Born in Tallinn, Estonia to Juhan and Elisabeth (née Kukk) Valtman,[1] Edmund sold his first cartoons when he was 15[2] to the children's magazine Laste Rõõm.

He had seen his older brother draw as well as his father make cakes and cookies with designs on them (Juhan was a baker).

When the USSR reoccupied Estonia in 1944, he and his wife, Helmi (who was Estonian) fled the country with retreating Nazi troops and then spent the next four years in displaced persons camps in Germany including one in Geislingen.

They emigrated to the United States in 1959,[4] first to Little Silver east of Red Bank, New Jersey and then to Hartford, Connecticut.

He was noted for his caricatures of Cold War–era communist leaders including Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev.