The Better Half is the title of 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....

 created by Bob Barnes

Bob Barnes

Bob Barnes is an American comic strip artist. His work includes:* Laugh of the Week * Laff of the Week * Double-Take * The Better Half ....

. It follows the lives of a married couple, Stanley and Harriet Parker, and the usual annoyances couples have with one another after years of marriage. It has been syndicated since 1956, and in 1958 won Barnes the National Cartoonist Society Newspaper Panel Cartoon Award. James Coco

James Coco

James Coco was an American character actor.- Early life and career :Born James Emil Coco in New York City, son of Feliche Coco, a shoemaker and Ida Detestes Coco, James began acting straight out of high school. As an overweight and prematurely balding adult, he found himself relegated to character...

 and Lily Tomlin

Lily Tomlin

Mary Jean "Lily" Tomlin is an American actress, comedienne, writer, and producer. Tomlin has been a major force in American comedy since the late 1960's when she began a career as a stand up comedian and became a featured performer on television's Laugh-in...

 made a sitcom pilot based on the strip for ABC

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

 in the early 1970s, but no series was ever made.

Writers

Cartoonists who have worked on the strip include Bob Barnes (1956-1972), Ruth Barnes and Dick Rogers (1973-1979), Vinnie Vinson (1979-1982), and Randy Glasbergen

Randy Glasbergen

Randy Glasbergen is an American cartoonist and humorous illustrator best known for the daily comic The Better Half.-Background:Randy Glasbergen began his professional cartooning career at the ripe old age of 15...

 (1982-present). Between 1982 and 1992 Glasbergen wrote under the pseudonym "Jay Harris", so as not to confuse publishers who were familiar with his different style of humor and character design. As he was able to transform the characters to his own style, he began using his own name. In the process, Stanley became much shorter than Harriet and lost his scruffy mustache. "Harris" was his wife's maiden name.

Comparisons to The Lockhorns

The strip is seen by many as a much tamer version of The Lockhorns

The Lockhorns

The Lockhorns is a United States single-panel cartoon created in 1968 by Bill Hoest and distributed by King Features Syndicate to 500 newspapers in 23 countries. It is continued today by Bunny Hoest and John Reiner.-Characters and story:...

, but with a few differences:

• Though both are single-panel
  Panel (comic strips)
  A panel is an individual frame, or single drawing, in the multiple-panel sequence of a comic strip or comic book. A panel consists of a single drawing depicting a frozen moment....
  
  strips featuring one character talking most of the time, The Better Half occasionally shows frames where both are talking, which The Lockhorns never does.
• Like the Lockhorns, Stanley and Harriet do not have kids. However, they do discuss wanting to having them from time to time.
• While the Lockhorns do not have pets, Stanley and Harriet have a cat that often appears in the background of strips. Prior to approximately 1979, a dachshund was occasionally seen.
• While the Lockhorns appear to generally hate one another, Stanley and Harriet do appear to try to love one another despite everything.