Expert: Chris Brown - 5/22/2008

Question
Hello and thanks for taking my question.  This is more of a comic strip question, but as you will see a "book" is involved.  Have the Carl Anderson's Henry comic strips ever been collected into books, whether they be mass market paperbacks or archive style hardcovers?  I know that Henry had his own line of comic books, but the magazines that I have seen have Henry talking, something he never did in the daily strips.  Any information would be appreciated.  Thanks again.

Answer
Hi Randall

Sorry to be slow to get back to you--the holiday weekend kept me away from my computer for a few days.

There was a collection of Henry comic strips that came out in 1935, shortly after the strip's beginning in 1932.  I would expect you would probably pay about $50 to $100 for a decent condition copy of this book--though a really nice copy with dust jacket would undoubtedly be more.  As you describe, Henry is silent in these strips (really single-panel cartoons by and large).

Doing a quick web search, I see there was another collection in 1945 called "Henry: America's Funniest Youngster in 100 Selected Laughs."  These are being sold in the $20 to $50 price range.  I have never seen this book though so I don't know anything about the contents.

Seems to be a fair amount of material available online too.  This site is particularly good for showing many of the early strips:

http://www.artbaxter.com/esoterica-pages/henry/henry-cartoons-1.html

(be sure to click on each pic of Henry to see the full cartoon).

And this page shows some of the 40s comic book stories, in which Henry did have an occasional comment to make:

http://henrycomics.blogspot.com/

This was a fun comic feature.

Chris