CHICAGO, IL — The creator of Playboy magazine’s infamously naughty “Granny” character died earlier this month at the age of 71 in a suburban Chicago hospital after suffering a stroke.Brown, whose work has also appeared in Ebony, Esquire and Jet, first had a piece published in Playboy in 1962. “Granny” was the magazine’s first full-color cartoon and it ran until 1966. He was one of the magazine’s most prolific artists, with his latest piece for the magazine running in the August 2007 issue.

Brown was remembered in Playboy’s online blog by cartoon editor Michelle Urry, who wrote, “Buck rendered the most incisive comments on race relations in America in his tour-de-force painterly style.”

Brown originally began to gain notoriety for his artwork during a stint in the U.S. Air Force and later at the University of Illinois.