Cartoonist Kimihiko Tsukuda, who authored the "Honobono-kun" comic strip, the longest-running serialized comic strip in Japanese newspapers, died of pneumonia at a Tokyo hospital on June 28, his family said Saturday. He was 80.
The comic strip appeared daily in the Tokyo Shimbun from 1956 and was eventually carried by several local papers.
Tsukuda suspended the series in February 2007 due to illness before ending it for good on March 8 of that year, when the 15,451st strip was printed in the morning editions.
The series featuring Honobono-kun, a child who played with animals, was dubbed the "Japanese Charlie Brown."