Jay Kennedy, 50; comics historian was top editor for King Features

Jay Kennedy, 50, a comics historian and editor in chief of King Features Syndicate since 1997, drowned Thursday while vacationing in Costa Rica, the New York-based comics distributor announced.

Kennedy had been comics editor at King Features, a unit of Hearst Corp., since 1989. He joined the company in 1988 after having served as cartoon editor of Esquire magazine since 1983.

Born April 18, 1956, in Toledo, Ohio, Kennedy studied sculpture and conceptual art at the School of Visual Arts in New York and earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of Wisconsin.

Kennedy viewed cartoons as “an art form accessible to all people,” according to a King Features biography that quoted him further: “They can simply laugh at the jokes or look beyond them to see the artist’s view of the world. Cartoons are multileveled art accessible to everyone at whatever level they choose to enjoy.”