George McManus Self-portrait

I managed to clean up this self-portrait from an article titled Bringing up Geo. McManus, from the Lethbridge Herald 14 Feb 1942.

George was a St. Louis boy who quit school age thirteen for a job as a newspaper office boy. His first comic strip was Alma and Oliver for the St. Louis Republic, drawn when he was seventeen, and followed by Snoozer, Merry Marcelene, and Let George Do It. He drew Nibsy the Newsboy, Panhandle Pete and The Newlyweds for the New York World. In 1912 he began a comic strip called Their Only Child in the New York Journal followed by the Bringing up Father daily on 3 Aug 1913, while Rosie‘s Beau was the title of his Sunday page.

McManus was antipathetic to speed and exercise. He took great pleasure in relaxing beside his radio with a cigar and a tall one, delivered by his man-Friday Ben, a Filipino. He averaged 30 cigars a day.