''The Nebbishes'' was a syndicated Sunday

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 ...

Herb Gardner Herbert George Gardner (December 28, 1934 – September 25, 2003), was an American commercial artist, cartoonist, playwright and screenwriter. Early life Born in Brooklyn, New York, Gardner was the son of a bar owner. His late brother, Rober ...

, better known today as a playwright and screenwriter. The strip was syndicated by the

McNaught Syndicate The McNaught Syndicate was an American newspaper syndicate founded in 1922. It was established by Virgil Venice McNitt (who gave it his name) and Charles V. McAdam. Its best known contents were the columns by Will Rogers and O. O. McIntyre, the ' ...

from January 4, 1959, to January 29, 1961. Gardner's characters were white blob-like creatures who expressed their attitude toward existence in mottos and quotes on greeting cards and statuettes. In the comic strip they engaged in dialogue in balloons in the standard comic strip format. Gardner first began drawing these characters while he was a student at

Antioch College Antioch College is a private liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Founded in 1850 by the Christian Connection, the college began operating in 1852 as a non-sectarian institution; politician and education reformer Horace Mann was its f ...

. As an English word from Yiddish, "nebbish" means an insignificant, pitiful person; a nonentity (from Yiddish interjection nebekh "poor thing!", and from Czech nebohý). On local New York television, Gardner drew ''The Nebbishes'' on

Shari Lewis Shari Lewis (born Phyllis Naomi Hurwitz; January 17, 1933 – August 2, 1998) was a Peabody-winning American ventriloquist, puppeteer, children's entertainer, television show host, dancer, singer, actress, author, and symphonic conductor. She wa ...

' WPIX ''Kartoon Klub'' show, as noted by Kevin S. Butler: :Long before he became one of Broadway's most prolific playwrights, Herb Gardner was a comic strip artist for the ''New York Daily News''. Mr. Gardner was invited to appear on ''Kartoon Klub'' where he engaged members of the studio audience and home viewers in chalk talks (he would draw pictures on a drawing pad to help illustrate his stories about an unusual group of creatures known as ''The Nebbishes''). The segment was so successful that on Saturday evening, September 23, 1956, the program's title was changed to ''Shari & Her Friends''. Even before syndication, the Gardner characters were a national craze, appearing on studio cards, matchbook covers, barware (including cocktail napkins) and wall decorations. In 1954, Bernad Creations published Gardner's characters on greeting cards, posters and figurines. The most famous of these showed two slacker Nebbishes relaxing with feet on a table and the line, "Next week we've ''got'' to get organized!" First a greeting card and then a poster, the cartoon was so popular that the gagline soon became a 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 ...

independent of the image. Gardner's autobiographical novel, ''A Piece of the Action'' (1958), has a thinly-disguised recounting of the creation and marketing of his characters. Gardner's comic strip was picked up by the ''

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...

'' and syndicated to 60-75 major newspapers. The strip ran Sundays only from 1959 to 1961. In 1960, after "the peechballoons were getting larger and larger, and there was hardly any drawing left", Gardner dropped the strip when he began writing plays.

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''Backing into Forward: A Memoir'' by Jules Feiffer
1959 comics debuts 1961 comics endings American comics characters American comic strips Comics characters introduced in 1959 Gag-a-day comics {{comic-strip-stub

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