''Penny'' was a
comic strip about a teenage girl by
Harry Haenigsen which maintained its popularity for almost three decades. It was distributed by 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.'', '' ...
from June 27, 1943, to October 25, 1970.
Publication history
''Penny'' began because Helen Rogers Reid, the wife of the ''
New York Herald Tribune'' publisher Ogden Mills Reid, wanted to see a girl as the central character of a new comic strip.
[Reynolds, Moira Davison. ''Comic Strip Artists in American Newspapers, 1945-1980''. McFarland, 2003.]
/ref>
Haenigsen had been doing a strip about a teenage boy, ''Our Bill'' (1939-1963), when he launched ''Penny'' as a Sunday strip on June 27, 1943.[ A daily strip debuted September 3, 1945.][
The prolific cartoonist Bill Hoest was Haenigsen's assistant on ''Penny''. After an injury from a 1965 traffic accident kept Haenigsen away from the drawing board, Hoest took over most of the work, although Haenigsen still supervised and signed each ''Penny'' strip.
In 1968, Hoest left to start his own strip, '' The Lockhorns'', for the ]Chicago Tribune New York News 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 ...
. Haenigsen chose to end ''Penny'' in 1970 and retired.
Characters and story
Comics historian Don Markstein
Don Markstein's Toonopedia (subtitled A Vast Repository of Toonological Knowledge) is an online encyclopedia of print cartoons, comic strips and animation, initiated February 13, 2001. Donald D. Markstein, the sole writer and editor of Toonopedi ...
described the title character and her confused parents:
Reception
In 1947, Nancy Blair of Lambertville, New Jersey
Lambertville is a city in Hunterdon County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the city's population was 3,906,[New Hope, Pennsylvania
New Hope is a borough in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The population was 2,612 at the 2020 census. New Hope is located approximately north of Philadelphia, and lies on the west bank of the Delaware River at its confluence with Aquetong Creek. ...]
.
In 1955, Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bor ...
wrote the following description of ''Penny'' into his novel '' Lolita'': "Her eyes would follow the adventures of her favorite strip characters; there was one well-drawn sloppy bobby-soxer with high cheekbones and angular gestures, that I was not above enjoying myself."Nabokov, Vladimir. ''Lolita''.
/ref>
See also
*'' Aggie Mack''
*'' Freckles and His Friends''
*''Harold Teen
''Harold Teen'' is a discontinued, long-running American comic strip written and drawn by Carl Ed (pronounced "eed"). Publisher Joseph Medill Patterson may have suggested and certainly approved the strip's concept, loosely based on Booth Tarking ...
''
*'' Teena''
*'' Zits''
References
External links
The Cagle Post: ''Hogan's Alley''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Penny (comic strip)
1943 comics debuts
1970 comics endings
American comics characters
American comic strips
Child characters in comics
Comics about women
Female characters in comics
Gag-a-day comics
Teen comedy comics