Vuillermin contributes the following brief bio of Kruckman. The gallery of Kruckman works are all from him with the exception of the two Happy Hunch comic strips, which are the only samples I have from this rare strip (sorry for the horrid condition):
Herbert (Herb) Kruckman (1904-98) was a New York-born cartoonist, illustrator, artist and author. Kruckman’s early comics include Gimpel Beinish for Warheit (1925) and Happy Hunch (1926) for the New York Evening Graphic, a strip about a rich young boxer named Clarence. [ed - our admittedly very limited samples don't seem to bear this out as the subject]
When Kruckman was 10 years old he worked as an office boy in the Sun Building on Nassau Street and studied under the cartoonist Jeff Travers. Later, he was an associate of Milt Gross and Gus Edson. After his time at the Graphic (Kruckman was fired by the art editor, Ryan Walker, for bursting a paper bag in the office), he studied under Boardman Robinson at the Art Students League. During the 1930s and 1940s, Kruckman became a frequent contributor to several left wing magazines including New Masses, The Hat Worker and Art Front, as well as mainstream media magazines and newspapers including New Republic, PM, New York Times and Post.
Following World War II, Kruckman became active in Jewish children’s education, creating the strip Joey and his People that was featured in the newspaper World Over for more than 40 years. As an artist, Kruckman worked as part of the WPA, regularly exhibiting throughout the 1930s and 1940s at the ACA Gallery, and he was part of the New York Group that featured such artists as Alice Neel, Jacob Kainen, Louis Nisonoff, Herman Rose, Max Schnitzler and Jules Halfant.
