F. M. Howarth

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F. M. Howarth (September 27, 1864 – September 22, 1908) was an American cartoonist and a pioneer of comic strips. He was born in Philadelphia, the oldest of four children. His father, William Howarth, was an English immigrant and pattern maker; his mother, Sarah Iseminger Howarth, was a Philadelphia native. He attended Central High School. By age 19 he was drawing for the Philadelphia Call and other papers, and soon worked for national magazines such as Munsey's Magazine, Life, Judge, and Truth. He joined the staff of Puck in 1891 and moved to the New York World in 1901. Howarth's figures often had big heads on small bodies, and he helped create serial cartoons, which would later be called comic strips.

Among his strips were The Love of Lulu and Leander (1902) for the New York American; Mr. E. Z. Mark (1903) for the American Journal-Examiner, a con-man character that ran at least until his death in 1908; and Ole Opey Dildock (1907), which was continued by W. L. Wells after Howarth's death and ran until 1914.

Howarth died of pneumonia on September 22, 1908, in Germantown, Philadelphia, at age 43.