel Syndication (AMS) has dropped the comic quip panel Graffiti from its list of syndicated features recently (the past few days). It may have been dropped from the GoComics roster last month. A Google search has The Chicago Tribune GoComics portal showing it for Saturday December 27, 2025.

Update: The Orlando Sentinel GoComics portal confirms that December 27, 2025 was the last Graffiti panel that appeared on the GoComics site. Did that panel appear in any newspaper?

Graffiti by Bill Leary – July 1, 1968

The one column newspaper panel featuring witty one-liners scrawled on a brick wall was created by Bill Leary and first appeared July 1, 1968 (in The Frankfort State Journal above). Leary was not adverse to throwing in jibes at the politics of the day and some of the epigrams are pertinent to today’s circumstances.

According to his Andrews McMeel profile Gene Mora would soon join Leary on the feature:

Gene Mora’s love of typography and hand lettering started when he was a high school student at the School of Art and Design. The chance to use his design and lettering skills along with the opportunity to write seemed a perfect fit, and he has been producing Graffiti since 1969.

Editor and Publisher would acknowledge Mora’s contributions when they noted a Sunday page joining the daily in September 1970.

Editor and Publisher – August 22, 1970
Graffiti by Bill Leary and Gene Mora – September 6, 1970

By the late 1970s Leary’s signature and credit would disappear from panel. By 1983 Mora was getting the credit line.The feature’s syndicate McNaught would fold around 1988 and the panel would move to United Feature Syndicate and eventually, in 2011, be distributed by Andrews McMeel Syndicate.

The last I found it appearing in a newspaper, via newspapers.com, is Monday September 12, 2022 in The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star after that date The Free Lance-Star would conform to the Lee Enterprises mandate on syndicated comics.

Update: Grant supplies proof that Graffiti ran in the The Oakland Press until December 27, 2025:

Graffiti by Gene Mora Oakland Press – Dec. 27, 2025

Graffiti

by Bill Leary and Gene Mora

daily: July 1, 1968 – December 27, 2025

Sunday: September 6, 1970 – September 3, 1972 (Tacoma News Tribune)

lettered panel

McNaught Syndicate/United Feature Syndicate-Andrews McMeel Syndicate

Graffiti by Bill Leary and Gene Mora – September 3, 1972
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Comments 13

  1. I have it in print here until just a few weeks ago.

  2. How many other super obscure cartoons like this does AMS have? Maybe we should start checking on them. Also Graffiti hasn’t been on GoComics in quite a while, 2021 or 2022. It was pulled from there due to low viewership. I think there was an article then. I can probably find it.

    2. It seems unlikely that GoComics uses page views to determine which strips to keep in their online menu. The website has an enormous number of orphaned strips that have not been updated for years, and that’s not even counting a plethora of strips that are permanent reruns. The following selection of “dead” strips was compiled just from the first two letters of the alphabet:

      Ali’s House — Mar 2022
      Awkward Yeti — Jan 2023
      Berger & Wyse — Mar 2024
      Berkeley Mews — Oct 2025
      BFGF Syndrome — May 2025
      Bird & Moon — Sep 2022
      Bloom County “continues” — Jun 2020

  3. I know in the early 1980’s the Philadelphia Inquirer and Toledo Blade carried the daily Graffiti strip.

  4. I knew when I first saw it in the early ’70s that the “inspiration” for this panel was 100% Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, which had used the double-entendre aphorism form as early as its first special in September of 1967. I recall looking for a George Schlatter-Ed Friendly or Romart copyright and not finding it. That the panel outlasted the show by fifty years is kind of amazing.

    1. In an interview at the release of the panel Leary claimed he had submitted the idea earlier and the syndicate held onto it for a year. Maybe Laugh-In’s popularity convinced the McNaught of the viability?

  5. The Oakland Press(Michigan) replaced it with reruns of Herman. I don’t know of any other paper that was still running it.

  6. I hope Gene Mora is alright. He must be pretty old by now.

    1. I actually did a search for Gene Mora and found his Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/gene.mora/). He was born on May 6, 1934 and so, at 91, is a Senior Stripper. I couldn’t find anything regarding his health.
      The newspaper.com search engine hates those uneven Graffiti block letters – saying that I couldn’t find any indication that Graffiti had entered rerun status.

      1. Will Gene Mora get a post over it, or does Graffiti not count as it’s only kind-of a cartoon, and it would be a year and a half late. I couldn’t find an obit online so I’m thinking he’s still alive. Is he just quietly inducted.

  7. There hasn’t been an update to his Facebook page since Sept 2022 so he may not be with us any longer.

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