This month we’re celebrating the talents of that pulp stalwart—Joe Archibald. He had a varied career even before he sold his first story to the pulps. Born in 1898, Joe began his writing career at the age of fifteen with a prize-winning contribution to the Boston Post. At the age of twelve he submitted and sold his first cartoon to the original JUDGE Magazine. He is a graduate of the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts.

During World War I he served on a sub-chaser for the United States Navy and was staff cartoonist for a service publication. After the armistice, he was a police and sports reporter for Boston Newspapers, and then went to New York and became a sports and panel cartoonist for the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.

Here are a few examples of one of his early strips for the McClure Syndicate—from the yellowing pages of the Bridgeport Telegram out of Bridgeport, Connecticut. From 1925, it’s “Champions Past and Present.”