Franklin Morris Howarth (1864–1908) was an American cartoonist and pioneering comic strip artist. Howarth was born in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

on September 27, 1864. He was the oldest of four children of William and Sarah (Iseminger) Howarth. His father was a pattern maker and an English immigrant, his mother a native Philadelphian. Howarth attended Central High School. By age 19 Howarth was drawing for the '' Philadelphia Call'' and other papers, after which he began to be employed by national periodicals such as ''

Munsey's Magazine ''Munsey's Weekly'', later known as ''Munsey's Magazine'', was a 36-page quarto United States, American magazine founded by Frank Munsey, Frank A. Munsey in 1889 and edited by John Kendrick Bangs. Frank Munsey aimed to publish "a magazine of the pe ...

'', ''

Life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energ ...

'', ''

Judge A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a panel of judges. A judge hears all the witnesses and any other evidence presented by the barristers or solicitors of the case, assesses the credibility an ...

'', and ''

Truth Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth 2005 In everyday language, truth is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as beliefs ...

''. He joined the staff of '' Puck'' in 1891, and moved to the ''

New York World The ''New York World'' was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 until 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers. It was a leading national voice of the Democratic Party. From 1883 to 1911 under publi ...

'' in 1901. Howarth, whose style for figures frequently featured big heads on little bodies, was among the first generation of cartoonists to create serial cartoons, which came to be called comic strips. According to author Jared Gardner, "F. M Howarth's work is representative of the development of sequential graphic narrative during this period... Howarth fractured the single panel that had previously dominated in the United States". Among Howarth's strips are the critically acclaimed courtship strip ''The Love of Lulu and Leander'' created in 1902 for the ''

New York American :''Includes coverage of New York Journal-American and its predecessors New York Journal, The Journal, New York American and New York Evening Journal'' The ''New York Journal-American'' was a daily newspaper published in New York City from 1937 t ...

'', and eternal con-man target ''Mr. E. Z. Mark'', created in 1903 for the ''American Journal-Examiner'' and which ran at least until his 1908 death (it might have been continued by another cartoonist). He also created the strip ''Ole Opey Dildock'' in 1907, which was taken over by W. L. Wells on Howarth's death and continued to 1914. Howarth died September 22, 1908, in

Germantown, Philadelphia Germantown (Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Deitscheschteddel'') is an area in Northwest Philadelphia. Founded by German, Quaker, and Mennonite families in 1683 as an independent borough, it was absorbed into Philadelphia in 1854. The area, which is about ...

, at age 43, of pneumonia.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Howarth, F. M. 1864 births 1908 deaths Artists from Philadelphia American comic strip cartoonists