Hammond Edward Fisher was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 comic strip writer and cartoonist

Cartoonist

A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. This work is usually humorous, mainly created for entertainment, political commentary or advertising...

 who signed his work Ham Fisher. He is best known for his popular long-run on Joe Palooka

Joe Palooka

Joe Palooka was an American comic strip about a heavyweight boxing champion, created by cartoonist Ham Fisher in 1921. The strip debuted in 1930 and was carried at its peak by 900 newspapers....

, which ranked as one of the top five newspaper comics strips during the 1940s.
Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

Wilkes-Barre is a city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, the county seat of Luzerne County. It is at the center of the Wyoming Valley area and is one of the principal cities in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area, which had a population of 563,631 as of the 2010 Census...

, Ham Fisher dropped out of school at the age of 16 to work as a brush peddler and truck driver before finding employment as a reporter and ad salesman for the Wilkes-Barre Record and then moving on to a job with the New York Daily News.

In 1920, Fisher put together a sample package of Joe Palooka (then titled Joe the Dumbbell) but was unable to attract interest.