Gene Ahern

Gene Ahern

Eugene Leslie Ahern (1895 – March 6, 1960) 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. Many of Ahern's comic strips took a surreal or screwball approach, notably The Squirrel Cage with its nonsensical catchphrase "Nov shmoz ka pop."

Ahern was born and raised in Chicago, attending public schools and working as a butcher boy, as noted in a 1929 newspaper article:

Gene Ahern's path to the height of popularity in the comic world, started, strange as it may seem—in a meat market. True, he had been to art school before this, but it was his job as butcher's helper that gave real opportunity the first chance to knock. Gene spent his time making sketches on the long rolls of brown paper in which the shop's meat was wrapped. One day a man connected with a large fashion house came into the market for pork chops. Gene snipped them off and wrapped them up, using, by chance, a sheet of the paper he had previously covered with sketches. The customer eyed the package. “Who drew these?” he asked. “Oh, I did—just for the fun of it,” said Gene. Whereupon the customer suggested that it would be more fun to draw such pictures for money—and Ahern readily agreed that it would. The conversation continued and Gene told of his studies at art school and of his fondness for sketching. The stranger expressed interest and wound up by offering Gene a job in his fashion house art department. In his new job, he admits he hardly set the world on fire, but he learned a lot about drawing and that was what counted.

In his teens, he worked as a model, which he later recalled, "Daily, I slipped on cutaway coats, silk top hats and immaculate white gloves—and stood indolently in the front of a room while an artist sketched me for a catalogue."