{"id":30998,"date":"2024-12-01T09:00:38","date_gmt":"2024-12-01T09:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=30998"},"modified":"2024-11-30T16:46:28","modified_gmt":"2024-11-30T16:46:28","slug":"hagar-the-horrible-the-epic-chronicles-dailies-1980-1981-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2024\/12\/01\/hagar-the-horrible-the-epic-chronicles-dailies-1980-1981-2\/","title":{"rendered":"H\u00e4gar the Horrible: The Epic Chronicles – Dailies 1980-1981"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nBy Dik Browne<\/strong> (Titan Books)
\nISBN: 978-1-78116-715-1 (HB)<\/p>\n

Win\u2019s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Perfect Traditional Plunder-fun… 8\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n

This book includes Discriminatory Content<\/strong> produced in less enlightened times. <\/em><\/p>\n

Although very much in decline these days, for nearly 200 years cartoon strips and gag-panels were the universal medium of wit, satire, mirth and cultural exchange. Latterly we purveyors of primarily sequential narrative have exhibited an unhappy tendency to become protective and parochial about our own particular specialism within the greater art form. How many times have we heard an artist or writer working on a hot new comic book property revelling in sales of 50 thousand monthly copies, almost simultaneously disparage strips such as Dilbert, Dick Tracy <\/strong>or Garfield<\/strong> whose daily readership can be numbered in millions, if not billions?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s all just try to remember that tastes differ, and that we\u2019re all just making lines on a surface here, and most especially that TV and Computer Games are the real enemy of our industry, shall we?<\/p>\n

OK, rant over.<\/p>\n

Mainstream cartooning is a huge daily joy to a vast and often global readership whose needs are quite different from those of hard-core, dedicated comic fans, or even that ever-growing base of intrigued browsers dipping their toes in the sequential narrative pool. Even the stuck-up stickybeaks who have STILL pointedly \u201cnever read a comic\u201d have enjoyed strips or panels, and in this arena Britain has seen not only a golden bounty of home produced material but also imported some of the very best the rest of the world has to offer.<\/p>\n

Richard Arthur Allan \u201cDik\u201d 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<\/strong> 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<\/em> about the Women\u2019s Army Corps, which set the tone for his peacetime career. As a professional cartoonist and illustrator, he worked for Newsweek<\/strong> and in advertising after mustering out, gaining a reputation as a superb logo designer (The Campbell Soup Kids<\/strong>, Chiquita Banana<\/strong> and the Birdseye Bird<\/strong> number amongst his most memorable creations).<\/p>\n

Dik also dabbled with comic books – a few Classics Illustrated Junior<\/strong> issues – and produced children\u2019s books, before teaming up in 1954 with Beetle Bailey<\/strong> creator Mort Walker to draw hugely successful spin-off strip Hi and Lois<\/strong>. Whilst illustrating that family comedy – and deviously training his sons Chance and Chris to take eventually over his cartooning duties – Browne devised another strip that he would write as well as render.<\/p>\n

H\u00e4gar the Horrible<\/strong> debuted through the King Features Syndicate on February 4th<\/sup> 1973 and quickly became a global hit. The strip is a fixture of 1900 papers in 56 countries and a dozen languages with the characters migrating to books, comic albums, games, animated movies, toys and more. Dik Browne retired from cartooning in 1988 and died from cancer on June 4th<\/sup> 1989. Chance continued Hi and Lois<\/strong> whilst Chris, assisted by Gary Hallgren, wielded pen, waved sword and wore the chief\u2019s horned helmet on H\u00e4gar until his own death on February 5th<\/sup> 2023…<\/p>\n

A certified classic of World Cartooning, H\u00e4gar the Horrible<\/strong> is the ongoing subject of comprehensive collectors series. This one – the sixth monolithic hardback compendium of a treasured and much missed series – is a personal favourite, covering 7th<\/sup> July 1980 – January 2nd<\/sup> 1982, with the hard-drinking, voracious sea-roving Viking and his scurvy crew trekking out to far climes before perennially staggering home to their quirky families in a never-ending stream of sight gags, painful puns and surreal situations.<\/p>\n

We open with a passionate reverie from a close associate and fellow star cartoonist in the Foreword by Lynn Johnston<\/em> before Chris Browne shares memories of one of his dad\u2019s most imaginative and appealing children\u2019s books (The Land of Lost Things<\/strong>, co-created with Mort Walker) in \u2018The Lost World of Dik Browne\u2019. <\/em>Then, before the cavalcade of comic calamity commences, readers old and new are regaled with a handy chart of the H\u00e4gar Family Tree<\/em>, reintroducing the great man and his doughty dependents: Helga<\/em> the long-suffering wife, studious son Hamlet<\/em> and troublesome teenaged daughter Honi<\/em>. Also making an appearance are faithful canine Snert<\/em>, stroppy house-duck Kvack<\/em> and the hero\u2019s faithful if intellectually challenged sidekick Lucky Eddie<\/em>…<\/p>\n

The magic of these daily strips\u2019 stream of japes and capers is that they constantly revisit established themes and hot-button topics. Over hundreds of pages that follow you will see H\u00e4gar\u2019s perpetual struggle to bring home the bacon (and wine and gold and textiles and…), spar with Helga as she fruitlessly struggles to civilise her barbaric oaf of a man, and Honi\u2019s torment as she pines equally for seedy musician Lute<\/em> and noble knight Sir Philip Courtright<\/em> whilst testing out other matrimonial options; and alternatively considers a career as an axe-swinging Valkyrie…<\/p>\n

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 whilst Lucky Eddie and the mismatched crew of incompetent sea-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…<\/p>\n

Enticing, irrepressible, outrageously old-fashioned, utterly unreconstructed, hilarious and yet deeply satisfying, H\u00e4gar the Horrible <\/strong>is a masterpiece of the strip cartoonists\u2019 unique art form and one guaranteed to deliver delight over and over again to young and old alike.
\nH\u00e4gar the Horrible is \u00a9 2014 King Features Syndicate \u2122 & \u00a9 Hearst Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved. All strips \u00a9 1980 & 1981 King Features Syndicate. All rights reserved. All other material \u00a9 2014 their respective authors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dik Browne (Titan Books) ISBN: 978-1-78116-715-1 (HB) Win\u2019s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Perfect Traditional Plunder-fun… 8\/10 This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. Although very much in decline these days, for nearly 200 years cartoon strips and gag-panels were the universal medium of wit, satire, mirth and cultural exchange. Latterly we purveyors … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “H\u00e4gar the Horrible: The Epic Chronicles – Dailies 1980-1981”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[90,113,78,97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cartooning-classics","category-comedy","category-comic-strip-classics","category-kids-all-ages"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-83Y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30998"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31000,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30998\/revisions\/31000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}