UPDATED: All the Cartoons From SUCCESSFUL FARMING December 1964

Yes, I am updating a blog entry about an obscure magazine over a half a century old. 

Here's an updated entry with lots more information on Larry Harris, one of the gag cartoonists in this December 1964 SUCCESSFUL FARMING magazine. 

"It's lucky I had my knife."

John Gallagher, who received the National Cartoonists Society Division Award for Gag Cartooning in 1957 and 1971, knocks the above cartoon outta the park. A great gag. From the December 1964 issue of SUCCESSFUL FARMING. Yes, you NEW YORKER snooty cartoon snobby types with your nose in the air, there was a magazine titled SUCCESSFUL FARMING. And, like so many mags of its day, the blessed publication had cartoons.

Friend of the Mike Lynch Cartoons blog Tom Sager reaches deep into his pile of musty magazines to come up with an issue of SUCCESSFUL FARMING. Here are all of the cartoons (all 3) from an issue from the December 1964 issue.

The rest of the cartoons were drawn by Larry Harris, a fellow I can find nothing about online. I've never seen his cartoons before. Perhaps he was a niche market seller.

EDIT: Wow! Another friend of the Mike Lynch cartoons blog, Jake Oster, wrote in to let me know more about cartoonist Larry Harris. He found this bio at the Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum site. Thanks, Jake! Thanks Billy Ireland staff! Here it is:

Larry Harris graduated from Rossford High School near Toledo, Ohio in 1927. While attending the University of Toledo, he studied art in the design school at the Toledo Art Museum and later went to school in the evenings at Keane's Art School. His first job was at the Toledo Bottle Cap Company designing milk bottle caps. While this was not the design work Harris wanted to do, the Depression limited opportunities for work in commercial art. The job provided him with experience in lettering and layout, which helped to advance his career. At the outset of World War II, Harris went to work with a Detroit engineering firm doing mechanical drawing and projection illustration. These new skills led to a position at General Motors Styling Section. WWII had put a hold on car design and Harris's work focused on three-dimensional illustration of military equipment, and design and layout for military manuals and handbooks. In his spare time he created the "Catfish Joe" comic strip that appeared in Pep Comics, until a wartime paper shortage of newsprint caused the publication to fold. At the end of WWII he decided to move to La Jolla, California and focus full-time on magazine cartooning. He became known as a gag cartoonist and published cartoons in many popular magazines of the day. He continued to work on developing cartoon panels and comic strips for syndication. In addition he created and designed board games for children that were published by Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley. Due to shrinking freelance market of the 1970s, Harris decided to leave cartooning and took a position as Art Director at a television station in Southern California. He retired from the television station in 1980.

"Catfish Joe" ran in PEP COMICS #40–48 (Jul 1943–May 1944, MLJ). Despite what the above article says the publication did not fold, though the page count dropped from 60 to 52 pages. PEP #411 (Mar 1987) was the last issue.

Cartoonist Laurence W. Harris died October 18, 1997; most of his work donated to Cartoon Research Library at Ohio State University. Reported by Brian Fox in THE COMICS JOURNAL #201 (Jan 1998).

-- Edited from a July 30, 2012 blog entry.