Ferd Johnson

Who was Ferd Johnson?

Ferdinand Johnson, aka Ferd Johnson, was an American cartoonist, best known for his 68-year stint on the Moon Mullins comic strip.

Born in Spring Creek, Pennsylvania. Johnson's youthful interest in cartooning had the support of his family after he won an Erie Dispatch Herald cartoon contest: "I think I was 11 years old. And then I won a newspaper cartoon drawing contest, and I think the prize was two or three tickets to Peck's Bad Boy, and that got my dad to thinking, and he gave me a $28 correspondence course. I went through that and worked on the high school yearbook all the time. I did lots of drawings there. At 13, I sold my first cartoon for money to a railroad magazine. It paid me $10 a month for years and years."

He began hanging around the Chicago Tribune offices when he was 17. After graduating from high school in 1923, he attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts for three months. He dropped out and became Frank Willard's assistant at the Tribune two months after Willard launched Moon Mullins in 1923. Johnson worked at the Tribune as a color artist and sports illustrator.