Russell Johnson (December 1893 – July 9, 1995) was an American cartoonist, best known as the creator and artist of Mister Oswald, a monthly comic strip that ran for more than six decades in the national trade journal now called Hardware Retailing. The strip documents a large portion of the history of American business life, as seen through the eyes of the main character, Oscar S. Oswald, a prominent citizen of the fictional Dippy Center, USA. Alt...
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Russell Johnson (December 1893 – July 9, 1995) was an American cartoonist, best known as the creator and artist of Mister Oswald, a monthly comic strip that ran for more than six decades in the national trade journal now called Hardware Retailing. The strip documents a large portion of the history of American business life, as seen through the eyes of the main character, Oscar S. Oswald, a prominent citizen of the fictional Dippy Center, USA. Although the strip was known primarily to hardware retailers, a book, Forty Years With Mister Oswald, was published in 1968, collecting the comic strips.
Johnson was born on a farm outside Gibson City, Illinois. He graduated from Dixon College and Norman School in 1915, whereupon he left small-town life for the big city and a job at Montgomery Ward's in Chicago. As someone who grew up land-locked on a farm in Illinois, Johnson yearned to be out on the high seas, like his favorite comic strip characters, the Katzenjammer Kids, so during World War...
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