The Strange World of Mr. Mum was a surreal humor comic panel by Irving Phillips which was published from 1958 to 1974. At its peak, it appeared daily in 180 newspapers in 22 countries. Initially distributed by the Hall Syndicate

Publishers-Hall Syndicate

Publishers-Hall Syndicate was a newspaper syndicate founded in 1944 by Robert M. Hall, the company's president and general manager.Hall had worked for The Providence Journal during high school, followed by three years at Northeastern Law School and four years at Brown University...

, it was later handled by the Field Newspaper Syndicate

Field Enterprises

Field Enterprises was a private holding company founded on August 31, 1944, by Marshall Field III and others whose main asset was the Chicago Sun. That same year the company acquired the book publishers Simon & Schuster and Pocket Books....

. A Sunday edition began in 1961.

Characters and story

Mr. Mum is a portly, bald and bespectacled character, who—as his name suggests—remains mum as he observes various odd, surprising or even surreal scenes. He is sometimes accompanied by his similarly silent dog. Mum is described as a "bystander on life's outer limits," and the feature's "anything-can-happen" humor paved the way for later titles like Herman, The Far Side

The Far Side

The Far Side is a popular single-panel comic created by Gary Larson and syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate, which ran from January 1, 1980, to January 1, 1995. Its surrealistic humor is often based on uncomfortable social situations, improbable events, an anthropomorphic view of the world,...

, Bizarro

Bizarro (comic strip)

Bizarro is a single-panel cartoon written and drawn by cartoonist Dan Piraro. Launched January 22, 1985, the panel appears daily in 350 markets throughout North and South America, Europe and Asia...

and Rhymes With Orange

Rhymes With Orange

Rhymes with Orange is an American comic strip written and drawn by Hilary B. Price and distributed by King Features Syndicate. The strip was first syndicated in 1995....

.

Because it was a pantomime

Pantomime

Pantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...

cartoon, its humor translated well internationally. Dutch comics historian Ger Apeldoorn noted that Mr. Mum was "one of the weirdest of the silent strips (excluding the Dutch masterpiece from the same period, Professor Pi by Bo van der Born)... Mr. Mum is a curious man in a weird world, who never gets involved but only observes with ever growing amazement."
After the feature ceased publication, Phillips created a few dozen large, full-color paintings based on ideas from the comic series.