James Llewellyn Frise (/fraɪz/,[1] 16 October 1890 – 13 June 1948) was a Canadian cartoonist best known for his work on the comic strip Birdseye Center and his illustrations of humorous prose pieces by Greg Clark.

He moved to the Montreal Standard in 1947, but as the Star kept publication rights to Birdseye Center, Frise continued it as Juniper Junction with strongly similar characters and situations.

In 1910 he moved there, though without aiming to develop his art—rather he sought work and found it as an engraver and printer at the Rolph, Clark, Stone lithography firm; he spent six months drawing maps for the Canadian Pacific Railway company indicating lots for sale in Saskatchewan.

He began by lettering titles and touching up photos until the Star Weekly's editor J. Herbert Cranston enlisted him for his drawing skills.

He was deployed overseas that September and by November was serving in the 12th Battery at the front, where he employed his farm experience driving horses to move artillery and ammunition.

The volume appeared later in the year under the title Battery Action!, written by Hugh R. Kay, George Magee, and F. A. MacLennan and illustrated with Frise's light-hearted, humorous cartoons rendered in accurate detail.

[3] The strip proved popular and evolved by 1923; it had taken on the influence of John T. McCutcheon's depictions of a fictional rural town in the American Midwest called Bird Center.

Frise turned his focus to humorous and nostalgic depictions of rural life[6] and on 12 December 1925[3] renamed his strip Birdseye Center, whose setting he described as "any Canadian village"; its lead characters included bowler-hatted Pigskin Peters, Old Archie and his pet moose Foghorn, and lazy Eli Doolittle and his wife Ruby.

Frise's tardiness caused such delays in production and distribution that editorial director Harry C. Hindmarsh once demanded Joseph E. Atkinson have something done about it.

The stories generally detailed various adventures (and misadventures) best friends Greg and Jim got up to, sometimes at their homes, but also on fishing or camping trips, or exploring the backwoods and rural areas of Ontario.

[6] This extremely popular feature ran for the next 16 years, making Frise well known throughout Canada not just as an artist, but as a continuing real-life personality in Clark's stories.

Clark contacted John McConnell, publisher of the Montreal Standard, a newspaper with a smaller circulation than the Star's that had earlier offered him a position.

McConnell offered the pair salaries similar to what they received at the Star, as well as the opportunity for Frise to have his strip syndicated in the United States, which would supplement his income.

[3] The Star maintained publication rights to Birdseye Center, so Frise re-created the feature as Juniper Junction with strongly similar characters and situations.

[2] After returning from his service in World War I, Frise began courting Ruth Elizabeth Gate, who had been born in the US and grew up in Toronto.

[10] In 1965 the Canadian publisher McClelland & Stewart printed a treasury of Birdseye Center with commentary by Greg Clark and an introduction by Gordon Sinclair.