Its stories usually emphasized harsh frontier justice and basic virtues such as honesty, self reliance, and independence with an occasional touch of wry humor.
When he died suddenly in December, 1936, Bob Leffingwell (also a Gray assistant) stepped in, continuing the strip until its conclusion in 1972.
It suffered greatly during its last few years routinely involving Joe and a Navajo boy named Dead Pan retelling a tired old joke.
Bob Leffingwell continued to ink and letter Little Orphan Annie until Harold Gray's death in 1969 when the feature passed into other hands.
Joe ran in an ever dwindling number of papers until it was caught up in the 1972 syndicate purge of formerly popular strips that included Terry and the Pirates and Smilin' Jack.