Robert Brown | Playboy cartoonist, 71

Cartoonist Robert "Buck" Brown, 71, who created Playboy magazine's infamously naughty "Granny" character, has died.

Mr. Brown died July 2 after suffering a stroke, daughter Tracy Hill said.

He became a leading black artist whose work was filled with social commentary about the civil rights movement of the 1960s. While he was most famous for his cartoons, Mr. Brown also was a noted painter of what he called "soul genre paintings" - humorous, slice-of-life images.

Mr. Brown's first cartoon appeared in Playboy in 1962, according to a 1981 biography. The character that became Granny, in his first color cartoon for the publication, came four years later.

In the decades that followed, the magazine printed more than 600 of his cartoons, including one that appears in the magazine's August issue. - AP