Herman was a comic strip

Comic strip

A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....

 written and drawn by Jim Unger

Jim Unger

Jim Unger is a Canadian cartoonist, best known for his syndicated comic strip Herman which ran for eighteen years in 600 newspapers in 25 countries....

. While the daily

Daily strip

A daily strip is a newspaper comic strip format, appearing on weekdays, Monday through Saturday, as contrasted with a Sunday strip, which typically only appears on Sundays....

 ran as a single panel with a typeset caption, it expanded on Sunday

Sunday strip

A Sunday strip is a newspaper comic strip format, where comic strips are printed in the Sunday newspaper, usually in a special section called the Sunday comics, and virtually always in color. Some readers called these sections the Sunday funnies...

 as a full multi-panel strip with balloons.

It was syndicated from 1975 to 1992, when Unger retired. In 1997, Herman returned to syndication with a mix of classic strip reprints and occasional new material.

Characters and story

The eponymous Herman is actually anybody within the confines of the strip—a man, a woman, a child, any animal or even an extraterrestrial. All characters are rendered in Unger's unique style as hulking, beetle-browed figures with pronounced noses and jaws, and often sport comically understated facial expressions.

An earlier strip, Herman, created by Clyde Lamb

Clyde Lamb

Clyde William Lamb was an artist and cartoonist whose gag cartoons, signed Clyde Lamb, were published in leading magazines of the 1940s and 1950s. He also drew a syndicated comic strip during the 1950s....

, published from 1950 through 1966, had no relation to Unger's strip.

Themes

While there is no apparent continuity to the daily panels, there are several recurring themes:

• Married life: Wife: "What would you rate me as? A 10? 9? 8? 7? 6? 5? 4, 3? (pause) Not 2!" Husband: "Keep going."
• Bad cooking: A woman says to her husband, "I made you a meat pie and the dog ate it," to which the husband replies, "I'll miss the dog."
• Strange neighbors: A television comes crashing through the wall. Outside, a man yells "You missed!"
• The elderly: "There's an elephant on TV, and Grandma's throwing peanuts at it!"
• Animals: One penguin to another. "We'd have arrived earlier, but our iceberg hit a ship."
• Children in school: "Don't drag your fingernails on the chalkboard, Niles," a teacher with shattered glasses and standing-up hair says.
• Intelligent babies: A man steps into the baby's room with a bottle. "It's about time! Another five minutes, and I'd have died of thirst!"
• Restaurants: A waiter dumps the customer's food on the tablecloth. "Terribly sorry about this, but we're short of plates."
• Life in prison: Two prisoners have been caught cutting the bars from their cell window. "We found it quite stuffy in here, warden."
• Art: A painting depicts a single half-circle at the bottom of the canvas: "This one's called 'Here Comes the Sun.'"
• Hunting and fishing: A hunter with the rifle realizes he has just blown the landing gear off of an airborne 747.
• People with bizarre ailments or injuries: A man in the hospital has a surgical scar that covers the perimeter of his torso. "It took us a while to find your appendix," the doctor explains.
• Encounters with extraterrestrial life: A UFO has been pulled over for speeding. "Ignorance of the law is no excuse, buddy!"
• Ordinary people thrust into bizarre situations: A man on a modern-day park bench encounters a Viking, who asks "Is the war still on?"
• Being overweight: An overweight man stands on a bathroom scale, and asks his wife, "What do you mean the needle's broken off?"
• Mispronounced words: A sheriff's deputy brings the sheriff a cat. The sheriff says "I said 'Round up a POSSE!'."
• Courts: A judge does not know that the defendant he is speaking to is a plywood cutout. "You have been found guilty of forgery."
• Strange inventions: A man has a giant showerhead over his house. "I get a good deal on fire insurance."
• Medical: Doctor tells overweight patient "Walk two miles per day, but not on Morning Glory Circle."

Several collections

Anthology

An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...

 of the comic strip were printed.

Awards

Unger received the National Cartoonists Society

National Cartoonists Society

The National Cartoonists Society is an organization of professional cartoonists in the United States. It presents the National Cartoonists Society Awards. The Society was born in 1946 when groups of cartoonists got together to entertain the troops...

's Newspaper Panel Cartoon Award for 1982 and 1987 for his work on the strip.

Sources

Strickler, Dave

Dave Strickler

Dave Strickler is a reference librarian noted for his compilation of Syndicated Comic Strips and Artists, 1924–1995: The Complete Index, regarded as a major reference work by researchers and historians of newspaper comic strips....

. Syndicated Comic Strips and Artists, 1924-1995: The Complete Index. Cambria, California: Comics Access, 1995. ISBN 0-9700077-0-1

External links

• Herman reprints at comics.com