Wayback Whensday – Merrill Blosser Before He Had Freckles
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James Rada, Jr. for The Fredricks News-Post writes of the origin of Merrill Blosser as a professional cartoonist (or here).
“In the early decades of the 20th century, one of the most successful newspaper cartoonists was Merrill Blosser. His comic strip, “Freckles and His Friends,” ran for more than 55 years, from 1915 to 1971, appearing in hundreds of newspapers across the country.”
…
“The following year [1911], The (Frederick [Maryland]) News was working on a campaign to generate interest in the city’s growth and development. As part of the effort, a Booster Banquet was held at the City Hotel. Around the same time, Blosser visited the newspaper’s offices on the upper floors of a building on North Market Street and spoke with editor Robert E. Delaplaine about his interest in becoming a cartoonist.”
Rada continues:
“According to [a 1971 article in] The News, these were Blosser’s first published drawings. However, they were not comic strips like those he would become known for, but illustrations promoting the Booster Banquet.”
Well, that first one was about the banquet but the following week it was an editorial cartoon concerning local politics and that seemed to be the trend on an irregular basis for a few months.
Merrill moved on to other establishments.
“Blosser left college in 1913 and sold another cartoon to the Baltimore American. He then worked for the Wheeling Register and the Cleveland Plain Dealer before joining the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA) in Cleveland, Ohio, in May 1915.
“Later that year, his first daily comic strip, ‘Freckles,’ was published. It was a single-panel cartoon about a mischievous young boy. It became popular, and Blosser soon renamed it ‘Freckles and His Friends.'”
Almost right. The first Freckles was a comic strip running down a single column.
“Henry Formhals began assisting Blosser with the comic strip in 1935 and eventually took over the daily version in 1966. Blosser continued drawing the Sunday strip until his retirement later that year.”
“Blosser died in Pasadena, California, on Jan. 9, 1983, at age 90.”
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