Henry Martin – RIP
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Magazine cartoonist Henry Martin has passed away.
Henry Read Martin
July 15, 1925 – June 30, 2020
Excerpted from daughters Ann and Jane’s announcement via Michael Maslin:
Longtime New Yorker cartoonist Henry Read Martin (who signed his cartoons H. Martin) died on June 30, 2020, just two weeks shy of his 95th birthday. For a man who had dealt with serious heart issues since he was fifteen, his sweet, loving, funny ticker sure gave him his money’s worth.
He graduated from Princeton University in 1948, after which he attended the American Academy of Art in Chicago. Hank then headed back East and began his 45-year career with The New Yorker magazine. He sold his first drawing — known as a “spot” (the small drawing inside a story) — to The New Yorker in April 1950, though it was another 14 years before he sold his first cartoon there. He was also a longtime contributor to Punch magazine and The Spectator in England and for fifteen years had a daily syndicated newspaper cartoon called “Good News/Bad News.” Collections of his cartoons included Good News/Bad News and Yak! Yak! Yak! Blah! Blah! Blah!, both published by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Hank received the National Cartoonist’s Society’s Gag Cartoon Award in 1978 and also illustrated many books published by Peter Pauper Press.
Mike Lynch reproduces a 1978 Cartoonist Profiles interview with Henry,
and shows us the way to a Mark Anderson appreciation and a 2010 Princeton interview.
Henry contributed to most of the magazines of the day: The New Yorker, Punch, Saturday Evening Post, The N. Y. Times, Ladies Home Journal, The Saturday Review, Family Circle, Better Home & Gardens, and more.
From 1978 to 1992 Henry syndicated the daily Good News•Bad News panel.
On the occasion of his passing Princeton remembers Henry Martin.
Art.com has a gallery of H. Martin cartoons.
Princeton Graphic Arts Collection looks at Henry’s spot art.
MIchael Maslin remembers Henry Martin.
In the late 1970s, I was a freshly minted New Yorker cartoonist walking for the first time into the magazine’s cartoonists waiting room just outside the art editor’s office. It was not a comfortable entrance: I didn’t know a soul. I was in a very small room with some of the biggest stars in The New Yorker cartoon universe. They were drinking coffee, and chatting with each other. It was, of course, intimidating. One of the stars stepped away from his colleagues and introduced himself. It was Henry Martin. Fate couldn’t have chosen a better good will ambassador to welcome me. Even today, four decades later, thinking of Henry, who passed away on Tuesday, I think — to lightly paraphrase George Booth — good thoughts about one of the kindest friendliest cartoonists I ever met. In the pool of friendly faces at The New Yorker, Henry’s face, in the years to come, was among the friendliest.
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