Mel Cummin

Mel Cummin
Portrait photo of Mel Cummin from the files of The Explorers Club.
Born	Melville Porter Cummin (1895-01-29)January 29, 1895 Brooklyn, New York
Died	December 1, 1980(1980-12-01) (aged 85) Fort Montgomery, New York
Nationality	American
Area(s)	cartoonist, naturalist
Notable works	Good Time Guy, McCall's Magazine paper-dolls
Awards	The Edward C. Sweeney Medal (1978)

Melville Porter Cummin (January 29, 1895 – December 1, 1980), popularly known as Mel Cummin, was a magazine illustrator and a newspaper staff artist; a notable cartoonist in the early decades of American comic strips; and a Golden Age comic book artist and art director. He was active in the Society of Friends. Cummin was also a well-known naturalist and explorer.

Mel Cummin was born in Brooklyn, New York on January 29, 1895. Of Quaker origin, Cummin attended Friends Seminary (his mother, wife and both daughters were all educated there). On course at a young age for his eventual career, Melville Cummin is listed in Mary Mapes Dodge's St. Nicholas Magazine in 1909 as President of a seven-member chapter of the St. Nicholas League called "St. Nick Drawing Club". He attended National Preparatory Academy and the Art Students League of New York. He held no college degrees. He was a teetotaler. Cummin married at around age twenty. He became a father at age twenty-one in 1916.

Cummin worked as a graphic artist for many decades. At various times he was a staff artist for publications of the Boy Scouts of America (c. 1912, shortly after the organization's founding) and West Point.

He served as art director for the American Kennel Club "Gazette". The editors of the "Gazette" paid tribute to Cummin in 2005 by revisiting his work, and called him "the master draftsman whose cartoons were such a distinctive part of the GAZETTE during the 1940s and '50s." In fact, Cummin drew for that publication at least as early as 1937.

Cummin drew editorial cartoons for The Middletown News-Signal, an Ohio daily. He worked as an illustrator for the San Francisco Examiner as well as a number of New York newspapers, and also contributed to magazines, including the original Life.