''What a Guy!'' is an American

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often 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 ...

created by Bill Hoest and Bunny Hoest, the team responsible for ''

The Lockhorns ''The Lockhorns'' is a United States panel (comic strips), single-panel cartoon created September 9, 1968 by Bill Hoest and distributed by King Features Syndicate to 500 newspapers in 23 countries. It is continued today by Bunny Hoest and John Re ...

'' and ''

Agatha Crumm ''Agatha Crumm'' is a newspaper comic strip created by the cartoonist Bill Hoest (creator of ''The Lockhorns'') and distributed by King Features Syndicate. The strip ran from October 24, 1977, until 1997. ''Agatha Crumm'' was Hoest's third strip, ...

''. 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 The Sunday comics or Sunday strip is the comic strip section carried in most western newspapers, almost always in color. Many newspaper readers called this section the Sunday funnies, the funny papers or simply the funnies. The first US newspap ...

grouped together an assortment of three different cartoons with no connecting theme or continuity. Distributed by

King Features Syndicate King Features Syndicate, Inc. is a American content distribution and animation studio, consumer product licensing and print syndication company owned by Hearst Communications that distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editoria ...

, the strip was continued by Hoest's widow, Bunny Hoest and Bill's assistant, John Reiner, until they decided to end it in 1996.

Characters and story

''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. ''What a Guy!'' cartoons featured a young boy who "questions life's complexities" and repeats adult concepts overheard from his yuppie parents. The strip was launched into

print syndication Print syndication distributes news articles, columns, political cartoons, comic strips and other features to newspapers, magazines and websites. The syndicates offer reprint rights and grant permissions to other parties for republishing content o ...

across the United States and Canada by King Features on March 29, 1987. 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. Strip historian Allan Holtz described the character: :The premise is that an elementary school kid named Guy is obsessed with the idea that he's a businessman. He wears a frumpy suit, has a middle-age paunch, worries about ulcers, the whole nine yards. The idea was timely in the go-go 1980s, but Hoest didn't get there first -- the Guy character is strongly reminiscent of Alex P. Keaton from the hit TV sitcom '' Family Ties''. The popularity of the TV show was probably seen as an asset, but it didn't seem to have the desired slingshot effect to propel ''What a Guy!'' into newspapers. The feature at first used the tried-and-true model of ''The Lockhorns'' for the Sunday page -- a group of panel cartoons that could be rejiggered into many different formats. For unknown reasons this format was dropped in 1988 and the Sunday became a strip feature. From the beginning the daily was in strip form instead of a panel, though the 'strip' was almost always a single panel.Holtz, Allen. Stripper's Guide, September 8, 2010.
/ref> Bill Hoest died on November 8, 1988, from complications of lymphoma at New York University Medical Center. 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 ''Newsday'' is an American daily newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island, although it is also sold throughout the New York metropolitan area. The slogan of the newspaper is "Newsday, Your Eye on LI", and f ...

'', "Hoest left up to two years' material in various stages of completion in his files." Reiner, who had already taken over drawing duties, would continue to draw ''What A Guy!'' and the five other Hoest comics then in production. (The other five were the syndicated ''

'' and ''

''; ''

Laugh Parade ''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. ''Laugh Parade'' displayed three or four single-panel cartoons, one of which was ' ...

'' and '' Howard Huge'' for ''

Parade A parade is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, float (parade), floats, or sometimes large balloons. Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually ce ...

'' magazine; plus ''Bumper Snickers'' for '' The National Enquirer''.) This arrangement lasted until the strip ended in 1996. ''What a Guy!'' was one of the comics featured on

Morning Funnies Morning Funnies is a fruit-flavored breakfast cereal produced by Ralston Cereals in 1988 and 1989. The name of the cereal was based on the assortment of newspaper comic strips featured on the box. Innovative packaging allowed the back flap of th ...

cereal boxes in 1988 and 1989, and the strips were collected in ''What a Guy! What's the Latest?'' (Tor, 1990).

Reception

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" 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 Trudy is a diminutive of Gertrude. Notable people with the name include: People * Trudy Adams (born 1964), American actress * Trudy Anderson (born 1959), New Zealand cricketer * Trudy Bellinger, British music video director * Trudy Benson ( ...

'' or '' Marmaduke''". 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.

References

{{King Features Syndicate Comics American comic strips Gag-a-day comics Gag cartoon comics 1987 comics debuts 1996 comics endings