Dick Daniels with a selection of his cartoon-inspired artworks (courtesy of the artist)
From posts at The Kansas City Star to Hallmark’s Shoebox and KCAI, the Kansas City artist has spent a lifetime mining comics and cartoons, even while battling cancer
People showed up in droves.
The intimate gallery space at HJ’s Community Center near Meyer Blvd. and Wornall was packed before the official start time of 6 p.m. on Aug. 29. Dick Daniels, a visual artist with a deadpan sense of humor and a devoted following, was giving away as much of his art as possible. The virtual flyers Daniels blasted out to old friends, former colleagues and fans summed up the offerings succinctly: T-shirts, ceramics, letterpress images, cartoon wood plaques, faux beer ads, beer glasses decorated with fictional slogans and cartoon characters and framed prints would be available.
His life’s work was free to anyone who walked through the door.
“Don’t be shy,” he messaged via his mailing list. “Please take as much as you want… Bring your own bags and boxes to cart away your precious treasures.”
Daniels and his wife, Renee Daniels, were seated just inside the door, greeting visitors as they filed in. At one point I threaded through the throng to ask Dick a simple question: How many people did you invite?
“Too many!” he answered.
Dick Daniels has done what a lot of people would like to do: He’s made a living making art. Ceramics, drawings, retro advertising images and paintings on scrap lumber — for years he sold his work at art fairs. But the unsold work stacked up.
So back in August, after months of cancer treatments, Dick decided to give a lot of it away for free at an invitation-only event.
I met Dick back in the days when we both worked for The Kansas City Star. He was an artist/illustrator. I was a reporter/second string movie critic. At the time, the artists and page designers occupied a space on the third floor of the old Star building just around the corner from the boxy dead end that housed the arts-and-entertainment writers. Eventually, the artists were all moved to the second floor, just off the newsroom — almost as if management was concerned that too many people with anarchic sensibilities (writers and artists) might contaminate each other with their subversive thinking.
When you’ve known someone since you were both in your 20s, you blithely assume that all the chaos, laughter, stress and occasional blowups will simply go on and on. You never picture yourself being old and tired. But nobody can slow time. Yet, for most of 2025, Daniels looked for ways to slow things down, at least in his head. In July he turned 74.
For most of 2025, Dick has been fighting a double cancer diagnosis — bladder and pancreas. He kept his Facebook followers up to date with hand-drawn cartoons and text after each medical procedure.
His work, much of it influenced by animated and print cartoons of the 1930s and ’40s, was and remains delightful and surprising. As one who had tried his hand at amateur cartoons, I always loved his caricatures and his ability to convey humor and feeling with only a few deft lines. His was a unique skill set.
After five years at the Star, Dick moved into a job at Hallmark’s new Shoebox division, which produced greeting cards with an edgy sense of humor. That’s what Dick was doing when 25 years ago he was diagnosed with colon cancer. After facing the daunting challenges of treatment, he became a cancer survivor.
At Hallmark he met Renee, an award-winning writer for the company. Her stats are impressive: She produced more than 11,000 pieces of writing used in Hallmark greeting cards and other products. Dick, for his part, produced about 2,000 images.
He eventually left the iconic greeting-card company and set up his own business selling his artwork, which eventually included ceramics in addition to prints of his hand-drawn work, much of it referencing vintage cartoon characters. Some of his creations were painted on scrap lumber panels, made to look like old, discarded advertising signs.
“I’ve studied it deeply,” he said. “You look up all the mouse cartoons and there were dozens and dozens of them. To this day I’ve got thousands of prints of old 1930s cartoon characters. I reference them all the time.”
Some of the images would be considered nostalgic if not for Dick’s subtle but subversive sense of humor.
“I’ll go back to when I was producing a lot of art,” he said. “I would take innocent looking characters and use two or three words that you wouldn’t associate with anything so naive. A lot of it is just smart-assery.”
At the time of two interviews in August, he was dealing with the double cancer diagnosis, which occupied his mind, body and spirit.
“The outlook is not good,” he said. “I’m not expecting a cure. What I picked up from the doctors is, ‘We’ll keep treating you.’ But they’re not going to save me. I’ve come to terms with it.”
Here’s how Dick Daniels describes himself and his art on his website: “Kansas City born illustrator, painter, ceramist and part-time junk collector Dick Daniels is a child of the ’50s who blossomed in the full glare of the psychedelic ’60s — influenced by the underground comix movement, American folk art and cheap commercial packaging.”
