Two weeks ago we discovered The Cartoon Factory Ltd. a small syndicate servicing weekly and bi-weekly newspapers that distributed comic strips and panels from July 5, 1981 to March 28, 1982. The full roster of The Cartoon Factory could be run on one page.
The cartoonists and comic titles remained the same throughout the syndicates existence as did the placement of comics. Last week we looked at the cartoonists who were placed on the left side of the page. This week we will try to find out about the cartoonists who filled the right side of the comics page.
Jared Lee
Jared Lee (1943 – ) was the cartoonist of Bazar for The Cartoon Factory and is one of the few cartoonists of The Cartoon Factory that didn’t need a side income to support his cartooning, it was and continues to be his main source of income. He is so famous he has his own Wikipedia page:
Jared Devon Lee was born in Van Buren, Indiana on August 19, 1943. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1966 from The John Herron Art Institute located in Indianapolis, Indiana. He served two years in the military from 1966 to 1968 in Ft Hood, Texas. His art career started at Gibson Greetings in 1969, located in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he designed humorous greeting cards. He launched out as a freelance Illustrator in 1970 creating Jared Lee Studio.
His work has been associated with Scholastic Publishing, Simon and Schuster, Dutton Children’s Books, US Postal Service, New York Telephone, Bell South, L.L. Bean, Procter and Gamble, Ralston Purina, Lands’ End, and Hasbro, to name a few. He was one of the six illustrators chosen to create the first group of Happy Meal boxes for McDonald’s.
Jared Lee has illustrated nearly 200 children’s books.
Gil Parcell
Gil Parcel (ca. 1923 – 2008) created the Tanglefoot panel for The Cartoon Factory and is another cartoonist who made his living as a cartoonist and illustrator.
Gil Parcell was a Canadian cartoonist, originally from Formby, Lancashire, on the northwest coast of England. After serving with the Royal Air Force in the Middle East in World War II, he emigrated to Canada, studied art through the Famous Artists School, and began a career in Toronto as a commercial artist, illustrator, and cartoonist. His cartoons have been published in newspapers and magazines in Canada and the United States. His favourite hobbies, soaring and sailing, provided plenty of subject matter. During his retirement – from work but not cartooning – he lived with his wife Carol in Wasaga Beach, Ontario.
Gil contributed to such publications as the Minden Times, Toronto Sun, Globe and Mail, Chip Chats, Free Flight, Cards by Kay, Southam Publications and more.
Bob Zahn
Bob Zahn (1934 – 2008) contributed McCobber to The Cartoon Factory and continued with the character after The Cartoon Factory as McCobber and Friends until 1995. Before McCobber Bob had syndicated Bigg’s Business (1972-1976) and Hap Hazard (1978-1979). In the first half of the 1990s Bob was a regular contributor to Cartoon College in WOW’s syndicated Professor Yuk-Yuk’s Cartooning Class.
Publishing under his own name and I believe occasionally as both Carroll Zahn and as Carroll, Zahn was widely published, and his clients included but were not limited to the Wall Street Journal, Reader’s Digest, Good Housekeeping, Punch, Field & Stream (Zahn enjoyed to fish), and two of the great markets for cartooning of the 20th Century, National Lampoon and Playboy.
His books included The Difference Between Cats and Dogs and Fly Fishing Tales of Terror. His cartoons appeared in several volumes of the popular Chicken Soup series of self-help books.
Like many gag cartoonists, he enjoyed an active career in greeting cards, working for a variety of publishers in that field including American Greetings.
A syndicated panel, Bigg’s Business, ran from 1972 to 1979. Zahn had two features on the site ComicsZ.com: Hap Hazard and Zahn, both of which published installments as recently as January 9.
Mike Lynch has Bob’s obit where it is noted that Zahn “retired from General Electric’s military equipment manufacturing division as a commercial artist with 35 years of service.”
Charles Marsh
Charles Marsh contributed the comic strip Charley to The Cartoon Factory page. Charley naturally was a horse. Marsh had a nice line and style but I can find nothing about him.
Ross (Gary Ross Hoffman)
Computer programmer Gary Ross Hoffman (1947 – 2022) contributed The Elf Squad to The Cartoon Factory signing the comic strip “Ross.”
After a year at Georgia Tech, Gary realized that Engineering was not for him and enlisted in the US Airforce. He served four years in the Airforce as a computer programmer. He moved to St. Louis and married Nancy in 1970. Gary went on to graduate from UMSL with a degree in computer science. He spent most of his career as a computer programmer for Washington University Medical School. Gary was a talented cartoonist as well as an amateur radio operator. He was very active with the amateur radio emergency management in the St. Louis area.
An archive of Gary’s Amateur Amateur columns for The National Association for Amateur Radio.
Fran Matera
Comic strip and comic book artist Fran Matera (1924 – 2012), who came up with Salty for The Cartoon Factory page, is probably the best known of the cartoonists shown here (apologies to Jared Lee). Matera was a constant presence on newspaper comics pages from 1946 to 2004. When Fran wasn’t drawing comic strips, and even when he was, he was drawing comic books regularly from 1949 to 1984.
From The Tampa Bay Times obit:
After [World War 2], Mr. Matera labored for the detective comic strip Kerry Drake alongside Andriola, who created it. For the next 30 years he adapted to shifting demands, drawing for comic books as varied as Fightin’ Marines, Speed Demons and The Hulk, while “ghosting” without credit for Nero Wolfe, Rex Morgan, M.D., and comic book companions to Bruce Lee and Indiana Jones movies.
GAG (Gregory A. Gilger)
Greg Gilger (1951 – 2024) created the Mutts comic strip for The Cartoon Factory. Greg involved himself in all the cartooning arts: comic strips, illustration, animation, caricature, painting, etc. He began his cartooning possibly in the 1970s. After Mutts 1981-82 run he proposed more comic strips (see the link above). His Instagram page shows some of his artwork. Greg’s Instagram and Facebook pages are run as memorials by his son. Not finding much else for background on the freelancer.
Lance Martin
Lance Martin (ca. 1955? – ) was the cartoonist for The Cartoon Factory’s Coach Gibbs comic strip. Freelancer Lance Martin is a barber/hair stylist who cartoons because he must. Lance’s National Cartoonists Society page has quite a list of Martin’s cartooning activities. The Lance Martin Facebook page includes many samples highlighting his most recent Bamboozled panel.
From the Lance Martin Comics homepage, which has a selection of Coach Gibbs, Billy Mars, editorial and sports cartoons, and more, the Meet the Artist page notes:
Over the last 50 years, drawing cartoons has been Lance’s passion.
The cartoonist, whose work has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, including The Orange County Register, was encouraged by perhaps the most famous cartoonist of them all, Charles Schultz.
