his cartooning and writing at night, except when he and his wife entertained in "artsy soirees" in their home and gardens (Traster, ibid). In 1963 (May 17), he wrote in Time Magazine that a featured painting by pop artist Roy Lichtenstein "came close" to an August 6, 1961 panel of his Steve Roper. He added: "Very flattering...I think?" He joined the National Cartoonists Society and clearly took pride in his work on the strip, which became Steve Roper and Mike Nomad in 1969, giving it new popularity. Later years and death In 1971 Overgard also took on the scripting of Kerry Drake after Saunders quit, and as that strip ended, began a new one he both wrote and drew, Rudy, which debuted on January 3, 1983. By then, there were disagreements over the writing of Steve Roper with Allen Saunders and son John who succeeded him in 1979. After his strip for April 7, 1985 (not 1982 as sometimes reported), Overgard left Steve Roper, immediately replaced by Fran Matera, and devoted himself to Rudy. Despite favorable reviews, Rudy came to an end later that year on December 22. Overgard had already expanded into screenplays and televised cartoons, now scripting episodes of ThunderCats. He had also been writing adventure novels, and in 1988 published his last one, A Few Good Men, about the U.S. Marines' 1931 intervention in the Sandinista war in Nicaragua. He continued his longtime interests in antique cars and music-making, especially the banjo. He died in Stony Point on May 25, 1990, survived by wife Gloria, sons Tom and Matthew, daughter Jennifer Magnusson and granddaughter Maja Magnusson, and leaving an archive of his earlier Steve Roper work at Syracuse University. Creative work Overgard's fiction includes the novels Moonlight Surveillance, Pieces of a Hero, Once More the Hero, Shanghai Tango, The Evil Chaser, The Divide, The Man from Raffles, and A Few Good Men. His screenplays include The Last Dinosaur (1977), The Bermuda Depths (1978), Ivory Ape (1980), Bushido Blade (1981), and the animated cartoons Silver Hawks and 19 episodes of ThunderCats (airing in the mid-1980s). He is more remembered for his 31 years (almost half his life) on Steve Roper; "one of the best-drawn and stylish adventure strips", and he varied it with fast-sequence montages, close-ups, and views from different angles. He also did the lettering after 1977, defining the strip's characters and aging them over the years.