Sydney 'Syd' Wentworth Nicholls (20 December 1896 – 3 June 1977) was an Australian cartoonist and commercial artist, best known for the long-running comic strip Fatty Finn.

Syd Nicholls was born in Frederick Henry Bay, Tasmania on 20 December 1896, the son of a watchmaker Hubert George Jordan and his wife Arabella Cluidunning, née Bartsche.

[2] His first published work appeared in the International Socialist in 1912,[1] at the age of sixteen and by the time he was eighteen he was having cartoons accepted by The Bulletin, Australian Worker and Australasian Seaman's Journal.

[1] In 1927 a film called The Kid Stakes was produced by Tal Ordell, featuring Fatty Finn and his goat, Hector.

Nicholls had twice tried, in 1928 and 1929, to introduce a dream sequence into Fatty Finn, involving pirates, cannibals and highwaymen, but was forced by Knox to return to his original comic style.

Believing that there was public interest, Nicholls drew one of the world's first adventure strips, Middy Malone, but could find no publisher.

Unable to compete with increasing paper costs and cheap, imported American comics, Nicholls's publishing company was put out of business in 1950.

At the district registrar's office, Paddington, on 29 August 1942 Nicholls had married Roberta Clarice Vickery, a 25-year-old commercial artist.

[4] While in a state of mental depression, Syd Nicholls fell to his death from the balcony next door to his tenth-floor Potts Point apartment on 3 June 1977.