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The Better Half

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The Better Half is an American comic strip created by Bob Barnes. It follows the lives of a married couple, Stanley and Harriet Parker, and the usual annoyances couples have with one another after years of marriage. It was distributed by The Register and Tribune Syndicate and King Features Syndicate from 1956, and in 1958 won Barnes the National Cartoonist Society Newspaper Panel Cartoon Award. The strip ended on November 30, 2014 after a 58-year run.

Contents

James Coco and Lily Tomlin made a sitcom pilot based on the strip for ABC in the early 1970s, but no series was ever made.

Characters

  • Stanley Parker is a stocky, middle-aged office manager who tends to be lazy, especially at home.
  • Harriet Parker is Stanley's thin (and thin-tempered) wife. Her cooking does not always agree with Stanley.
  • Bert is the proprietor and head cook of Bert's Beanery, a greasy spoon which Stanley frequents.

    • Writers

    Cartoonists who have worked on the strip include Bob Barnes (1956-1970), Ruth Barnes and [Rogers (1971-1979), Vinnie Vinson (1979-1982), and Randy Glasbergen (1982-2014). Between 1982 and 1992, Glasbergen wrote under the pseudonym "Jay Harris", so as not to confuse publishers who were familiar with his different style of humor and character design. As he was able to transform the characters to his own style, he began using his own name. In the process, Stanley became much shorter than Harriet and lost his scruffy mustache. "Harris" was his wife's maiden name.

    References

    The Better Half Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA