Born in Newark, New Jersey, Hoest spent two years in the Navy and studied art at Cooper Union.

[1] Hoest entered the comic strip community in 1960 with My Son John, for the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate.

Top cartoonists of that decade drew cartoons showing Volkswagens, and these were published along with amusing automotive essays by such humorists as H. Allen Smith, Roger Price and Jean Shepherd.

While working on Penny, Hoest began his cartoons about a bickering couple, The Lockhorns, as a single-panel daily on September 9, 1968, with the Sunday feature launched April 9, 1972.

Hoest, who lived in Lloyd Neck, Long Island, was 62 when he died of lymphoma at New York Medical Center.

I came to realize that his success, which so many cartoonists young and old tried to analyze, was the result of a simple rule: Learn to do each segment of a comic professionally.

Bill Hoest could draw well, letter attractively and legibly, design in an eye-catching fashion, direct and control the action and expression of his characters, and write material that was genuinely funny.