Moreno’s torch for Latino representation in the Times was being carried by another young Mexican immigrant: Alex Perez, who also started at the Junior Times before becoming a staff illustrator for the adult Times for 50 years. By then, the 19-year-old already worked for animation studios.
The following year, the Times reported that Moreno held a screening of some of his “animated funnies” to members of the Junior Times Club. “Never has he missed a club art meeting, nor has he lost the gentleness and kindness that have always stamped him as a clean-cut sport.” “Manuel is now making a good salary, but has he forgotten us?” Aunt Dolly wondered that year. Moreno’s last illustration for the Times published in 1927, but he never abandoned the paper that gave him his break. “Already, you have the notion of a child who sees all the possibilities in the world, and he seems fearless.” “Manuel has not traveled the world, but he’s reading and illustrating it,” Klein added. “He looks like a child cartoonist when he first starts,” Klein said of Moreno, “but his level of talent accelerates so quickly that by the end of his run, he’s drawing at a professional level.” The professor praised the teen’s quick pivot to “continuity strips” - a story told over weeks - instead of one-off gags, citing a run where Keen and Feeble Tat fly to different countries.
That’s how he found out that Moreno was probably the first Latino to pen his own regular comic strip in a major American newspaper, from 1924-26. Loyola Marymount animation professor Tom Klein is working on a biography of Moreno, whom he called “a figure who really deserved more and could’ve been so much more.” He plans to tell the history of animation in Los Angeles through his book, and has been in the proverbial salt mines for years. in the 1950s, left the world of cartoons, and ran a successful photo-processing store for decades. Disney animators who had worked with Moreno tried multiple times to recruit him to the Mouse House, but he instead took over his brother’s camera shop during World War II, then moved to his native Mexico to run an animation studio.
He was a trusted supervisor for Walter Lantz in the 1930s, and also worked for MGM. Some became legends like Bill Melendez (who brought “Peanuts” to television), Phil Roman (whose animation studio long produced “The Simpsons”) and Disney stalwart X Atencio others might not get as much mainstream attention but are nevertheless respected by animation buffs. While Old Hollywood stereotyped Latinos or just ignored them (still does, alas), animation was a space where Latinos - particularly Mexican Americans - were able to flourish.
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