Henry Matthew Talintyre (1893–1962) was a British
comic strip
A comic strip is a Comics, sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often Serial (literature), serialized, with text in Speech balloon, balloons and Glossary of comics terminology#Captio ...
artist
An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...
, best known for drawing the elephant character
Uncle Oojah for Flo Lancaster's comic series that later became ''The Wonderful Adventures of Jerry, Don and Snooker''.
Biography
Talintyre was born in
Gateshead, Durham in 1893.
He served in
World War I
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
, then moved to
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
in the 1920s. He later drew nursery comics for
DC Thomson
DC Thomson is a media company based in Dundee, Scotland. Founded by David Couper Thomson in 1905, it is best known for publishing ''The Courier (Dundee), The Courier'', ''Evening Telegraph (Dundee), The Evening Telegraph'' and ''The Sunday Pos ...
and lived in
Dundee
Dundee (; ; or , ) is the List of towns and cities in Scotland by population, fourth-largest city in Scotland. The mid-year population estimate for the locality was . It lies within the eastern central Lowlands on the north bank of the Firt ...
, where he lodged in a
boarding house
A boarding house is a house (frequently a family home) in which lodging, lodgers renting, rent one or more rooms on a nightly basis and sometimes for extended periods of weeks, months, or years. The common parts of the house are maintained, and ...
with the father of cartoonist
Dave Gibbons
David Chester Gibbons (born 14 April 1949) is an English comics artist, writer and sometimes letterer. He is best known for his collaborations with writer Alan Moore, which include the miniseries ''Watchmen'' and the Superman story " For the M ...
. Gibbons would later describe him as "something of a bohemian type... very unlike a customs officer." His son, Douglas, recalled that Talintyre and his fellow artists were frustrated by DC Thompson's management style, even smashing a clocking-in machine the company introduced.
Talintyre took over the Oojah comic series after the death of its previous illustrator, Thomas Maybank.
The strip ran in ''Playhour'', ''Pictures'' and ''
Jack and Jill
"Jack and Jill" (sometimes "Jack and Gill", particularly in earlier versions) is a traditional English nursery rhyme. The Roud Folk Song Index classifies the commonest tune and its variations as number 10266, although it has been set to severa ...
''.
This version of the comic renamed ''The Wonderful Adventures of Jerry, Don and Snooker'', which ran in ''Jack and Jill'' between 1954 and 1958.
Talintyre also contributed to the early issues of ''
TV Comic
''TV Comic'' was a British weekly comic book published from 9 November 1951 until 29 June 1984. Featuring stories based on television series running at the time of publication, it was the first British comic to be based around TV programmes '', where he drew characters named "Jack and Jill" (unrelated to the characters in the comic of
that name).
Talintyre married Gladys Gould,
whom he met while living in London. He was involved in several music hall shows.
He died in the Chichester area of Britain in 1962, aged 69.
References
British comics artists
1893 births
1962 deaths
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