Stan Lynde was born in Billings, Montana in 1931, and raised on a cattle and sheep ranch on Montana's Crow Indian Reservation. Encouraged by his artistic mother, he started drawing, making his first comic for the high school paper. Lynde studied art and journalism at Montana State University, and joined the U.S. Navy in 1951, where he drew the comic 'Ty Foon' for the base newspaper.
In 1955 Lynde was discharged from the Navy. After an attempt at ranching and working for a newspaper in Colorado Springs, he moved to New York City in 1956. There he was employed by the Wall Street Journal, and took art classes in the evenings. On 27 April 1958, he created the newspaper comic 'Rick O'Shay', and sold it to the Tribune-News Syndicate. Lynde continued working on this strip until 1977, and made a revival episode in 1992 ('Rick O'Shay and Hipshot: The Price of Fear'). Lynde had by then returned to Montana, while his strip ran in papers like The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer.
In 1979 he came up with 'Latigo', another Western strip, which ran until 1983. Another creation is the weekly panel 'Grass Roots', which he drew in 1984-85 and again from 1998. Since the mid-1990s, Lynde has also been active for the Swedish Fantomen magazine, starting with 'Chief Sly Fox' and from 2002 the humor strip 'Rovar Bob' ('Bad Bob'). Stan Lynde lived with his wife Lynda in Helena, Montana, where he ran Cottonwood Publishing. His eight published novels, set in Montana Territory during the 1880s, include seven novels in his 'Merlin Fanshaw' series. He passed away from cancer in August 2013.
