Merle Tingley Profile in Editor & Publisher: Giant of the North Talks Worm’s Eye View Down South
by BK Munn
Not many Canadian cartoonists were being profiled in U.S. magazines back during the Kennedy administration. In fact, I can think of only one: the editorial cartoonist for The London Free Press, Merle Tingley, who signed his work “Ting.” Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear when a small town cartoonist could be interviewed for two full pages in Editor and Publisher about the little worm mascot he sneaks into every drawing and how he rode a Harley across the continent looking for a job making cartoons, like some kind of pipe-smoking, inky-fingered Marlon Brando. While it may still be the case today that a cartoonist from the boonies can be read around the world thanks to the web, it is slightly more amazing to ponder how someone like Ting became widely-syndicated and featured in the pages of newspapers across the globe. Merle “Ting” Tingley (1922-2017) was not without honours in his own country of course: he was inducted into the Giants of the North: The Canadian Cartoonist Hall of Fame in 2015 and Tingfest, The Ting Comic And Graphic Arts Festival, takes place in London, Ontario each year.
Read on to learn of “The ‘Ting’ Approach” from Editor & Publisher, June 1, 1963:
