Out of My Head–But

Marcy Matthew Fox was born in New York City on November 8, 1906. His mother, Minnie Fox (neé Flesche), was born of Jewish ancestry in Russia in 1881 and immigrated to the United States in 1902. Matt’s father, Morris Fox, had been born in Russia in 1879 and came to America in 1900. According to the family, Minnie and Morris had met through a dating service, and as related in the 1910 New York Census, the couple was married on October 28, 1905. After the nuptials, the family settled into a small tenement apartment in the Jewish section of East Harlem. Morris worked in the garment industry.

Later, in 1909, a daughter named Rita (who would later prefer to be called Rose) was born. The 1915 New York Census lists Marcy’s father as a “shirt ironer,” while the Census from 1925 indicates he is a “traveling salesman.” His occupations varied widely and, according to the family, he was a highly educated man, but couldn’t seem to hold a steady job. This resulted in the Fox family constantly moving and scraping to make ends meet. Minnie Fox and her children were hopeful that things would improve, but eventually the unemployed Morris began showing a darker side with abusive behavior emerging. Morris had a violent temper, which he took out on the family, especially on young Marcy. Exploding in anger, he would aggressively force his son up against the wall and punch him in the stomach. This abuse caused Marcy severe intestinal problems for the rest of his life. During his childhood, Minnie became very sick. With a husband who didn’t believe in working much, times became even harder for the family to get by. In 1918, the Fox family moved to a cheaper apartment located at 339 East 118th Street, on Manhattan’s tough Lower East Side. At some point, Marcy started using his middle name Matthew—or just Matt—for short.

As a young boy attending grade school, Matt took an immediate interest in art and, at the age of eleven, he won the Wanamaker Medal for the “Most Outstanding Art Entry” of all school-age contestants in the city of New York. He would eventually win other awards during his school years and soon discovered—and fell in love with—many of the popular newspaper comic strips of the day. He read the funnies whenever he could get access to discarded newspapers and was soon emulating his favorites with ink on paper. At some point, he decided he wanted to become a professional cartoonist and, by 12, was headed in that direction. He created his own comic strip characters, first using pencil and watercolors, then later graduating to straight pen-&-ink pages in black-&-white. These were drawn in a Sunday page format on small sheets of ruled paper taken from his school tablets. Some of these pages were akin to pulp paper, and a few examples still exist today, only because his sister, Rose, saved them.

Even at this young age, Matt demonstrated an interest in the macabre, creating a strip called “Poor Mr. Undertaker.” Later examples show the “Poor Mr.” was dropped in favor of the abbreviated title of “Undertaker.” Although the gags in these early efforts are extremely crude and old fashioned, one can recognize the devotion the young artist applied to these strips. One surviving example, dated August 5, 1921, depicts a young man who decides to become an undertaker in order to make some money. Fox drew the strip in four tiers, with each panel numbered from one to twelve, showing the young man accosting old people on the street, prematurely