Charles H. Winner (December 18, 1885 – August 12, 1956), better known asDoc Winner, was an American cartoonist, notable for hiscomic stripsTubby andElmer, plus his contributions toThimble Theatre,Barney Google and otherKing Features strips.

Born inPerryville, Pennsylvania, Winner had seven brothers and two sisters, the children of Barbara and John Winner, a roofing contractor. His drawing skills soon led him to nearbyPittsburgh, as he recalled:

I fooled around a lot in school with art, covering the blackboard and all my books with sketches, and finally at 17, I went to art school in Pittsburgh, where I attended night classes for three years while working daily as a clerk in a tea and coffee store and later in the offices of thePennsylvania Railroad.^[1]

He drew sports cartoons for two years at thePittsburgh Post, succeedingBilly DeBeck, and became that newspaper's political cartoonist in 1910, relocating to theHarrisburg Patriot in 1914 and theNewark Star-Eagle in 1917. In 1923, he began his kid stripTubby forUnited Feature Syndicate, as chronicled by comic strip historianAllan Holtz:

Doc Winner had a very long career in newspaper comics, the bulk of it spent picking up the pieces on strips that had lost their original creators... The strip was offered by United Feature Syndicate back in the days when they were a tiny outfit with just a few offerings. Later on, of course, United Features would take over all the Pulitzer and Metropolitan strips and become a major name in the syndication business.Tubby ran from March 19, 1923, to June 5, 1926, according to my best information, and the stock of dailies was then sold to reprint syndicates, so you'll find the strip popping up later as well. Winner's next job, starting just a few months later, was to take overJust Boy from A. C. Fera, and Winner pretty quickly turned that strip into a continuation ofTubby. Elmer, the main character ofJust Boy, became all but indistinguishable from the title character of this strip.^[2]

Following the strip size of the period,Tubby was drawn five inches high and 19 inches wide. Winner's stripElmer, which ran from 1926 to 1956, was based on the friends of his youth, as he recalled, "A great many of the stunts they do are ones we either did or tried to do when we were kids."^[1] In the late 1930s, Winner had his ownSunday page withElmer positioned beneath Winner'sAlexander Smart, Esq. and hisDaffy Doodles (subtitledDizzy Dramas from Our Readers)topper.

Starting in the King Features bullpen in 1918, Winner worked with King Features for the next 38 years. At the time ofE. C. Segar's illness and death, he was a ghost artist onThimble Theatre during 1938 and 1939, continuing on some of the strip's Sunday pages in 1940. HisDaffy Doodles andElmer were reprinted inAce Comics during the 1940s, andElmer was seen again in Harvey'sFamily Funnies #6 (1951). Dell'sLarge Feature Comic reprinted hisThimble Theatre in 1941 and 1943.Elmer and His Dog was a 1935 Big Little Book.

In the final years of his life, Winner drewThe Katzenjammer Kids (from 1947 to 1956). Winner lived with his wife, the former Agnes Reid, and two daughters inUpper Montclair, New Jersey.

He died of cancer in 1956, he was 71.^[3]

• Media related toDoc Winner at Wikimedia Commons
• Lambiek Comiclopedia page.

• American comic strip cartoonists
• American humorists
• Popeye
• 1885 births
• 1956 deaths

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