Manny Curtis, 1924-2007
Veteran gag cartoonist Manny Curtis has passed away, according to a report by the artist David Lloyd. Curtis worked in both single-panel and three-panel standard newspaper form, with both one-shot and recurring characters.
Curtis was an aspiring cartoonist before World War II who availed himself of the various aspects of London cartooning culture and education opportunities as a teenager. World War II took him to the Far East theater in 1943; he left the service in 1947. When he returned home and restarted his education, he found a thriving market driven by the sudden expansion of newspapers no longer restricted to a set number of pages by shortage. "It was a crazy, crazy period," he said in the short film interview embedded here, "but marvelous for me."
That short film speaks to the origin of Curtis' feature on black kids and white kids playing together, Algy and Fred, which Curtis says was inspired by the notion that there were no black characters in comics and anyone looking at the comics as represented as social history would think no black people existed in mid-Century England. It was purchased by an editor whose kids played with neighbor children in much the same way as Curtis depicted. The cartoonist says the strip was reprinted in Africa, China and Japan.
Recent work by Curtis may be seen here. Reminiscences of his time in Burma and his return there in 2005 can be found here.
