Charles Voight

Charles Anthony Voight (April 28, 1887 – February 10, 1947) was an American cartoonist, best known for his comic strip Betty.

Early life Born in Brooklyn, New York City, Voight was 14 when he dropped out of school and became an art staffer at the New York World. During this period, he also did advertising art.

Comic strips In 1908, he drew his first comic strip, Petey Dink, for the Boston Traveler. When it moved to the New York Herald it became simply Petey (sometimes titled Poor Little Petey). He also drew for the New York World, and for Life, he created a series titled The Optimist. Comics historian Don Markstein described the strip and characters:

Betty was an influential strip, notably for the illustrator and comic book artist Bernard Krigstein. Jerry Robinson, in his book The Comics: An Illustrated History of the Comic Strip, commented:

The classic beauty was seen in Betty. Charles Voight employed an exquisite pen style in defining the visual delights of the long-legged, cool sophisticate in the extreme fashion of the day, including beachwear that revealed areas not previously shown in the comic pages.

Voight continued to do artwork for advertising agencies, such as his 1932 Rinso Soap ads. and work for Prize Comics (1945). In 1945 he created the superhero Atomic-Man in Headline Comics, and in 1946, drew Impossible Man for Captain Wizard and the superhero satire Captain Milksop for Atomic Bomb Comics #1.

Voight lived for a time in Pelham, New York. When Fontaine Fox first came to visit his friend Voight, he rode the Pelham trolley that inspired him to create the Toonerville Trolley for his long-running cartoon panel, Toonerville Folks.

Death Voight died on February 10, 1947, in Brooklyn, New York City.