CSotD: A Short Career
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When I did a roundup of editorial cartoons from New Year's 1915 for New Year's of 2015, I stumbled across a cartoonist named Harry Osborn whose distinctive line really attracted me.
I poked around to learn more about him and found very little, in large part due to his sharing a name with a character from Spiderman but also due to his career being apparently short and fitful. I did find a reference to an H.S. Osborn at Strippers Guide, but little else. If it's the same fellow, his art improved markedly in the next decade.
But I was able to pull up some work he'd done in 1914 and 1915 at the Richmond Dispatch and I doubt I'll find out much more, so I might as well share what I've got, given that I've been on the road for about 22 hours and don't have the brain cells to talk about things I actually know anything about anyway.
He did some non-editorial work, like this Sept 20, 1914 sports roundup …
And this piece from November 21.
But his strength was in the political realm.
You have to know a little history to realize that the unrest on our southern border on the eve of WWI was what made the Zimmerman telegram such a big deal, and Osborn comments here on the topic, a good three years before that fateful telegram was intercepted. (Nov 22, 1914)
Harry made frequent use of "Father Byrd," an Uncle Sam type figure representing William Byrd II, considered the founder of Richmond, as seen in this March 16, 1915 cartoon.
In this January 6, 1915 piece, Uncle Sam had a year earlier opened a Federal Reserve Bank in Richmond, to the delight of Father Byrd and the dismay of Baltimore, who would end up with a branch of the Richmond bank, but not, apparently, for another decade.
In April 1915, Osborn did this piece on voter apathy, which isn't a topic others have failed to comment on, but I love the postures and expressions and, in particular, the foot poking out of the frame. He was very much ahead of his time.
Much the same can be said of this December, 1914 piece, which more or less explains itself and is less remarkable for the concept than for the execution.
Which makes this May 15, 1915 cartoon, in which Uncle Sam waits for a response from Germany about the sinking of the Lusitania, an oddity: It's so much like other cartoonists' work rather than his own that it makes Osborn's death in December (noted when this was reprinted December 8) even sadder and more mysterious.
This piece appeared in a cartoonists magazine and sheds little light, and the two other pieces I found were almost illegible as well as discreet to the point of not reporting the story.
You may be able to make them out, but the story appears to be that Harry drifted a bit: Several cities are listed and yet he is described as young, so you have to assume he didn't stay in one place very long.
His wife was an invalid of some sort, but both the above obit and the news story in the Dispatch suggest that it was a breakdown in Harry's case that sent them to his father's in Wisconsin, where he died and she "followed him to the grave" a week later, and I suppose that means there was reasonable cause for discretion.
(Nov 11, 1914)
But whatever else was going on in his short life, the man sure could draw comics with a certain personality and distinction!
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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