By Dik Browne (Egmont/Methuen)
ISBN: 0-416-05090-5 Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â ASIN: B000R9A1OO
Dik (AKA Richard Arthur Allan) Browne was a native New Yorker born in 1917 who studied at Cooper Union and apprenticed as a copy boy and art-bod for the New York Journal America before joining the US Army.
His wartime duties in the Engineering Corps included strategic map-making, but whilst in service he also created the comic strip Jinny Jeep about the Women’s Army Corps, which set the tone for his peacetime career.
After mustering out he became a professional cartoonist and illustrator, working for Newsweek and also in advertising, gaining a reputation as a superb logo designer (The Campbell Soup Kids, Chiquita Banana and the Birdseye Bird number amongst his most memorable creations).
He also dabbled with comicbooks (some Classics Illustrated Junior issues) and produced children’s books, before teaming up with Beetle Bailey creator Mort Walker to draw the hugely successful spin-off strip Hi and Lois in 1954.
Whilst illustrating that family comedy – and deviously training sons Chance and Chris to eventually take over his cartooning duties – he came up another strip that he would write as well as render.
Hägar the Horrible debuted through the King Features Syndicate on February 4th 1973 and quickly became a world-wide hit. The strip is still a fixture in 1,900 newspapers – in 58 countries and thirteen languages – and the iconic characters have migrated to books, comic albums such as this one, games, animated movies, toys and more…
Dik Browne retired from cartooning in 1988 and died from cancer on June 4th 1989. Chance now produces Hi and Lois whilst Chris continues to wield pen, wave sword and wear the chief’s hornèd helmet on Hägar…
Hägar the Horrible is a hard-drinking, hardworking, voracious sea-roving Viking family man. He and his scurvy crew constantly trek to far climes before perennially staggering home to their quirky clans in a never-ending stream of sight gags, painful puns and surreal situations.
With such daily adventuring taking the world by storm, it was only natural that European-style albums would follow and this truly surreal and hilarious extended saga (the fourth of seven released in Britain) came circuitously via German publishing powerhouse Ehapa Verlag to our own Egmont outfit in 1978.
Hägar’s family tree – and its many surrounding weeds – includes the great man of business and his doughty dependents plus a few notable and iconic regulars. As pictured on a double page spread of the unusual suspects, they include long-suffering wife Helga, embarrassingly studious son Hamlet and troublesome teenaged daughter Honi.
Also making an appearance are faithful canine Snert, stroppy house-duck Kvack, Honi’s besotted musician beau Lute and Hägar’s faithful if intellectually challenged sidekick Lucky Eddie…
The magic of the daily strips is the constant stream of quickfire japes and capers constantly revisiting established themes and hot-button topics. At home Honi keeps Lute on a string whilst testing out other matrimonial options and alternatively considers a full-time career as an axe-swinging Valkyrie whilst bookish Hamlet is always there to disappoint and delight his gregarious, bellicose dad.
Snert and Kvack frequently outwit and appal the humans who share their home and at sea Lucky Eddie and the mismatched crew of incompetent reavers follow the red-bearded rascal into battle against foreign armies, daunting dragons, a coterie of assorted clergy and the unwelcoming elements, content in the knowledge that somehow, somewhere they will find more booze and loot…
In this delightful full-colour chronicle however there’s room and time to develop a proper storyline which hilariously begins with the widely promulgated and reiterated tenet that “The World is Flatâ€â€¦
This is something all Vikings know, from the youngest baby to the aged and roister-loving King. It informs all of Hägar’s planned excursions and loot-accruing expeditions. However one day the world inexplicably changes thanks to the connivance of an Italian toymaker whose latest invention flops.
Nobody wants his round “bouncy-bouncy†balls until he has the notion to shove a stick through the centre, paint countries on them and call them globes. Suddenly everybody wants one and a strange new idea seems to be spreading that Earth is giant sphere.
…And once one new idea sticks all manner of conceptual innovations follow…
On Hägar’s latest voyage of acquisition he continually discovers things are not what they were and is shocked to find that the wave of innovations – such as invaded countries charging customs duty, the theory that bathing isn’t bad for the skin or “the Meek inheriting the Earth†are spreading everywhere.
That disturbing trend for change even invades the heart of Viking society. When he arrives home broken and baffled, Helga expects him to help with the housework and Honi is wearing miniskirts…
Shaken to the core, all the Viking men attend a huge meeting and it’s decided that a heroic voyage must be undertaken to prove the world is still flat… by sailing over the edge…
Moreover, caught up in the manly bluster and bravado, our inebriated hero is horrified to discover that he has volunteered…
And so begins a wickedly inspired and playfully surreal sea voyage which eventually proves both hypotheses false as Hagar, Lucky Eddie, lovesick Lute and a hand-picked crew of ignorant, stupid, non-Viking speaking and straight-out kidnapped mariners set out to discover the final truth, allowing the author a chance to outrageously cut creatively loose… whilst always minding the corners…
Enticing, irrepressible, hilarious and beguiling, The World is Flat is a madcap mini masterpiece of the strip cartoonists’ unique art form and one guaranteed to deliver delight over and over again to young and old alike. So, let’s get it and all the others back in print soon, shall we?
All rights reserved. © 1978 King Features New York/Bulls, Frankfurt a M. and Ehapa Verlag GmbH. Copyright this edition © 1978 Egmont Publishing Limited, London. Hägar the Horrible is © 2014 King Features Syndicate and ™ Hearst Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.