Tim Kennedy, a longtime Archie Comics artist who has been working regularly for the company ever since being hired in 1989, generally alongside his twin brother, Pat Kennedy, has passed away.

Kennedy and his brother both graduated from the Joe Kubert School of Cartooning and Graphic Design in 1985. They were then both hired by Archie Comics in 1989, with work from the pair beginning to really start at the company in earnest in 1990, like this story penciled by Tim Kennedy in Archie's Pals 'n' Gals #213...

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1989-1991 was a fascinating period in Archie history, where the company underwent a dramatic expansion of comic book titles, including some out there concepts like Archie 3000, a series about Archie and the gang in the future; Jughead's Time Police, about Jughead teaming up with Archie's descendent from the future to fight crime throughout time; and Jughead's Diner, probably the most ambitious of all the books, where Jughead was in charge of an interdimensional diner. With so many new titles, Archie needed an influx of new talent, and both Tim and Pat Kennedy started during this period (and worked on most of those titles at one point or another). However, when that expansion retracted, the Kennedys remained as steady contributors for over 30 years at the company.

As the years passed, Tim and Pat Kennedy began penciling books together, as "The Kennedy Bros" (or The K Bros). There have been other brothers who worked together as penciler/inker teams, but it's still fairly rare to see brothers working together as pencilers, with another artist then inking their jointly penciled works (Bob Smith being their most common inker).

They worked on Life With Archie for a number of years with writer Paul Kupperberg, the magazine-style comic book series that followed two distinctive alternate universes where Archie married Betty in one universe and Veronica in another.

Last year, Tim and Pat paid homage to the 1989-91 era of Archie Comics with a "Crisis on the Riverdale Earths" story in Archie 80th Anniversary Jumbo Comics Digest #1, featuring a number of the characters from those years in a "Crisis on Infinite Earths" parody...

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The Kennedy Bros. were magnificent mimics of certain artistic eras, as you can see in the recent Archie Meets Riverdale crossover, which saw the classic Archie characters meet the TV versions of themselves...

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Tim and Pat Kennedy's ability to handle different genres also served them well while drawing the "Jughead as a werewolf" comic book, Jughead: The Hunger, with writer Frank Tieri...

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Archie Comics President/Editor-in-Chief Mike Pellerito issued a statement about Kennedy's tragic passing:

For decades, the Fabulous K Bros have dazzled fans around the world, bringing some of the funniest and most difficult stories from idea to the page. No matter the challenge of illustrating a difficult scene with a giant Ferris wheel, intricate architecture, spaceships, car chases or any other wild story idea, they handled it seemingly with ease. Over the past decade or so I think their work has become some of the best and most versatile at Archie.

In addition to their work in the fun and bouncy classic Archie style, they excelled at more dramatic material like the hugely successful story, Archie: The Married Life. This led them to incredible work on the Archie Horror title Jughead: The Hunger and the more recent Archie Meets Riverdale where they combined the look of classic Archie and the realistic style of The CW’s Riverdale

The range of work during their career has been nothing short of truly fabulous. Beyond the gorgeous art, Tim and Pat were the most humble and funny pair of brothers I have ever met. The loss of Tim at far too young an age is so very sad. My deepest condolences to Pat, and the rest of their family, friends and countless fans.