Edwin Reid McCall (born 1901 in Chatham, Ontario, died 1975) was a Canadian journalist, and a

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

and comic book writer.Biography at the Joe Shuster Awards
/ref> He was best known for creating the first comic strip based on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, ''

Men of the Mounted A man is an adult male human. Prior to adulthood, a male human is referred to as a boy (a male child or adolescent). Like most other male mammals, a man's genome usually inherits an X chromosome from the mother and a Y chro ...

'' for the

Toronto Evening Telegram ''The Toronto Evening Telegram'' was a conservative, broadsheet afternoon newspaper published in Toronto from 1876 to 1971. It had a reputation for supporting the Conservative Party at the federal and the provincial levels. The paper competed with ...

and the war hero

Freelance ''Freelance'' (sometimes spelled ''free-lance'' or ''free lance''), ''freelancer'', or ''freelance worker'', are terms commonly used for a person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Freelance w ...

for

Anglo-American Publishing Anglo-American Publishing was a Canadian comic book publisher during the World War II era. While they published a number of Canadian creations, they also printed Canadian reworkings of scripts bought from American publisher Fawcett Comics. His ...

. McCall was one of four children of Alexander McCall. He was married to Elise Donaldson (1899–1976) and had one son, Ted Jr.Biographical info by his great nephew
/ref>Search results on Ancestry.ca
/ref>

Career in comics

Comic strips

On February 13, 1933, The Toronto Evening Telegram began publishing McCall's comic strip ''Men of the Mounted'', drawn by Harry Hall.Punch in Canada on McCall
/ref> The strip starred Corporal Keene. It was the first strip based on the RCMP as well as being Canada's first regular adventure strip. Syndicated across Canada, it ran for two years until '' King of the Royal Mounted'', an American strip, began to be published.Biography of Harry Hall, illustrator of Men of the Mounted, at Lambiek
/ref> McCall had approached King Features about syndicating his strip in the United States but was rejected. When ''King of the Royal Mounted'' was started, McCall felt they had plagiarized his idea. The last strip was published on February 16, 1935, the day before ''King of the Royal Mounted'' started. The strips were also adapted into a

Big Little Book The Big Little Books, first published during 1932 by the Whitman Publishing Company of Racine, Wisconsin, were small, compact books designed with a captioned illustration opposite each page of text. Other publishers, notably Saalfield, adopted t ...

published by Whitman PublishingReferences to the Whitman books
/ref> and were featured in trading cards from Willard's Chocolates. A little over 7 months later, on September 23, 1935, McCall began another strip, this time based on the Robin Hood legends. '' Robin Hood and Company'' was illustrated by

Charles Snelgrove Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English and French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was "f ...

and was also originally only published in the Telegram. Overall it was more successful and eventually was published internationally in more than 80 papers, including some in the US and Europe. Snelgrove died in late 1939 and, after a brief hiatus, the strip was continued by

Syd Stein Syd or SYD may refer to: *Syd (name), including a list of people with the name * ''Syd.'', taxonomic author abbreviation of Hans Sydow (1879–1946), German mycologist * Sydney, New South Wales, Australia ** IATA code for Sydney Airport, New South ...

.Biography of Charles Snelgrove at Lambiek
/ref> The last strip was published on February 16, 1939, after Stein joined the army.
/ref> The strip was popular and lasted a while because of "McCall's deft writing, inventive plots and earthy humor". It did not follow the traditional plots of the Robin Hood mythos but did include secondary characters such as Little John, Friar Tuck and Will Scarlett.

Anglo-American Publishing

On December 6, 1940, the War Exchange Conservation Act was passed by the Canadian government. Amongst the things it did was banning the importation of American comic books. McCall saw this as an opportunity and approached Harold Sinnott of Sinnott News. McCall owned both the copyright and the plates for publishing ''Robin Hood and Company'' and Sinnot had a press capable of printing comics. In March 1941, the first issue of ''Robin Hood and Company'' was published by Anglo-American Publishing, consisting of strip reprints in a tabloid sized format. The comic existed with just reprints for about a year when it became necessary to start producing new material. McCall became the main writer at Anglo-American and brought with him Ed Furness as the main artist. While at

, McCall created the war hero Freelance, "a daring guerrilla battling the Axis powers". McCall's "well rounded scripts...were relatively sophisticated for the time and generally took a realistic approach to war". McCall was also involved in creating the adventures of Red Rover and Commander Steel.Punch in Canada on Robin Hood
/ref> ''Freelance'' ran from 1941 to January 1947.Freelance at the GCD
/ref> ''Robin Hood'' ran, under various titles, for the same time period.Robin Hood at the GCD
/ref> After Anglo-American closed its doors in 1947, McCall never produced anything for comics again.

Career after comics

After the collapse of Anglo-American, McCall went on to become the Managing Editor of the Toronto Evening Telegram. He died in 1975 of a heart attack. In 2008 he was inducted into the Canadian Comic Book Creator Hall of Fame.Joe Shuster Awards Hall of Fame

References

Works cited

* {{DEFAULTSORT:McCall, Ted Canadian comics creators 1901 births 1975 deaths Canadian comics writers