Fung, Paul, 1897-1944

Paul Fung (1897-1944) was an American cartoonist. He worked on a number of newspaper comic strips during his career but is most known for the work he did as Chic Young's successor on Dumb Dora (1930-1932) and as an assistant to Cliff Sterrett on Polly and Her Pals (late 1930s).

Born in Seattle in 1897, Paul Fung was educated in the U.S. and China, where his Baptist minister father, the Rev. Fung Chak, sent him to study traditional Chinese art. In 1916, he started his newspaper career doing sports cartoons for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer . Fung's first original comic strip appeared a few months later, Innocent Hing, but it was short lived. After working as an assistant on Billy DeBeck's Barney Google in the early 1920s, Fung went on to crank out a variety of quality, but short-lived comic strips- A Guy from Grand Rapids, Bughouse Fables, Gus and Gussie . In April of 1930, Fung inherited Dumb Dora and its topper panel When Mother Was a Girl from creator Chic Young, who had left the strip to launch Blondie . Fung continued on Dumb Dora for a few years, passing it on to Bil Dwyer in 1932. Subsequently, Fung worked as an assistant on Cliff Sterrett's Polly and Her Pals in the late 1930s. The Dumb Dora comic strip ceased newspaper publication in 1934, but Fung brought Dora back in the early 1940s as part of an ad campaign for Shredded Ralston cereal. Paul Fung died in 1944. His son is the noted cartoonist Paul Fung, Jr.