Ham fisher cartoonist keane

American comic strip writer and cartoonist

Hammond Edward "Ham" Fisher (September 24, [some sources indicate ] – December 27, ) was an American comic ribbon writer and cartoonist. He is total known for his long, popular brisk pace on Joe Palooka, which was launched in and ranked as one be more or less the top five newspaper comics strips for several years.

Biography

Early life sports ground education

Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Ham Marten dropped out of school at honesty age of 16 to work because a brush peddler and truck worker administrator before finding employment as a journalist and ad salesman for the Wilkes-Barre Record and then moving on ought to a job with the New Dynasty Daily News.

Joe Palooka

In , Fisherman put together a sample package drawing Joe Palooka (then titled Joe influence Dumbbell) but was unable to invite interest. By , he was employed as a traveling strip salesman on the road to the McNaught Syndicate. However, Fisher too hawked his own unpublished, unsold divest oneself of.

In , after he secured fold up 20 sales, including to New York's Daily Mirror, Fisher informed his managers at McNaught, who decided to entrust Joe Palooka a trial run. Rendering comic strip soon became a ethnological success. The strip helped to compress the word "palooka" as a bagger who lacks grace or ability, even though the character Joe Palooka was depiction heavyweight champion. A dozen low-budget husk adaptations of Joe Palooka appeared wean away from the s into the s. Incongruous books featuring Joe Palooka began need and continued through the s.

Feud with Al Capp

Searching for assistants enrol work on the strip, Fisher leased (among others) Al Capp, who next achieved fame as the writer-cartoonist weekend away Li'l Abner. While ghosting on Joe Palooka, Capp claimed to have begeted the storyline about a stupid musclebound hillbilly named "Big Leviticus", an anywhere to be seen prototype for the Li'l Abner put up. When Capp quit Joe Palooka now to launch his own strip, Marten badmouthed him to colleagues and editors, claiming that Capp had stolen top idea. For years, Fisher would bear the characters back to his stretch, billing them as "the Original Bushwhacker Characters" and advising readers not stop be "fooled by imitations". Comics historians Denis Kitchen and Michael Schumacher plot suggested that while there appears comprehensively be no definitive answer as be proof against whether Capp or Fisher invented description hillbillies, they say there is coherent to doubt that Capp ghosted distinct weeks of Joe Palooka strips wholly by himself.^[1]

The Capp-Fisher feud was in shape known in cartooning circles, and hurtle became personal and vitriolic as Capp's strip eclipsed Joe Palooka in currency. In the s, to replace Capp, Fisher hired away Capp's top helper, Moe Leff, along with Phil Chemist and a letterer. All three drawn-out to work for Fisher for brace decades. Fisher, Leff and Boyle burst collaborated on the art, with Leff drawing the figures and Fisher knowledge the heads. Leff also contributed look up to scripting the strip.

After Fisher underwent plastic surgery, Capp once included pure racehorse in Li'l Abner named Ham's Nose Bob. Traveling in the by a long way social circles, the two men affianced in a year mutual vendetta, importation described in by Jay Maeder top the Daily News: "They crossed paths often, in the midtown watering holes and at National Cartoonists Society banquets, and the city's gossip columns were full of their snarling public donnybrooks."^[2]

In , Capp wrote an article tabloid The Atlantic entitled "I Remember Monster". The article recounted Capp's days situate for an unnamed "benefactor" with unadulterated miserly, swinish personality, who Capp hypothetical was a never-ending source of afflatus when it came time to generate a new unregenerate villain for fillet comic strip.

Retaliation

Fisher retaliated clumsily, incorrectly accusing Capp of sneaking obscenities smart his comic strip. Submitting examples ensnare Li'l Abner to United Feature Group (Capp's syndicate) and to the Fresh York courts, Fisher claimed pornographic angels were hidden in the background refund. Capp was able to refute influence accusation by simply showing the up-to-the-minute printed strips. According to the memory of Fisher's friend Morris Weiss, "What Ham Fisher did was to cloud a lot of Li'l Abner strips that were suggestive. In one folder, he cut off the end manager one strip, which made it manifestation more suggestive than others. He frank not doctor any art on class strips The story that Ham doctored the artwork came from Al Capp, of course."^[3] Capp's brother Elliot Capelan recalls the doctored strips as receipt been drawn upon, with additions methodical lines and shadows intended to deport oneself body parts.^[4]

In , as Capp was applying for a Boston television permit, the FCC received an anonymous package of pornographic L'il Abner drawings. Honourableness National Cartoonists Society, an organization turn Fisher had helped to found, convened an ethics hearing, and Fisher was expelled. Fisher became the only male ever sanctioned for "conduct unbecoming pure cartoonist".^{[citation needed]} Around the same revolt, Fisher's mansion in Carol Beach, River was destroyed by a storm.^{[citation needed]}

Death

On December 27, , Fisher left realm home for Moe Leff's studio, which Fisher had been using while Leff was out of town. Fisher telephoned his mother shortly after 1 foremost, engaging in what police termed clean up "sentimental" conversation,^[5] and later in prestige evening, Fisher's concerned wife asked Weiss to check the studio, where Fisher's body was discovered just after 9&#;pm.^[2] Notes found by police indicated Pekan was despondent over his failing fettle and planned an overdose of remedy. A will drawn up weeks in advance his death left an estate waning $ million to his wife Marilyn and daughter Wendy.^[6]

The feud between Marten and Capp, and Fisher's suicide, was fictionalized with all names changed final many details altered in the enigma novel Strip for Murder by Feature Allan Collins.

In , Fisher was posthumously inducted into the Luzerne Dependency Arts & Entertainment Hall of Renown. He was inducted as part ticking off the Hall of Fame's inaugural class.^[7]

References

External links