Charles H. Winner (December 18, 1885 – August 12, 1956), better known as Doc Winner, was an American cartoonist, notable for his
comic strip
A comic strip is a Comics, sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often Serial (literature), serialized, with text in Speech balloon, balloons and Glossary of comics terminology#Captio ...
s ''Tubby'' and ''Elmer'', plus his contributions to ''
Thimble Theatre
Popeye the Sailor Man is a fictional cartoon character created by E. C. Segar, Elzie Crisler Segar.Barney Google'' and other King Features strips.
Born in Perryville, Pennsylvania, Winner had seven brothers and two sisters, the children of Barbara and John Winner, a roofing contractor. His drawing skills soon led him to nearby
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...
, as he recalled:
:I fooled around a lot in school with art, covering the blackboard and all my books with sketches, and finally at 17, I went to art school in Pittsburgh, where I attended night classes for three years while working daily as a clerk in a tea and coffee store and later in the offices of the
Pennsylvania Railroad
The Pennsylvania Railroad ( reporting mark PRR), legal name as the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, also known as the "Pennsy," was an American Class I railroad that was established in 1846 and headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At its ...
.
Editorial cartoons
He drew sports cartoons for two years at the ''Pittsburgh Post'', succeeding
Billy DeBeck
William Morgan DeBeck (April 15, 1890 – November 11, 1942) was an American cartoonist. He is most famous as the creator of the comic strip ''Barney Google'', later retitled ''Barney Google and Snuffy Smith''. The strip was especially pop ...
, and became that newspaper's political cartoonist in 1910, relocating to the ''Harrisburg Patriot'' in 1914 and the ''Newark Star-Eagle'' in 1917. In 1923, he began his kid strip ''Tubby'' for
United Feature Syndicate
United Feature Syndicate, Inc. (UFS) is a large American editorial column and comic strip newspaper syndication service based in the United States and established in 1919. Originally part of E. W. Scripps Company, it was part of United Media ( ...
, as chronicled by comic strip historian Allan Holtz:
:Doc Winner had a very long career in newspaper comics, the bulk of it spent picking up the pieces on strips that had lost their original creators... The strip was offered by United Feature Syndicate back in the days when they were a tiny outfit with just a few offerings. Later on, of course, United Features would take over all the Pulitzer and Metropolitan strips and become a major name in the syndication business. ''Tubby'' ran from March 19, 1923, to June 5, 1926, according to my best information, and the stock of dailies was then sold to reprint syndicates, so you'll find the strip popping up later as well. Winner's next job, starting just a few months later, was to take over ''Just Boy'' from A. C. Fera, and Winner pretty quickly turned that strip into a continuation of ''Tubby''. Elmer, the main character of ''Just Boy'', became all but indistinguishable from the title character of this strip.
Following the strip size of the period, ''Tubby'' was drawn five inches high and 19 inches wide. Winner's strip ''Elmer'', which ran from 1926 to 1956, was based on the friends of his youth, as he recalled, "A great many of the stunts they do are ones we either did or tried to do when we were kids." In the late 1930s, Winner had his own Sunday page with ''Elmer'' positioned beneath Winner's ''Alexander Smart, Esq.'' and his ''Daffy Doodles'' (subtitled ''Dizzy Dramas from Our Readers'') topper.
King Features
Starting in the King Features bullpen in 1918, Winner worked with King Features for the next 38 years. At the time of E. C. Segar's illness and death, he was a ghost artist on ''Thimble Theatre'' during 1938 and 1939, continuing on some of the strip's Sunday pages in 1940. His ''Daffy Doodles'' and ''Elmer'' were reprinted in ''Ace Comics'' during the 1940s, and ''Elmer'' was seen again in Harvey's ''Family Funnies'' #6 (1951). Dell's ''Large Feature Comic'' reprinted his ''Thimble Theatre'' in 1941 and 1943. ''Elmer and His Dog'' was a 1935 Big Little Book.
In the final years of his life, Winner drew '' The Katzenjammer Kids'' (from 1947 to 1956). Winner lived with his wife, the former Agnes Reid, and two daughters in
Upper Montclair, New Jersey
Upper Montclair is a census-designated place (CDP), Local government in New Jersey#Unincorporated communities, unincorporated community and neighborhood within Montclair, New Jersey, Montclair in Essex County, New Jersey, Essex County, in the U. ...