Merrill Blosser (1892-1983) was born in Nappanee, Indiana on May 28, 1892. He spent one year at Blue Ridge College, Maryland, took a correspondence course in cartooning, and studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. His first cartoon was sold to the Baltimore American in 1912. He held several art jobs with magazines and newspapers and drew political cartoons for the Wheeling (W.Va.) Register and the Cleveland Plain Dealer . In 1915, he went to work for the NEA syndicate, where he created the comic strip Freckles and His Friends, which eventually ran in some 700 newspapers.
Blosser's initial style for Freckles and His Friends was very simple, but over the years as Freckles grew older and the strip became more narrative, he shifted to a more realistic style. He was particularly influenced by fellow cartoonist Walter Hoban, who drew Jerry on the Job . In the mid-1930s Henry Formhals became Blosser's assistant on the strip, eventually taking over the daily version in early 1966. Blosser continued to do the Sunday feature until his retirement at the end of that year. Formhals continued doing both the daily and Sunday versions of Freckles and His Friends until the end of its run in 1971. Merrill Blosser died in Pasadena, California in 1983.
From the guide to the Merrill Blosser Cartoons, 1966, (Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries)
