Henry is a comic strip created in 1932 by Carl Thomas Anderson. The title character is a young bald boy who is mostly mute in the comics (and sometimes drawn minus a mouth). Except in a few early episodes, when the comic strip character communicates, he does so largely but not entirely through pantomime. He also spoke in a comic book series of 1946–1961 and in at least one Betty Boop cartoon from 1935 in which Betty Boop has a pet shop and Henry speaks to a dog in the window.

The Saturday Evening Post was the first publication to feature Henry, a series which began when Anderson was 67 years old. The series of cartoons continued in that magazine for two years in various formats of one, two, or multiple panels. It then moved to newspaper syndication on December 17, 1934. Anderson stopped drawing due to arthritis in 1942, and the strip continued with other artists. After 84 years of syndication, Henry was discontinued on October 28, 2018.

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.

right|thumb|300px|Carl Anderson's Henry began in The Saturday Evening Post (1932–1934), and this 1932 single panel is one of the earliest. Others in The Saturday Evening Post series were two panels or multiple panels.

Anderson's assistant on the Sunday strip was Don Trachte. His assistant on the dailies was John Liney. In 1942, arthritis kept Anderson away from the drawing board and Trachte enlisted for WWII, so Anderson turned both the daily and Sunday strip over to Liney. When Trachte returned in 1945, Liney continued to draw the dailies, and Trachte drew the Sunday strips. Liney retired in 1979, but Trachte continued with the Sunday strips until the end of the run in 2005. Later strips of Henry would be somewhat a reversal of earlier themes, such as adults having the last word when Henry and his friends misbehave, or Henry walking around town to see free samples of common household items, then seeing another sign advertising ice cream for expensive prices, to his unspoken consternation.

center|thumb|550px|John Liney's Henry (March 30, 1973)

Derivative works

<!-- Deleted image removed: right|thumb|110px|Betty Boop with Henry, the Funniest Living American (1935) -->

Henry appears (and speaks) alongside Betty Boop in the Fleischer Studios animated short Betty Boop with Henry, the Funniest Living American (1935).

During the period of 1946 to 1961, Dell Comics published 61 issues of a color comic book titled Carl Anderson's Henry. Henry spoke in the comic book, as did the other principal characters.

See also

  • The Little King by Otto Soglow, an American pantomime comic strip that preceded Henry
  • Charlie Brown, another more-or-less bald boy cartoon character (1950–present)
  • Caillou, a bald boy in an animated television series (1997–2010, plus a few special episodes around 2021)

References

Sources

  • Strickler, Dave. Syndicated Comic Strips and Artists, 1924–1995: The Complete Index. Cambria, California: Comics Access, 1995.
  • Henry, The Funniest Living American on Youtube
  • King Features: Henry
  • Henry at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on January 27, 2016.