'Felix the Cat' daily from 1928.
Jack Bogle was an American animator and cartoonist, who has spent several years working with Pat Sullivan and Otto Messmer's 'Felix the Cat' character. He not only animated Felix, but also drew the 'Felix the Cat' newspaper comic between 1927 and 1931. He created the newspaper comic 'Ozzy and His Gym' (1924-1925) and worked for Dell Comics in the 1940s. Bogle was furthermore an animator for the Van Beuren and Disney studios.
Early life and career
John James Bogle was born in 1900 in a little town outside Newark, New Jersey. Although he wanted to become a cartoonist, he had his first job in a factory. He proved to have an creative mind, as he apparently built an inventive mouse trap, and went to work for Thomas Alva Edison at age 18. In the early 1920s he worked for the Edison Herald, a magazine for Edison's employees.
'Felix the Cat' daily from November 1927.
Felix the Cat
During the same decade Bogle went to work for the animation studio of Pat Sullivan, where he worked on the 'Felix the Cat' series. Whereas a Sunday comic strip starring the black cat was drawn by Otto Messmer from 1923, Bogle is credited with drawing the first episodes of the daily strip from May 1927 until 1931. In a 1977 newspaper interview, conducted by Marcy Springer, Bogle even claimed that he came up with the idea to create a 'Felix' comic strip. These early installments were adaptations of the cartoons, and supposedly often consisted of cut-and-pasted or re-inked animation stils.
Other comics
Another daily comic strip by Bogle was 'Ozzy And His Gym', which was syndicated by McFadden Publishing in 1924 and 1925. Bogle also drew the short-lived funny animal Sunday comic strip 'Barnyard Folks' (1937) for King Features Syndicate, although specific publication dates are unknown.
Van Beuren
Bogle briefly worked as an animator for the Van Beuren Studios in the 1930s, where he gave a still unknown Joseph Barbera (of later Hanna-Barbera fame) his first job as animator.
Disney
Later in the 1930s Bogle joined Walt Disney, where he worked on early 'Mickey Mouse' cartoons and the animated full-length features 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' (1937) and 'Pinocchio' (1940).
Filler comic strip from Dell's New Funnies #66 (1942). The comic book was otherwise filled with comics starring characters from Walter Lantz cartoons, but this one has a copyright notice for Oskar Lebeck, the managing editor of Western Publishing.
Later career
Not much is known about his later career, except that he drew some funny animal comics for Dell Comics/Western Publishing like 'New Funnies' in the early 1940s. In a newspaper article in the Desert Sun from 3 June 1977, conducted by Marcy Springer, Bogle was retired and living in Torrance, California. John "Jack" Bogle died two days before his 82nd birthday on 2 July 1982.
Jack Bogle in 1977.