Edgar Martin

Who was Edgar Martin?

Edgar Everett Martin, known to his family and friends as Abe Martin, was an American cartoonist, who kept his comic strip, Boots and Her Buddies, running for decades, eventually reaching an audience of 60,000,000 readers.

Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, the youth moved with his family to Nashville, Tennessee and then to Monmouth, Illinois where his father, George Martin, was a Monmouth College biology professor. As a Monmouth College freshmen, he drew frogs, grasshoppers and salamanders in his father's biology classes.

He met and married Mary Armsby while attending Monmouth College. Martin left his junior year to study at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, joining Newspaper Enterprise Association in 1921 as a cartoonist.