Wayback Weekend: Mister Oswald
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The Life and Legacy of Mister Oswald
When it comes to pop culture icons, he may not be mainstream, but Mister Oswald has garnered celebrity status and a loyal following in the hardware industry. He first appeared in the comic strip bearing his same name in October 1927 and would delight readers of Hardware Retail magazine for over eight decades.
Mister Oswald was born from the creative mind of Russell Johnson, an artist and independent retailer…
Earlier this year the North American Hardware and Paint Association (NHPA) celebrated its 125th anniversary. As part of that observance it featured a couple articles about the Mister Oswald comic strip that regularly appeared in their Hardware Retailing for decades. They interview Larry Day who succeeded Russell Johnson on the Mister Oswald feature.
After retiring from retail in 1963, Johnson continued working on the Mister Oswald comic for two more decades. At the age of 95, he officially retired, passing the reins to illustrator Larry Day, who had been assisting Johnson with the comic since the early 1980s. Mister Oswald last appeared in the magazine in 2008.
They also interviewed comic enthusiast, comics historian and comic original art collector Rob Stolzer who had set up a Russell Johnson/Mister Oswald webpage years ago.
Not long after I purchased the book back in 1993, I began searching for information about Russ and his comic strip. There had been a couple of published interviews done years earlier, but nothing recent. I decided to try and contact Russ. Luckily, a friend of mine had his address, so I wrote him an old-fashioned letter. In July 1995, I was able to conduct Russ’s final interview, as he passed away two months later. That interview ran in the pages of Hogan’s Alley magazine, a publication devoted to the cartoon and narrative arts.
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