J. Norman Lynd (1878-1943) was a staff artist on the New York Herald from 1907 until it merged with the Tribune in 1924. Publisher Frank Munsey, pulp magazine pioneer and great merger and destroyer of newspapers, fired Lynd immediately upon purchasing the Herald. It is believed not only that a caricature Lynd had done of Munsey two years earlier was the cause of his termination, but that firing Lynd was reason he bought the Herald in the first place.*
In 1927 Lynd took over the Sunday feature "Vignettes of Life" from Frank Godwin and worked it until 1938, when he created a similar feature called "Family Portraits" for King Features.
Rick Marschall wrote of Lynd's work in The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons:
J. Norman Lynd had one of the most handsome pen lines in cartooning. In his mature work he managed to retain the disciplined crooshatch technique of the early years while infusing an arresting verve both to characters and compositions. His style zeroed in on personality so well that readers were able to recognize character types - a prerequisite for the type of feature Lynd drew.
*Munsey died the following year and was not remembered fondly. "I am glad Munsey is dead and I hope he is in hell!" said H.L. Mencken. William Allen White of the Emporia (Ks.) Gazette wrote, "“Frank Munsey, the great publisher is dead. Frank Munsey contributed to the journalism of his day the talent of a meat packer, the morals of a money changer and the manners of an undertaker. He and his kind have about succeeded in transforming a once noble profession into an 8 percent security. May he rest in trust!” White was far less kind to Mencken himself:
With a pig’s eyes that never look up, with a pig’s snout that loves muck, with a pig’s brain that knows only the sty, and a pig’s squeal that cries only when he is hurt, he sometimes opens his pig’s mouth, fanged and ugly, and lets out the voice of God – railing at the whitewash that covers the manure about his habitat.
Citations from a speech by Portland Gartner, delivered to the National Conference of Editorial Writers, September 16, 2005.
