Carl Anderson's Henry (July 28, 1935)

Henry is a comic strip created in 1932 by Carl Anderson. The title character is a young bald boy who is mute (and sometimes drawn minus a mouth). With the exception of a few early episodes, the comic strip Henry communicates only through pantomime, a situation which changed when he moved into comic books.

The Saturday Evening Post was the first publication to feature Henry, a series which began March 19, 1932, when Anderson was 67 years old. The series of cartoons continued in that magazine for two years in various formats of single panel, multiple panels or two panels.

[edit] From cartoons to comic strip

After seeing a German publication of Henry, William Randolph Hearst signed Anderson to King Features Syndicate and began distributing the comic strip on December 17. 1934, with the half-page Sunday strip launched March 10, 1935. Henry was replaced in The Saturday Evening Post by Marjorie Henderson Buell's Little Lulu.

Anderson's assistant on the Sunday strip was Don Trachte, and John Liney was his assistant on the dailies.

Carl Anderson's Henry began in the The Saturday Evening Post (1932-34), and this 1932 single panel is one of the earliest. Others in The Saturday Evening Post series were two panels or multiple panels.

In 1948, when Anderson died, the comic strip continued, drawn on weekdays by Liney and on Sundays by Trachte. When Liney retired in 1979, the strip appeared on Sundays only until Trachte's death in 2005. During that period, Jack Tippit and Dick Hodgins, Jr. also contributed. About 75 newspapers still run classic Henry strips drawn by Trachte, and it is also available through King Features' DailyINK.

[edit] Characters and story

Cartoonist Art Baxter analyzed the appeal of the character and the strip:

Henry was a strip that was supposed to be contemporary, but it never looked that way. There were almost no modern trappings. There may be cars or telephones, but that's about it. It always seemed like Henry could always find the coal wagon, horse-drawn ice delivery or a five-cent ice cream cone. There were always shadings of nostalgia in the strip, even when it began in the depression. Part of that has to do with the fact that Henry's creator, Carl Anderson, was already an old man in his late 60s when he created the character by accident. Henry is autonomous in The Saturday Evening Post strips. Henry would not pick up a regular cast of characters, all with no proper names, only titles: the mother, the dog, the bully, the little girl, until it became a William Randolph Hearst comic strip. The Saturday Evening Post Henry is similar in many ways to the Little Rascals/Our Gang comedies of the same era. That is children free from the tyranny of an adult presence (mostly). Children navigating the world as best they can with the knowledge and experience they currently possess. Sometimes they get things right, often get things wrong and frequently come up with solutions to problems unique to their limited experience. Necessity is the mother of invention with funny surprising results.^[1]

John Liney's Henry (March 30, 1973)

[edit] Animation

Henry appeared in a Fleischer Studios animated cartoon alongside Betty Boop, Betty Boop with Henry, the Funniest Living American (1935).

[edit] Comic book

Dell Comics published a color comic book, Carl Anderson's Henry, which ran 61 issues from 1946 to 1961. Henry spoke normally in it, as did all the other characters.

Betty Boop with Henry, the Funniest Living American (1935)

[edit] References

[edit] Sources

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

[edit] External links

• King Features: Henry
• Don Markstein's Toonopedia: Henry