Noel Sickles

Noel Douglas Sickles (January 24, 1910 – October 3, 1982) was an American commercial illustrator and cartoonist, best known for the comic strip Scorchy Smith.

Sickles followed Caniff, creator of the Terry and the Pirates comic strip, to New York City in 1933, where both men initially worked as staff artists for the Associated Press.

Sickles was assigned to the action/adventure comic Scorchy Smith, whose creator, John Terry, was suffering from tuberculosis.

Loosely modeled on Charles Lindbergh, Scorchy was a pilot-for-hire who flew into numerous high-octane globe-trotting adventures.

The series, which started in 1930, was heavily influenced by Roy Crane’s adventure strip Wash Tubbs.

"[2] Sickles asked the Associated Press for a salary raise in 1936, and when he was turned down, he quit, becoming a successful commercial illustrator.

His Scorchy Smith strips were reprinted in Famous Funnies and in two collections published by Nostalgia Press in the 1970s.