Lawrence Lariar

• Born — 25 December 1908 • Birthplace — Brooklyn, New York City, New York, U.S. • Died — 12 October 1981 • Place of death — Waterbury, Connecticut, U.S. • Area — Cartoonist, novelist, editor • Spouse — Susan Mayer • Children — 2 • Alias — Michael Stark Adam Knight Marston la France • Notable Works — Best Cartoons of the Year series

Born in Brooklyn, Lariar studied illustration at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art but then switched to cartooning. After graduation, he teamed with two of his friends, and they started a cartoon agency, selling their own work under a dozen different pseudonyms. In 1927, they moved the operation to Paris, selling to British magazines and Fleetway. Two years later, they were back in New York looking for work, as Lariar recalled, "To make a living, we did everything. We had a service for printers, drew cartoons for calendars, played messenger and did some of the first work for the slicks." They scored with a series of cartoon postcards that Boy Scouts could use to write home, selling more than a million cards in a direct-mail campaign. From 1930 to 1938, working in an office on 45th Street, Lariar did freelance gag cartoons, comic strips and spot drawings, including political cartoons for the New York Journal American and pages for some of the earliest comic books. In 1938 he moved to California to work at Walt Disney Studios, including on the film Fantasia, but was dissatisfied with the factory approach of the work and quit after a short time. Lariar returned to New York, describing the experience as "my brief sojourn in the whimsey mill of Mickey Mouse".

In 1941, his Comicard Company in Roosevelt, New York, produced a set of postcards that soldiers could use to write home, similar to Dave Breger's line of Private Breger postcards also available during World War II. Beginning in 1942, Lariar was the cartoon editor of Liberty, where he started The Thropp Family, the first comic strip to run as a continuity in a national magazine. From 1943 to 1946, he was president of the American Society of Magazine Cartoonists. In 1953, he created Yankee Yiddish Cocktail Napkins, which featured cartoons illustrating puns on Yiddish words and expressions.

In 1935, he married his agent, Susan Mayer, one of the first cartoon agents in the magazine gag panel field. They had two children. For over a decade, starting in 1957, Lariar had an affair with Barbara Griffith, the mother of future cartoonist Bill Griffith. This later formed the basis of Bill Griffith's 2015 graphic novel Invisible Ink: My Mother’s Secret Love Affair with a Famous Cartoonist.

The authorities additionally record the headings Adam Knight, Lawrence La Riar and Michael Stark. His recorded language was American English.