Chic Young - Comic Strips

Comic Strips

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Young began drawing with the encouragement of his mother, who was an artist. Although his father, James, was a shoe salesman who didn't think much of artists, all of the children in the family were creative: Walter was a painter, daughter Jamar entered the commercial art field and Lyman, Chic's older brother, drew the Tim Tyler's Luck comic strip for King Features. It was Lyman who spurred Chic to constantly draw.

Chic Young grew up in a German-Lutheran neighborhood on the south side of St. Louis. After graduating from high school in St. Louis, he returned to Chicago where he worked as a stenographer while taking night classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1921, he learned that the Newspaper Enterprise Association was seeking an artist to do a comic strip about an attractive young woman. He headed for Cleveland and earned a salary of $22 a week while drawing The Affairs of Jane about a struggling film actress who dreamed of graduating from low-budget pictures to stardom. The short-lived strip, which began in 1921 on Halloween, came to a conclusion five months later on March 18, 1922. In the NEA art department, Young worked near cartoonist Gene Ahern, and the two often played pranks on each other. When a call came from King Features' J. Gortatowski offering an annual salary of $10,000, Young thought it was a prank and turned down the job. Looking for work later, he applied to Gortatowski and learned the call was legitimate.

After six months in Cleveland, Young left for New York where he created another female flapper strip, Beautiful Bab, which the Bell Syndicate began distributing on July 15, 1922. It ran for only four months but landed him a job in the art department of King Features Syndicate. In 1924, he began Dumb Dora, about brunette Dora who "wasn't as dumb as she looked."

In 1927, Young married professional harpist Athel Lindorff. In the spring of 1930, after six years of Dumb Dora's increasing popularity, Young requested more money and strip ownership. This action led to changes, and Paul Fung took over Dumb Dora in April 1930 when Young dropped it in order to create a new strip.