What a Guy! | |
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![]() Bill Hoest's What a Guy! (1987) | |
Author(s) | Bill Hoest (1987–88) Bunny Hoest (1988–96) |
Illustrator(s) | John Reiner |
Current status/schedule | Discontinued |
Launch date | March 29, 1987 |
End date | 1996 |
Syndicate(s) | King Features Syndicate |
Genre(s) | Humor |
What a Guy! is an American comic strip created by Bill Hoest and Bunny Hoest, the team responsible for The Lockhorns and Agatha Crumm . It began in March 1987, just over a year before Hoest's death in 1988.
The What a Guy! daily strip was a single-panel gag cartoon which was also formatted as a rectangular comic strip. The Sunday strip grouped together an assortment of three different cartoons with no connecting theme or continuity. Distributed by King Features Syndicate, the strip was continued by Hoest's widow, Bunny Hoest and Bill's assistant, John Reiner, until they decided to end it in 1996. [1]
What a Guy! was created when Bill and Bunny were visiting with Bunny's daughter and her family. Bunny's grandson was an early "latchkey" child. Bill and Bunny were amazed at his very "grown-up" comments and used him as the prototype for Guy Wellington Frothmore, who became the focus of a comic strip. [2] What a Guy! cartoons featured a young boy who "questions life's complexities" and repeats adult concepts overheard from his yuppie parents. [3] The strip was launched into print syndication across the United States and Canada by King Features on March 29, 1987. [3] [2] The strip, like many non-topical gag strips, was mailed to the syndicate in batches of four weeks worth of comics at one time, several months ahead of the expected publication date. [4]
Strip historian Allan Holtz described the character:
Bill Hoest died on November 8, 1988, from complications of lymphoma at New York University Medical Center. [6] His widow, Bunny Hoest, announced that What a Guy! and the other Hoest strips would continue "in perpetuity" with Bunny Hoest as writer and drawing on the "large amount of work" Bill had prepared before his death. Bill Hoest's "cartooning assistant," John Reiner, told Newsday , "Hoest left up to two years' material in various stages of completion in his files." [7] Reiner, who had already taken over drawing duties, would continue to draw What A Guy! and the five other Hoest comics then in production. [6] [4] (The other five were the syndicated The Lockhorns and Agatha Crumm ; Laugh Parade and Howard Huge for Parade magazine; plus Bumper Snickers for The National Enquirer . [8] ) This arrangement lasted until the strip ended in 1996. [9]
What a Guy! was one of the comics featured on Morning Funnies cereal boxes in 1988 and 1989, [10] and the strips were collected in What a Guy! What's the Latest? (Tor, 1990).
Reader reaction to the strip was widely varied. One person wrote in The Philadelphia Inquirer that What a Guy! was one of the "worst comics around" [11] while a couple wrote to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to deride the strip as "merely insipid" and that it "warrants no more space than Trudy or Marmaduke ". [12] A Lakeland Ledger reader commented, after the paper dropped What a Guy! in favor of Calvin and Hobbes , that What a Guy! was "one of the best and funniest comic strips" the paper printed. [13]
William Boyd Watterson II is an American cartoonist who authored the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. The strip was syndicated from 1985 to 1995. Watterson concluded Calvin and Hobbes with a short statement to newspaper editors and his readers that he felt he had achieved all he could in the medium. Watterson is known for his negative views on comic syndication and licensing, his efforts to expand and elevate the newspaper comic as an art form, and his move back into private life after Calvin and Hobbes ended. Watterson was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. The suburban Midwestern United States setting of Ohio was part of the inspiration for the setting of Calvin and Hobbes. Watterson lives in Cleveland Heights, Ohio as of January 2024.
A comic strip is a sequence of 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 century, these have been published in newspapers and magazines, with daily horizontal strips printed in black-and-white in newspapers, while Sunday papers offered longer sequences in special color comics sections. With the advent of the internet, online comic strips began to appear as webcomics.
