Bill Holman (March 22, 1903 – February 27, 1987)
''New York Times'' (March 21, 1987). was an American cartoonist who drew the classic

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

Smokey Stover ''Smokey Stover'' is an American comic strip written and drawn by cartoonist Bill Holman from March 10, 1935, until he retired in 1972 and distributed through the ''Chicago Tribune''. It features the misadventures of the titular fireman and ha ...

'' from 1935 until he retired in 1973. Distributed through the

Chicago Tribune syndicate Tribune Content Agency (TCA) is a syndication company owned by Tribune Publishing. TCA had previously been known as the Chicago Tribune Syndicate, the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate (CTNYNS), Tribune Company Syndicate, and Tribune Media Se ...

, it had the longest run of any strip in the screwball genre. Holman signed some strips with the pseudonym Scat H. He once described himself as "always inclined to humor and acting silly."Goulart, Ron, editor. ''The Encyclopedia of American Comics'', Facts on File, 1990. Born in

Crawfordsville, Indiana Crawfordsville is a city in Montgomery County in west central Indiana, United States, west by northwest of Indianapolis. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 16,306. The city is the county seat of Montgomery County, the only char ...

, Holman lived as a child in

Nappanee, Indiana Nappanee is a city in Elkhart and Kosciusko counties in the U.S. state of Indiana. The population was 6,648 as of the 2010 U.S. Census and had grown to 6,913 by the 2020 U.S. Census. The name Nappanee probably means "flour" in Algonquian. Th ...

, a town where six successful cartoonists lived when they were children. Holman's father died when he was young. He began drawing when he was 12 years old. While working part-time at Nappanee's local five and dime store, he developed an interest in art as a career and sent away for the Landon School of Illustration and Cartooning correspondence course. Dropping out of high school, he was 15 when he moved with his mother to Chicago. There he took night courses at the Academy of Fine Arts and learned more about cartooning from

Carl Ed Carl Frank Ludwig Ed (July 16, 1890 – October 10, 1959) was a comic strip artist best known as the creator of ''Harold Teen''. His name is pronounced ''eed''. Born in Moline, Illinois, Ed graduated from Augustana College in Rock Island, Illino ...

. In 1920, he held a job as a copy boy at the ''Chicago Tribune'' for six dollars a week. The position gave him the opportunity to hang out with the top ''Tribune'' cartoonists, including Sidney Smith,

Harold Gray Harold Lincoln Gray (January 20, 1894 – May 9, 1968) was an American cartoonist, best known as the creator of the newspaper comic strip ''Little Orphan Annie''. Early life Harold Gray was born in Kankakee, Illinois on January 20, 1894, to Este ...

and

E. C. Segar Elzie Crisler Segar (; December 8, 1894 – October 13, 1938), known by the pen name E. C. Segar, was an American cartoonist best known as the creator of Popeye, a pop culture character who first appeared in 1929 in Segar's comic strip ''Thimble ...

. In Cleveland, he began working for the

Newspaper Enterprise Association The Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA) is an editorial column and comic strip newspaper syndication service based in the United States and established in 1902. The oldest syndicate still in operation, the NEA was originally a secondary news ...

, which syndicated his short-lived animal strip, ''Billville Birds'' (1922). After three years with NEA and

Scripps-Howard The E. W. Scripps Company is an American broadcasting company founded in 1878 as a chain of daily newspapers by Edward Willis "E. W." Scripps and his sister, Ellen Browning Scripps. It was also formerly a media conglomerate. The company is h ...

, he headed for New York, where he was a ''Herald Tribune'' staff artist and drew the child strip ''G. Whizz Jr.'' for the

New York Herald Tribune Syndicate The New York Herald Tribune Syndicate was the syndication service of the ''New York Herald Tribune''. Syndicating comic strips and newspaper columns, it operated from c. 1914 to 1966. The syndicate's most notable strips were ''Mr. and Mrs.'', ''O ...

. He scored a success when he headed in a new direction, submitting his cartoons to a variety of different magazines, including ''

Liberty Liberty is the ability to do as one pleases, or a right or immunity enjoyed by prescription or by grant (i.e. privilege). It is a synonym for the word freedom. In modern politics, liberty is understood as the state of being free within society fr ...

'', '' Redbook'', ''

Collier's ''Collier's'' was an American general interest magazine founded in 1888 by Peter Fenelon Collier. It was launched as ''Collier's Once a Week'', then renamed in 1895 as ''Collier's Weekly: An Illustrated Journal'', shortened in 1905 to ''Collie ...

'' and '' Life''.Bill Holman
/ref>

''Smokey Stover'' and ''Spooky''

Holman thought firemen were funny, "running around in a red wagon with sirens and bells," and he began doing ''Smokey Stover'' as a

Sunday strip The Sunday comics or Sunday strip is the comic strip section carried in most western newspapers, almost always in color. Many newspaper readers called this section the Sunday funnies, the funny papers or simply the funnies. The first US newspap ...

for the Chicago Tribune Syndicate on March 10, 1935. One month later (April 7, 1935), to accompany ''Smokey Stover'', he launched a topper strip, ''Spooky''. With a perpetually bandaged tail, the firehouse cat Spooky lived with its owner, Fenwick Flooky, who did embroidery while sitting barefoot in a rocking chair. The daily ''Smokey Stover'' was not launched until November 14, 1938. Holman loved word play, and all of his features percolated with puns. In his file cabinet, Holman kept thousands of puns. Readers of ''Smokey Stover'' often sent him puns, sometimes with accompanying illustrations. He also inserted bizarre words and phrases, such as "

Foo The terms foobar (), foo, bar, baz, and others are used as metasyntactic variables and placeholder names in computer programming or computer-related documentation. - Etymology of "Foo" They have been used to name entities such as variables, fu ...

