Artist Tom Moore brought life to the many characters that inhabited Archie Comics for the better part of 30 years starting in the 1950s and brought joy to hundreds of thousands of fans. Tom, an El Paso native and alumnus of Texas College of Mines, now UTEP, died Monday, July 20, 2015. The University featured Tom in its summer 2009 UTEP Magazine that focused on UTEP’s impact on the arts.
by Daniel Perez
During a brief stint as a student at the Texas College of Mines, now The University of Texas at El Paso, Tom Moore revealed a talent for cartooning that helped him become a legendary artist for Archie Comics.
Moore, 81, began drawing cartoons at El Paso’s Austin High School and continued to hone his skills, creating illustrations for TCM’s student newspaper, The Prospector, and humor magazine, El Burro.
During his semester-and-a half at the college, he studied art under famous typographer/book designer Carl Hertzog, and Cristo Rey sculptor Urbici Soler. He also was in a journalism class taught by future El Paso mayor Judson Williams.
Although a self-described loner, he said that everything he observed and felt became part of his creative process, whether consciously or unconsciously.
“Every artist is influenced by their life experiences,” he says.
Moore’s time at TCM was bookended by two military conflicts. He joined the Navy out of high school at the end of World War II and was called back into action at the start of the Korean War.
cartooning skills to UTEP’s
Nova Quarterly in the
March 1989 issue.
His prowess with a pen blossomed while in the service and, with the help of the G.I. Bill, he enrolled at prestigious art schools in Chicago and New York in the early ’50s.
His abilities soon landed him a prominent role with Archie Comics starting in 1953. He and his wife, the former Ruth Kurz, a UTEP alumna, returned to El Paso in 1960 and brought the popular characters from Riverdale High School — Betty, Veronica, Jughead and Reggie –” with them.
Moore’s wife earned her bachelor’s in music education in 1966 and her master’s in piano performance in 1991, both from UTEP.
As for Moore, he graduated from his Archie duties in 1988, but has stayed active with freelance assignments. Today, some of his work can be seen on billboards along Interstate 10 around El Paso.