18 Facts About Mel Cummin

Melville Porter Cummin, popularly known as Mel Cummin, was a magazine illustrator and a newspaper staff artist; a notable cartoonist in the early decades of American comic strips; and a Golden Age comic book artist and art director.

Mel Cummin was born in Brooklyn, New York, on January 29,1895.

On course at a young age for his eventual career, Melville Cummin is listed in Mary Mapes Dodge's St Nicholas Magazine in 1909 as president of a seven-member chapter of the St Nicholas League called "St Nick Drawing Club".

Mel Cummin attended National Preparatory Academy and the Art Students League of New York.

Mel Cummin became a father at age twenty-one in 1916.

Mel Cummin served as art director for the American Kennel Club "Gazette".

Mel Cummin drew editorial cartoons for The Middletown News-Signal, an Ohio daily.

Mel Cummin worked as an illustrator for the San Francisco Examiner as well as a number of New York newspapers, and contributed to magazines, including the original Life.

Therefore, Mel Cummin originated and drew many of the big, eight-column cartoons for Brisbane's editorials in the New York Sunday American, the New York Evening Journal and occasionally The Mirror from 1924 to 1927, and again in 1934 and 1935.

Mel Cummin called Brisbane "a well-informed naturalist," and said the two collaborators discussed the subject of Naturalism frequently.

Later in the decade, Mel Cummin was the first artist for Good Time Guy, which began in 1927.

Mel Cummin made another foray into comics in 1929 with Traveler in the Land of Trundletree, a daily strip that may have been nationally syndicated, or only local.

Mel Cummin was a well-known artist-naturalist, who produced work for museums and their publications, and was a benefactor and Life Member of the American Museum of Natural History.

Mel Cummin was elected the club's third vice president in 1954, and he served as secretary.

Mel Cummin collected specimens, took photographs, and painted and drew what he encountered in nature.

Mel Cummin rounded out his credentials with memberships in the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, New York Zoological Society, and National Geographic Society.

Mel Cummin drew covers, interiors, and he served as art director from 1946 to 1949 for Novelty Press, one of the numerous comic book publishers of the Golden Age of the 1940s.

Melville Porter Cummin died the first day of December 1980, survived by his wife of 65 years, Marion Cummin, and two daughters, Eleanor Claire and Miriam Louise.