Carl Thomas Anderson

Carl Thomas Anderson (February 14, 1865 – November 4, 1948) was an American cartoonist best remembered for his comic strip Henry. Readers followed the pantomime adventures of the mute, bald-headed Henry in strips which he signed with his familiar signature displaying an enlarged "S": Carl AnderSon.

Biography Early life Carl Thomas Anderson was born in Madison, Wisconsin, the son of Norwegian immigrants. Anderson initially worked in his father's planing mill in Des Moines, Iowa,

From cabinets to cartoons

At the age of 25, he developed a strong interest in drawing and went to Philadelphia because the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art was the only school he found specifically advertising a pen-and-ink course, where he graduated in 1893.

He also taught through his mail order cartoon course from "The Carl Anderson School, Madison, Wis." Small ads in 1930 issues of Popular Mechanics announced:

Henry begins Carl Anderson's Henry began in The Saturday Evening Post. This 1932 single panel is one of the earliest. Others in The Saturday Evening Post series were two panels or multiple panels.

In 1932, he sold his first Henry cartoon to The Saturday Evening Post for $50, and it became a regular weekly feature in that magazine. As interest in the character increased, Anderson began to receive fan mail, and his cartoons were reprinted in foreign publications. Hearst was traveling in Germany in 1934 when he saw Henry in the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung. He sent a cablegram to his syndicate chief, Joseph Vincent Connolly, that simply read, "Get Henry." Connolly took the next train to Madison, where he signed Anderson for King Features Syndicate. Within months, Henry was being published in 50 American newspapers, including 15 Hearst papers. Anderson continued to work on the strip until arthritis made him retire in January 1942. Anderson died at the Edgewater Hotel in Madison at age 83 in 1948. The strip continued with other artists, finally being discontinued on October 28, 2018, a week short of the seventieth anniversary of its creator's death.

Books In 1934, the first Henry book was published featuring 60 cartoons from The Saturday Evening Post. Anderson followed with How to Draw Cartoons Successfully, published by Greenberg in 1935.