CSotD: Saturday profile: Chris Browne on “Hagar the Horrible”
Skip to comments
(The first Hagar — courtesy of Chris Browne)
(I wrote this profile of Hagar the Horrible's Chris Browne in 2003 for the Post-Star of Glens Falls, NY)
Hagar the Horrible has been the scourge of the northern seas for three decades and shows no signs of changing his ways.
Hagar was created by the late Dik Browne, but the strip's current artist, Chris Browne, was very much present at the creation.
As a high school student, Chris had begun working with his father as an assistant on "Hi and Lois," the strip created as a "Beetle Bailey" spinoff by Mort Walker, with Dik Browne providing the artwork. By the time Chris was old enough to assist, that strip was well-established.
"I think 'Hi and Lois' first appeared in 1952, but, anyway, I first appeared in 1952 and I know the strip and I are about the same age," Chris says.
Walker and his syndicate, King Features, were concerned that "Beetle Bailey," a college student who joined the army during the Korean War, might lose steam as the war ended, so decided to tackle the emerging suburbs through the eyes of a family that included Beetle's sister, Lois.
The editor and Walker agreed to hire an artist, and discovered that, when they met again to talk about names, they had each brought in the same piece of art: an advertisement for Mounds candy bars drawn as a comic strip by an advertising artist named Dik Browne.
Browne, who had also created the comic-style version of "Chiquita Banana" and updated the Campbell Soup kids, adapted quickly to comic strip work, but wanted to develop his own strip.
That happened in the early 1970s,and, if "Hi and Lois" came about at the same time Chris was born, "Hagar the Horrible" coincided with his brief and, indeed, horrible college career.
"College was a disaster, and I was glad to have a chance to go back to working with Dad," he recalls.
He and his father had many discussions about the new strip Dik was developing, but he was also weighing college again.
"My mom took me aside one night and said, 'Your father would never ask, but he really wants you to work on the new strip with him,'" he recalls.
Cartooning was a family business in this extended group. Chris's brother, Chance,was working with Dik on "Hi and Lois," just as Greg and Brian Walker were assisting their father, Mort, on his portion of the partnership.
"Hagar the Horrible" launched in February 1973, with the hapless Viking and his raiding party pounding on the drawbridge of the wrong castle. It was a pattern of genial incompetence that would endear the strip to millions of readers in some 2,000newspapers around the country.
For Chris, it was more of a formal apprenticeship than he had enjoyed in his high school days,under the most demanding of masters: a beloved one.
"Once I took a series of gags from the pile and developed a week's worth of strips," he recalls."I had them all finished except the inking: the lettering, the backgrounds, all the bells and whistles, and I showed them to my dad.He looked them over and said, 'If anybody else had given these to me, I'd say they were great, but you're my son,and my son can do better than this.'"
Today,those words are permanently fixed to the top of Chris Browne's desk: "My son can do better than this." It's a constant spur to maintain the standards his father set, all those years ago.
Dik Browne died of cancer in 1988, but Chris carried on the partnership they had established, just as Chance Browne moved forward with "Hi and Lois." Three years ago, however, Chris turned over the writing and inking of the strip to others.
He still draws "Hagar," but has stepped out of his father's shadow with "Raising Duncan," a comic strip about a couple with a Scottish terrier.
Now in 75 papers, the strip also gets considerable audience on the comics.com Web page,and Browne reports equal mixes of paper and electronic response.
Having his own strip is rewarding, but Chris Browne is still a fan of that bumbling, genial Viking who just turned 30 this month. Though there is often criticism of strips that continue after their creators' deaths,he points out that he is, in fact, one of the creators.
Beyond that, however, is the simple fact that he enjoys being part of the strip.
"I love working on 'Hagar," he says."I hope someday to find the time to reappear as a writer from time to time, but working on it every week gives me a great deal of pleasure, and as long as people still want to read it, I'll still be happy to draw it."
Comments
Comments are closed.