Horace T. Elmo (3 April 1903 – October 23, 1992)[4] was an American comic stripcartoonist particularly active in the 1930s and 1940s; he also ran a comic strip syndication service whose main claim to fame was that it employed Jack Kirby in the late 1930s.
He was born Arazio Theodore ElmoinManhattan (later moving to Brooklyn and then the Bronx),[3] the sixth of seven children of Italian immigrants Joseph and Josephine Elmo.[3]
It is not known if or where Elmo received art training, but early cartoons were published on the "amateur pages" in Judge magazine.[5] After starting out as a stock clerk in the export business, he worked as a cartoonist with the local tabloid the New York Evening Graphic.[6][4]
Elmo's first recorded comic strip was the daily strip Little Otto, "which was to be syndicated beginning in 1926 by Wheeler-Nicholson, Inc. It’s unclear if the strip was ever published."[3][7]
His first professionally published work were six episodes of the recurring one-page feature Did You Know That for the film magazine Picture Play in 1932–1933.[3]
He started the weekly syndication serviceLincoln Newspaper Syndicate (also known as Lincoln Features Syndicate and Lincoln News Syndicate) in 1935, beginning with Larry Antonette's[8]Dash Dixon, and followed by Biff Baxter’s Adventures,[9]Detective Riley, Little Buddy, Your Health Comes First!!!, and Socko the Sea Dog (a takeoff on Popeye).
In the period 1935–1939, Elmo worked on a number of strips of his own, including Facts You Never Knew, The Fizzle Family, Goofus Family, and Laughs from Today's News.[10] He also ghosted some Lincoln service strips, including Socko the Seadog and Your Health Comes First!!!.
Jack Kirby joined Elmo's syndicate in 1936, working on strips and single-panel advice cartoons such as Your Health Comes First!!! (under the pseudonymJack Curtiss), as well as Abdul Jones, The Black Buccaneer, Cyclone Burke, Detective Riley, and Socko the Seadog.[11] While with the syndicate, Kirby also did the artwork for a 24-page pamphlet produced for the banking industry, called The Romance of Money.[12] Kirby remained with the syndicate until late 1939, when he began working for the theatrical animation company Fleischer Studios.[13]
After a two-year hiatus, from 1941 to 1946 Elmo worked on some new weekly strips, including It's Amazing, Sally Snickers,[3] and Useless Eustace.[2]
Elmo's Lincoln service operated until c. 1945, when he restarted it as Elmo Features Syndicate, sometimes employing the talents of the Roche-Iger Studio;[2] but that syndicate also didn't last.[6]
In the late 1950s/early 1960s, Ace Books published three Elmo cartoon collections;[10] he also packaged books sold in the United Kingdom, including 150 Games to Play, The Complete Book of Space, and 101 Things to Make and Play.[10]
Elmo's later strips included The Rhyming Romeos, which ran exclusively in the African-American newspaper the Arkansas State Press in the 1950s; and Puggy and Tell Me, which ran exclusively in the Hubbard, Ohio, News Reporter in the 1960s and in the Spirit Lake Beacon in the mid-1970s.
