Illustrator, Jon Whitcomb was born in Weatherford, Oklahoma, and raised in Manitowic, Wisconsin. He attended Ohio Wesleyan University and graduated from Ohio State where he did pictures for the school publications and worked during the summer painting posters for a theater in Cleveland.

Whitcomb majored in English with an ambition to write, but switched to art classes. After graduation he was able to obtain work in a series of studios doing travel and theater posters, as well as general advertising illustrations.

In 1934, he moved to New York to combine studio work with free-lance illustration. His first illustrations were for Collier's, followed by Good Housekeeping, and then the others in succession as Whitcomb's pretty girl...