Burne Hogarth

Hogarth was born in Chicago in 1911, the younger son of Pauline and carpenter Max. He displayed an early talent for drawing. His father saved these efforts and some years later presented them and the young Hogarth to the registrar at the Art Institute of Chicago. At age 12, Hogarth was admitted, embarking on a formal education that took him through such institutions as Chicago's Crane College and Northwestern University, and New York City's Columbia University in New York City – also studying arts and sciences.

Due to his father's early death, Hogarth began work at age 15, when he became the assistant at the Associated Editors Syndicate and illustrated a series called Famous Churches of the World. He worked for several years as an editor and advertising artist. This work provided steady (and, by 1929, crucial) employment. In 1929, he drew his first comic strip, Ivy Hemmanhaw, for the Barnet Brown Company; in 1930 he drew Odd Occupations and Strange Accidents for Ledd Features Syndicate.

As the Great Depression worsened, Hogarth relocated to New York City at the urging of friends. He found employment with King Features Syndicate in 1934, drawing Charles Driscoll's pirate adventure Pieces of Eight (1935). In 1936 came the assignment that catapulted Hogarth's illustration career. With Tarzan, Hogarth brought together classicism, expressionism and narrative into a new form of dynamic, sequential art: the newspaper comic strip. Hogarth drew the Tarzan "Sunday (newspaper comic strip) page" for 12 years (1937–45; 1947–50). This work has been reprinted often, most recently by NBM Publishing.