FROM “NUTTY CARTOON STUFF” TO NOW
In his basement studio is a “sprawling mass of artifacts from his past, present and future,” including “carnival punks, Rat Fink model kits, wooden processed cheese boxes, half-finished robots, MadBalls, Smurf collectibles, stacks of Roi-Tan cigar boxes, millions of old plastic and hard rubber toys, boxes of parts and weathered wood.”
“I was heavy into comic books,” he said. “The superhero stuff didn’t really appeal to me much. But I liked the daily cartoon page in the paper. I was really drawn to the Nancy cartoons. And Richie Rich. I eventually got into Mad Magazine. In the fifth grade I came up with a character named Pudgy Mash. And all the kids came around and they all wanted me to draw Pudgy Mash.”
Pudgy Mash was a blob-like human head with a tiny sprout of hair growing from an otherwise bald head. And he wore a bowtie.
“I was doing nutty cartoon stuff,” he said. “Pretty crude. When I look at it now I think, ‘how did you get from that to what you’re doing now?’”
More recently, he began creating convincing images of imaginary vintage tin toys by feeding hand-drawn cartoons into an artificial intelligence platform. The results appear to be photographs of actual objects, so realistic that people have asked him if they can buy one. Others ask simply, “Is that real?”
Dick grew up in old Leawood. His father was a housebuilder. His mom freelanced doing alterations on women’s clothes.
“She was a hard worker,” he said. “I got a lot of my work ethic from watching her.”
Leawood had the feel of a small town in the 1950s and ’60s. Dick said his life there was a “very sheltered existence.” After high school he enrolled at the Kansas City Art Institute and has lived on the Missouri side ever since.
“I was signed up to go to KU, and a friend of mine told me about the (Kansas City) art institute,” he said. “So we went, and I looked around and said, ‘Yeah, this looks pretty good.’ I would have bombed out at KU, that’s for sure.”
The institute was all about creating art. He took academic classes, including English and art history, but most of his time was spent making art. His art history instructor told him at the end of a semester, “You can take a test or just turn in a piece of art.”
Dick also taught himself the basics of animation.
“They didn’t have an animation department, but they let me do one on my own,” he said. “I had a single-frame 16-millimeter camera so I duct-taped it to a table… I had done all the drawings so I just clicked them off one at a time. There were no parameters. They said just go ahead and do it.”
As a result, Dick was able to create two or three short films with music. After he graduated, he spent eight years doing training films, which bored him. His next stop was the Star, where he created cover art and illustrations for five years. Then he landed at Hallmark.
“I was always looking for extra money,” he said. “So I just dropped off my portfolio and they called back.”
Dick stayed at Hallmark’s Shoebox for 25 years. Then he went solo, buying a tent and selling his work at art fairs.
Dick talked his doctors into letting him take a break from chemo and radiation in August. He started feeling better and had more energy.
“I told him I could see a big difference in him,” Renee said.
Through Renee’s influence, Dick learned a bit about Zen Buddhism. He was able to apply some of the principles to his daily life as a cancer patient
“She sent me stuff I’ve found really interesting. Mainly, it’s stay in the here and now,” he said. “I don’t meditate per se but I keep in the here and now. Living in the moment — that’s my philosophy and it serves me well with what I’m going through right now. Renee is a fantastic caregiver. Without her I’d be totally lost.”
Renee said she began attending Zen classes several years ago and has made it part of her daily life.
“I think it sustains me,” she said. “I meditate almost every morning… It helps to quiet my mind and it helps me to stay focused on the present. One night shortly after Dick had been diagnosed, I couldn’t stop the tears. And then I had to pull back and remind myself that Dick is right here. He’s holding your hand. He’s right here. And I have found immense comfort in staying present like that… It’s like you have this big clock and you can just hear it tick, tick, tick, and that makes you very aware of every moment.”
One thing seemed clear in August: Dick had not lost his sense of humor.
“Yesterday I had to go to the DMV and renew my license,” he said. “I made the funniest face I could for my driver’s license photo. Anytime I can get out and be around people, it’s good. But it wears me out.”
Still, old friendships endure. Former colleagues from the Star have come to see him. So have many of his Hallmark coworkers.
“Hallmark artists have kept in touch, mostly through my Facebook page,” he said. “I had 10 people come over and help with the yard work. I found that Hallmarkers really stick together.”
Dick said he, like all of us and especially people facing cancer, wants more time.
“A lot of stuff I wanted to get done, I just won’t be able to, unfortunately,” he said. “I’ll tell you what, it gets your attention. Every day you think of things like that.”