," "Notary Sojac," "Scramgravy Ain't Wavy" and "1506 Nix Nix". Some of these became national

catchphrase A catchphrase (alternatively spelled catch phrase) is a phrase or expression recognized by its repeated utterance. Such phrases often originate in popular culture and in the arts, and typically spread through word of mouth and a variety of mass ...

s. "1506 Nix Nix" was an inside joke on Holman's friend, cartoonist

Al Posen Alvah Posen (October 2, 1894 - June 10, 1960) was an American cartoonist on several comic strips, but he is best known for his 1933-1960 comic strip ''Sweeney & Son'' and as co-producer of the now-lost Marx Brothers film, '' Humor Risk'' (1921). ...

, as Holman once explained, "The late Al Posen, who did the ''Sweeney and Son'' comic strip, was a bachelor living in a hotel room, number 1506. I began using the phrase, a private joke between the two of us, as a warning to girls to stay away from Al's room."

''Nuts and Jolts''

Holman's gag panel, ''Nuts and Jolts'', was syndicated by the Chicago Tribune - New York News Syndicate from the 1930s to 1970. When

Gaar Williams Gaar Campbell Williams (December 12, 1880 - June 15, 1935) was a prominent American cartoonist who worked for the ''Indianapolis News'' and the ''Chicago Tribune''. His scenes of horse-and-buggy days in small towns of the Victorian era included s ...

, who drew a gag panel under a variety of titles, died in 1935, Holman stepped in as a replacement. In July 1935, Holman picked up where Williams had left off, but the ''Nuts and Jolts'' title did not appear on the series until July 3, 1939. That same month, he began a Thursday panel, ''Zipper'', about a dog.Schneider, Walter E. "Holman Renews Contract; To Do New Daily Panel," ''Editor & Publisher'', July 8, 1939.
/ref> Journalist Al Meyers described Holman in a 1938 feature story: By 1939, when Holman was earning $1500 a month, he gave a humorous summary of his life to ''Editor & Publisher'': For the USO, Holman made many trips abroad to entertain troops in the South Pacific, Europe, Japan and Korea, in addition to his

chalk talk A chalk talk is an illustrated performance in which the speaker draws pictures to emphasize lecture points and create a memorable and entertaining experience for listeners. Chalk talks differ from other types of illustrated talks in their use of r ...

s at veteran’s hospitals. A promoter of U.S. Savings Bonds, Holman donated his time to draw booklets for local fire-safety campaigns. He was also involved in numerous children’s charities. Holman was one of the co-founders of the National Cartoonists Society, and he was the organization's president in 1961-62. He continued his close association with the Society after his 1973 retirement. Even after retiring from ''Smokey Stover'', Holman could not stop the flow of puns and verbal/visual ideas, and he produced stack of sketches for a possible syndicated panel he titled ''Wall Nuts''.Mike Lynch Cartoons: "Unseen Bill Holman Comics"
/ref> This had no connection with

Gene Ahern Eugene Leslie Ahern (September 16, 1895 – March 6, 1960) was a cartoonist best known for his bombastic Major Hoople, a pompous character who appeared in the long-run syndicated gag panel '' Our Boarding House''. Many of Ahern's comic strips took ...

's '' The Nut Bros: Ches and Wal'', but it could be a nod to Ahern's strip which mined a vein of surreal silliness somewhat similar to ''Smokey Stover''. At age 83, Holman died February 27, 1987 in New York, survived by his wife Dolores. In Nappanee, Holman is cited on the Indiana Historical Bureau's Historical Marker, which reads:

Bibliography

According to Holman, more than 100,000 copies of Whitman's ten-cent ''Smokey Stover'' books were sold by 1939. *''Smokey Stover: Fire Fighter of Foo''. Better Little Book, Whitman Publishing, 1937. *''Smokey Stover and the Fire Chief of Foo''. Better Little Book, Whitman Publishing Co., 1938. *''Smokey Stover: The Foo Fighter''. Better Little Book, Whitman Publishing, 1938. *''Smokey Stover: The False Alarm Fireman''. Better Little Book, Whitman Publishing, 1939. *''Smokey Stover, The Foolish Foo Fighter''. Better Little Book, Whitman Publishing, 1945. *''Bill Holman's Smokey Stover, Book 1''. Introduction by

Harvey Kurtzman Harvey Kurtzman (; October 3, 1924 – February 21, 1993) was an American cartoonist and editor. His best-known work includes writing and editing the parodic comic book ''Mad (magazine), Mad'' from 1952 until 1956, and writing t ...

. Blackthorne, 1985.

References

Sources

* Strickler, Dave. ''Syndicated Comic Strips and Artists, 1924-1995: The Complete Index.'' Cambria, California: Comics Access, 1995.

External links