Henry Boltinoff (February 19, 1914 – April 26, 2001)
Career
Comic books
Born in New York City, Boltinoff created numerous humor features for DC Comics, where his brother
Murray Boltinoff was an editor.
His most prominent creation for DC was "Dover & Clover" which debuted in
More Fun Comics #94 (Nov. 1943).
Boltinoff's other features include "Abdul the Fire Eater", "Bebe", "Billy", "Buck Skinner", "Cap's Hobby Center", "Casey the Cop", "Charlie Cannonball", "Chief Hot Foot", "Cora the Carhop", "Dexter", "Doctor Floogle", "Doctor Rocket", "Elvin", "Freddie the Frogman", "Hamid the Hypnotist", "Homer", "Honey in Hollywood", "Hy the Spy", "Hy Wire", "Jail Jests", "Jerry the Jitterbug", "King Kale", "Lefty Looie", "Lem 'n' Lime", "Lionel and His Lions", "Little Pete", "Little Pocahontas", "Lucky", "The Magic Genie", "Moolah the Mystic", "No-Chance Charley", "Ollie", "On the Set", "Peg", "Peter Puptent", "Prehistoric Fun", "Professor Eureka", "Sagebrush Sam", "Shorty", "Stan", "
Super-Turtle",
"Tricksy the World's Greatest Stunt Man" and "Warden Willis". These were usually
letterer by
Gaspar Saladino. Boltinoff's final creation for DC was "Cap's Hobby Hints".
In 1969, he became the writer of the
Date with Debbi and
Swing with Scooter titles.
Magazine cartoons
Boltinoff started doing magazine cartoons in the early forties. He contributed to all of the mid range magazines, such as
Look,
Collier's,
The Saturday Evening Post,
True,
Liberty,
The American Legion':, Sunday newspaper magazines such as This Week',
Today,
The American Weekly,
Parade and almost every other general interest magazine, from
The Progressive Farmer to
The Ford Times.
He also sold a large number of cartoons to special cartoon magazines, such as
1000 Jokes and
Judge and Gags.
For
Judge he did a monthly one page feature identifying character types between 1944 and 1947
and for King Features'
Pictorial Review he had a regular page of gags under the title "Gags and Gals". All in all he was one of the best selling cartoonists in the 1940s and into the 1950s. Even while doing his filler strips for DC, his cartoons kept appearing in magazines such as
Boy's Life and many of the low rent
Humorama titles.
Comic strips and panels
Boltinoff was a regular contributor to
This and That (a daily cartoon panel from the George Matthew Adams syndicate),
Nubbin (1970 - 1986),
This Funny World (a daily cartoon panel from the McNaught syndicate) and
Laff-a-Day (a daily cartoon panel from King Features). He also had his own panels:
Woody Forrest (1960),
Stoker the Broker (1960), and
Hocus-Focus through 2001.
Hocus-Focus may have been Boltinoff's best-known work. The King Features Syndicate feature, which was started c. 1965 by Harold Kaufmann,
Awards
Henry Boltinoff received the National Cartoonists Society's Newspaper Panel Cartoon Award in 1981 and also received their Humor Comic Book Award for 1970.
He received the
Inkpot Award in 2001.
Bibliography
DC Comics
-
All Funny Comics #1–23 (Dover and Clover) (1943–1948)
-
The Best of DC #45 (1984)
-
Binky #77 (1971)
-
Binky's Buddies #11–12 (1970)
-
Date with Debbi #3–5, 14 (1969–1971)
-
Detective Comics #158, 163, 165, 171 (Dover and Clover) (1950–1951)
-
More Fun Comics #94–100, 102–127 (Dover and Clover) (1943–1947)
-
Star Spangled Comics #23, 24, 96 (1943–1949)
-
Superboy #83 (1960)
-
Swing with Scooter #17–18, 29, 31 (1969–1970)
-
World's Best Comics #1 (1941)
-
World's Finest Comics #2–4, 12, 67 (1941–1953)
External links
