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Sally Artz, New Senior Stripper

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D. D. Degg Updated: March 17, 2025 at 4:02 pm EDT 1 minute 1 comment

British cartoonist Sally Artz recently celebrated her 90th birthday on March 14 (yeah, we’re a couple days late here). Having been born in 1935 she joins TDC’s Senior Strippers group of 90+ plus year old comic strippers.

From the University of Kent British Cartoon Archive Sally Artz biography:

Sally Artz was born in north London on 14 March 1935, the daughter of Benjamin Artz, a painter. As a child she was influenced by Walt Disney cartoons and American ‘funnies’, and had a passion for drawing cartoon characters – ‘first things first – schoolwork had to wait its turn’. In 1951 Artz went to St Martin’s School of Art to study graphic design, and after graduation in 1953 worked as a commercial artist, and as a cartoon animator for Hallas & Batchelor.

In 1955, at the age of nineteen, Artz sold her first cartoon to the Weekend Mail. Since then she has worked for a wide range of publishers and publications, producing gag cartoons, strips, illlustrations, and animated cartoons. She cites Nicolas Bentley and New Yorker cartoonist Chauncey Addison Day (Chon Day) as having an impact on her work.

I love that Sally “Artz” is a cartoonist; kind of like the old “Joe King” being a cartoonist.

Below is a 1986 profile from Western Daily Press on the occasion of her Why… debuting in 1986.

Sally Artz had a number of continuing comic panels and strips.

The above comes from Paul Hudson’s A to Z and newspapers.com; there are probably more.

Another profile, this one from Chis Beetles:

Sally Artz was born in London on 14 March 1935, the daughter of Benjamin Artz, a painter. She studied graphic design at St Martin’s School of Art (1951-53), and worked as a commercial artist for Halas & Batchelor animation studios before selling her first cartoon to the Weekend Mail in 1955. Since then, she has produced strips for the Sunday People, Tit-Bits and Chat, produced a widely syndicated feature for the Daily Mirror (1981-85) and drew regularly for the paper’s business page (1990-93).

Artz has also contributed cartoons to the Reader’s Digest, Penthouse (USA), Weekend, Oui, Bella, Private Eye, the Spectator, the Oldie, the Mail on Sunday, She, the Radio Times, the Daily Sketch and Punch; and has designed greetings cards for Accord and Camden Graphics.

In addition, Artz has written scripts for ‘The Smurfs’, produced animated cartoons for TV advertisements and provided illustrations for educational publications for such as Heinemann and Cambridge University Press.

Winner of the Humor Gag section at the International Salon of Cartoons in Montreal (1981), Artz was Vice-President (with Peter Maddocks) of the British Cartoonists’ Association (1991-93). In 2017 she was given the prestigious Pont Award at the annual Cartoon Art Tust Awards which was presented to her by Mike Leigh.

Artz was first influenced by Disney and the American ‘funnies’ and later by Nicholas Bentley and the New Yorker cartoonist Chon Day.

She even appeared in U.S. newspapers through the Register and Tribune Syndicate’s Today’s Best From Europe/Laughs From Europe panel which she contributed to at least from 1965 to 1974.

Welcome to the club Sally!