The National Cartoonists Society (NCS) is an organization of professional cartoonists in the United States. It presents the National Cartoonists Society Awards. The Society was born in 1946 when groups of cartoonists got together to entertain the troops. They enjoyed each other's company and decided to meet on a regular basis.
The Family Circus is a syndicated comic strip created by cartoonist Bil Keane and, since Keane's death in 2011, is written, inked and rendered (colored) by his son Jeff Keane. The strip generally uses a single captioned panel with a round border, hence the original name of the series, which was changed following objections from the magazine Family Circle. The series debuted February 29, 1960 and has been in continuous production ever since. According to publisher King Features Syndicate, it is the most widely syndicated cartoon panel in the world, appearing in 1,500 newspapers. Compilations of Family Circus comic strips have sold more than 13 million copies worldwide.
Bizarro is a single-panel cartoon written and drawn by American cartoonist Dan Piraro and later by cartoonist Wayne "Wayno" Honath. The cartoon specializes in surrealist humor and at times is slightly cryptic in its humor. The creator often includes hidden symbols in the drawing which refer to inside jokes or other elements.
The Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA) is an editorial column and comic strip newspaper syndication service based in the United States and established in 1902. The oldest syndicate still in operation, the NEA was originally a secondary news service to the Scripps Howard News Service; it later evolved into a general syndicate best known for syndicating the comic strips Alley Oop, Our Boarding House, Freckles and His Friends, The Born Loser, Frank and Ernest, and Captain Easy / Wash Tubbs; in addition to an annual Christmas comic strip. Along with United Feature Syndicate, the NEA was part of United Media from 1978 to 2011, and is now a division of Andrews McMeel Syndication. The NEA once selected college All-America teams, and presented awards in professional football and professional basketball.
The Lockhorns is a United States single-panel cartoon created September 9, 1968 by Bill Hoest and originally distributed by King Features Syndicate to 500 newspapers in 23 countries. The Lockhorns joined Andrews McMeel Syndication (AMS) January 1, 2024 and continues to appear in hundreds of newspapers worldwide and online through websites including AMS's GoComics! After Hoest's death in 1988 the comic panel was continued by his wife Bunny Hoest and cartoonist John Reiner. In 2017 Hoest donated the archives of more than 37,000 of her cartoons - including The Lockhorns, Howard Huge and others - to Adelphi University where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree and an honorary doctorate.
Bunny Hoest, sometimes labeled The Cartoon Lady, is the writer of several comic strips, including The Lockhorns, Laugh Parade, and Howard Huge, the first of which she inherited from her late husband Bill Hoest. She is the co-creator of Bumper Snickers in 1974, Agatha Crumm in 1977, Laugh Parade in 1980, Howard Huge in 1981, What A Guy! in 1986, and Hunny Bunny's Short Tales in 1992.
Laugh Parade was a group of weekly gag cartoons written by Bunny Hoest and drawn by John Reiner. It ran in Parade, a Sunday newspaper magazine supplement.
John Reiner is a cartoonist who collaborates with writer Bunny Hoest on three cartoon series: The Lockhorns, syndicated by King Features, and Laugh Parade and Howard Huge.
William Pierce Hoest was an American cartoonist best known as the creator of the gag panel series, The Lockhorns, distributed by King Features Syndicate to 500 newspapers in 23 countries, and Laugh Parade for Parade. He also created other syndicated strips and panels for King Features.
Our Boarding House is an American single-panel cartoon and comic strip created by Gene Ahern on October 3, 1921 and syndicated by Newspaper Enterprise Association. Set in a boarding house run by the sensible Mrs. Hoople, it drew humor from the interactions of her grandiose, tall-tale-telling husband, the self-styled Major Hoople, with the rooming-house denizens and his various friends and cronies.
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Agatha Crumm is a newspaper comic strip created by the cartoonist Bill Hoest and distributed by King Features Syndicate. The strip ran from October 24, 1977, until 1997. Agatha Crumm was Hoest's third strip, following Bumper Snickers (1974).
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Sure enough, the little boy evolved into Guy Wellington Frothmore, star of What a Guy.