Room and Board was a comic strip by Gene Ahern

Gene Ahern

Eugene Leslie Ahern was a cartoonist best known for his bombastic Major Hoople, a pompous character who appeared in the long-run syndicated gag panel Our Boarding House...

 which was syndicated from 1936 to 1953, following Ahern's memorable Our Boarding House

Our Boarding House

Our Boarding House was a long-running, American gag-panel comic strip created by Gene Ahern in 1921 and syndicated by Newspaper Enterprise Association. Set in a boarding house run by the sensible Mrs...

which he drew from 1921 to 1936.

Related strips

Ahern's topper

Topper (comic strip)

A topper in comic strip parlance is a small secondary strip seen along with a larger Sunday strip. In the 1920s and 1930s, leading cartoonists were given full pages in the Sunday comics sections, allowing them to add smaller strips and single-panel cartoons to their page.Toppers usually were drawn...

 strip, The Squirrel Cage, which ran above Room and Board, is notable because of the repetitive use of the nonsensical question, '"Nov shmoz ka pop?", which was never translated yet became a national catch phrase

Catch phrase

A catchphrase is a phrase or expression recognized by its repeated utterance. Such phrases often originate in popular culture and in the arts, and typically spread through a variety of mass media , as well as word of mouth...

. As a consequence, The Squirrel Cage and Our Boarding House are today both better remembered than Room and Board, despite its 17-year run.

Ahern was making an annual $35,000 doing Our Boarding House for Newspaper Enterprise Association

United Media

United Media is a large editorial column and comic strip newspaper syndication service based in the United States, owned by The E.W. Scripps Company. It syndicates 150 comics and editorial columns worldwide. Its core business is the United Feature Syndicate and the Newspaper Enterprise Association...

 when King Features Syndicate

King Features Syndicate

King Features Syndicate, a print syndication company owned by The Hearst Corporation, distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editorial cartoons, puzzles and games to nearly 5000 newspapers worldwide...

 offered to double that figure. Leaving NEA in March 1936 for King Features, Ahern created Room and Board which had more than a few parallels with Our Boarding House. Debuting June 21, 1936, it revived the title of an earlier Room and Board strip, drawn by Sals Bostwick, which ran from 1928 to 1931, distributed by the King Features subsidiary, Central Press Association (best known for launching Brick Bradford

Brick Bradford

Brick Bradford was a science fiction comic strip created by writer William Ritt, a journalist based in Cleveland, and artist Clarence Gray. It was first distributed in 1933 by Central Press Association, a subsidiary of King Features Syndicate....

). However, Ahern's Room and Board had no connection with Bostwick's strip other than the similar title.

Characters and story

A resident in Room and Boards boarding house was Judge Puffle, very similar to Major Hoople, the central character of Ahern's Our Boarding House. The moustache was slightly different, the nose was slightly smaller, and instead of a fez like that worn by Hoople, Puffle had a beret.

Some strips featured a large roomer, that the landlord had rented a room to and asked various persons to evict.

Comics historian Don Markstein traced the proliferation of Puffle and other Hoople variations:

Knock-offs, such as Associated Press

AP Newsfeatures

AP Newsfeatures, aka AP Features, was the cartoon and comic strip division of Associated Press, which syndicated strips from 1930 to the early 1960s.In February 1930, I.M...

' Mister Gilfeather (which, by the way, was handled at various times by both Al Capp

Al Capp

Alfred Gerald Caplin , better known as Al Capp, was an American cartoonist and humorist best known for the satirical comic strip Li'l Abner. He also wrote the comic strips Abbie an' Slats and Long Sam...

 and Milton Caniff

Milton Caniff

Milton Arthur Paul Caniff was an American cartoonist famous for the Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon comic strips.-Biography:...

, before they hit it big with Li'l Abner

Li'l Abner

Li'l Abner is a satirical American comic strip that appeared in many newspapers in the United States, Canada and Europe, featuring a fictional clan of hillbillies in the impoverished town of Dogpatch, Kentucky. Written and drawn by Al Capp , the strip ran for 43 years, from August 13, 1934 through...

and Terry and the Pirates

Terry and the Pirates (comic strip)

Terry and the Pirates was an action-adventure comic strip created by cartoonist Milton Caniff. Captain Joseph Patterson, editor for the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate, had admired Caniff’s work on the children's adventure strip Dickie Dare and hired him to create the new adventure strip,...

, respectively), began to proliferate. In fact, it was a knock-off that took Ahern away from his creation. King Features launched one called Room and Board, starring the very Hoople-like Judge Puffle, in 1936, and hired Ahern himself to write and draw it. This was a reprise of a move King had made nine years earlier, hiring George Swanson (Elza Poppin) to produce a duplicate of his own NEA strip, Salesman Sam, and it had a similar result — success, but not to the extent of the original. When, in 1953, Ahern retired, Room and Board ended. Today, its memory is overshadowed by its own topper, The Squirrel Cage, where the enigmatically familiar phrase, "Nov shmoz ka pop?" was introduced.

The strip also adopted Our Boarding Houses format of a single panel daily with a multi-panel Sunday page.

Reprints

There were several reprints in Dell Comics

Dell Comics

Dell Comics was the comic book publishing arm of Dell Publishing, which got its start in pulp magazines. It published comics from 1929 to 1973. At its peak, it was the most prominent and successful American company in the medium...

anthologies before the strip came to an end with Ahern's 1953 retirement.