Henry was a comic strip created in 1932 by Carl Thomas Anderson. The title character is a young bald boy who is mute. With the exception of a few early episodes, the comic strip character communicates only through pantomime, a situation which changed when Henry moved into comic books. The Saturday Evening Post was the first publication to feature Henry, a series which began when Anderson was 67 years old. The series of cartoons continued in that magazine for two years in various formats of single panel, multiple panels or two panels. It then moved to newspaper syndication on December 17, 1934. Anderson stopped drawing due to arthritis in 1942, and the strip continued with other artists. The daily strip went into reruns in 1995, and the Sunday strip in 2005. After 84 years of syndication, Henry was discontinued on October 28, 2018.
From cartoons to comic strip
After seeing a German publication of Henry, William Randolph Hearst signed Anderson to King Features Syndicate and began distributing the comic strip on December 17, 1934, with the half-page Sunday strip launched March 10, 1935. Henry was replaced in The Saturday Evening Post by Marjorie Henderson Buell's Little Lulu. Anderson's Post cartoons featuring Henry are credited with early positive depictions of African-American characters during an era when African-Americans were often unflatteringly depicted. Anderson's assistant on the Sunday strip was Don Trachte. His assistant on the dailies was John Liney. In 1942, arthritis kept Anderson away from the drawing board and Trachte enlisted for WWII, so Anderson turned both the daily and Sunday strip over to Liney. When Trachte returned in 1945, Liney continued to draw the dailies, and Trachte drew the Sunday strips. Liney retired in 1979, but Trachte continued with the Sunday strips until the end of the run in 2005. After Liney's retirement, Jack Tippit took over the dailies until 1983. Dick Hodgins, Jr. worked on the dailies from 1983 until 1995, when the daily strip concluded. About 75 newspapers still ran classic Henry strips. These were also available through King Features' Comics Kingdom.
Characters and story
Cartoonist Art Baxter analyzed the appeal of the character and the strip:
