Cartoonist Charles "Doc" Winner was born in Perryville, Pennsylvania on December 18, 1885. An early interest in art led to night classes at the Pittsburgh School of Art at age seventeen, while supporting himself as a clerk for a tea shop and the Pennsylvania Railroad. His first formal cartooning job was in 1910 as the replacement for Billy DeBeck at the Pittsburgh Post, beginning with sports comics followed and then political cartoons. He then worked for the Harrisburg Patriot and the Newark Star-Eagle in the a replacement capacity. There is some speculation that he and fellow cartoonist Marion T. Ross ghosted for Richard Outcault's "Buster Brown" from the late 1910s to the early 1920s.

In 1918 he was approached by the William Randolph Hearst organization with an offer to join its comic staff, a position Winner held for thirty-eight years. In 1923 his comic strip, "Tubby," was published and would continue for three years before he went on to create "Elmer," a new iteration of "Tubby" which received its own Sunday page in the late 1930s.

Among his other notable cartooning stints was as a ghost artist on Thimble Theater's 'Popeye' after its creator, E.C. Segar, fell ill in January of 1938, and continued the comic after Segar died that October. He remained the offical "Popeye" artist until December of 1939. He also worked on Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, and the Katzenjammer Kids. He created various "toppers," the single-panel or short panel that topped full page Sunday comics.

Charles "Doc" Winner dies on August 12, 1956 in Upper Montclair, New Jersey.