''Frank and Ernest'' is an American

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 ...

created and illustrated by

Bob Thaves Robert Thaves (October 5, 1924 – August 1, 2006) was the creator of the comic strip '' Frank and Ernest'', which began in 1972. Early life Robert Lee Thaves was born on October 5, 1924, in Burt, Iowa, where his father, John, published local ne ...

and later Tom Thaves. It debuted on November 6, 1972, and has since been published daily in over 1,200 newspapers. The humor of the comic is based almost exclusively on wordplay and

pun A pun, also known as paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophoni ...

s. Regardless of the topic, everything related to the topic (background and phrases) is shown in a single frame in the daily strips. ''Frank and Ernest'' has a tradition of breaking new ground. It was the first strip to use digital coloring for its

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 ...

s and the first strip in over 1,000 newspapers to list the creator's email address. 1997 was a ground-breaking year: first interactive comics based on strips published in the newspaper, first keyword searchable archive for a comic strip and the first 3-D characters. The strip is distributed to Spanish-speaking countries as ''Justo y Franco''.

Characters and story

In a non-sequential story, the main characters are seen not just as humans but as animals, vegetables, minerals and more. A constant element has been

word play Word play or wordplay (also: play-on-words) is a literary technique and a form of wit in which words used become the main subject of the work, primarily for the purpose of intended effect or amusement. Examples of word play include puns, pho ...

, including the characters' names.

Frank Frank or Franks may refer to: People * Frank (given name) * Frank (surname) * Franks (surname) * Franks, a medieval Germanic people * Frank, a term in the Muslim world for all western Europeans, particularly during the Crusades - see Farang Curr ...

is both a name and a synonym for honest. The name Ernest is a homophone of the word earnest, which is a synonym for

serious Serious may refer to: * Seriousness, an attitude of gravity, solemnity, persistence, or earnestness * ''Serious'' (TV series), a BBC children's television show Albums * ''Serious'' (Luther Allison album) or the title song, 1987 * ''Serious'' ( ...

. Weekday strips are laid out in one long panel with one joke or pun; the

is similarly in one large block, with a series of rapid-fire puns pertaining to the characters (usually in character as various characters including, but not limited to, the planets, "Robotics Department," or "

Malaprop A malapropism (also called a malaprop, acyrologia, or Dogberryism) is the mistaken use of an incorrect word in place of a word with a similar sound, resulting in a nonsensical, sometimes humorous utterance. An example is the statement attributed to ...

Man"). Example: U.S. Postal Dept. Stamp Design Office: "The department decided to have a religious message on our next stamp. How about: 'Lord, deliver us'?" Unlike most syndicated comic strip cartoonists, Bob Thaves did not write all of the gags for the strip (nor maintain a pretense that he did) and openly solicited gags in publications such as ''

Writer's Market ''Writer's Market'' (''WM'') is an annual resource book for writers who wish to sell their work. The publication is released by ''Writer's Digest'' Books and usually hits bookstores around the summer time of each year. ''Writer's Market'' was fir ...

''. Bob Thaves died on August 1, 2006. His son, Tom Thaves, has since taken over production of the strip.

Awards

Thaves won the National Cartoonists Society's Newspaper Panel Cartoon Award for 1983, 1984, and 1986 for his work on the strip. Other awards include the Mencken Award for Free Speech and designation as a Champion of Creativity by the American Creativity Association in 2006.United Features Syndicate's obituary
/ref>

References

External links

Official site''Frank and Ernest'' at gocomics.com

''Justo y Franco''
at GoComics

at Don Markstein's Toonopedia
Archived
from the original on July 30, 2016.
NCS Awards
{{United Media Comics 1972 comics debuts American comics characters American comic strips Comics characters introduced in 1972 Comic strip duos Gag-a-day comics Gag cartoon comics