Herman (comic Strip) - Themes

Themes

While there is no apparent continuity to the daily panels, there are several recurring themes:

• Married life: Wife: "What would you rate me as? A 10? 9? 8? 7? 6? 5? 4, 3? (pause) Not 2!" Husband: "Keep going."
• Bad cooking: A woman says to her husband, "I made you a meat pie and the dog ate it," to which the husband replies, "I'll miss the dog."
• Strange neighbors: A television comes crashing through the wall. Outside, a man yells "You missed!"
• The elderly: "There's an elephant on TV, and Grandma's throwing peanuts at it!"
• Animals: One penguin to another. "We'd have arrived earlier, but our iceberg hit a ship."
• Children in school: "Don't drag your fingernails on the chalkboard, Niles," a teacher with shattered glasses and standing-up hair says.
• Intelligent babies: A man steps into the baby's room with a bottle. "It's about time! Another five minutes, and I'd have died of thirst!"
• Restaurants: A waiter dumps the customer's food on the tablecloth. "Terribly sorry about this, but we're short of plates."
• Life in prison: Two prisoners have been caught cutting the bars from their cell window. "We found it quite stuffy in here, warden."
• Art: A painting depicts a single half-circle at the bottom of the canvas: "This one's called 'Here Comes the Sun.'"
• Hunting and fishing: A hunter with the rifle realizes he has just blown the landing gear off of an airborne 747.
• People with bizarre ailments or injuries: A man in the hospital has a surgical scar that covers the perimeter of his torso. "It took us a while to find your appendix," the doctor explains.
• Encounters with extraterrestrial life: A UFO has been pulled over for speeding. "Ignorance of the law is no excuse, buddy!"
• Ordinary people thrust into bizarre situations: A man on a modern-day park bench encounters a Viking, who asks "Is the war still on?"
• Being overweight: An overweight man stands on a bathroom scale, and asks his wife, "What do you mean the needle's broken off?"
• Mispronounced words: A sheriff's deputy brings the sheriff a cat. The sheriff says "I said 'Round up a POSSE!'."
• Courts: A judge does not know that the defendant he is speaking to is a plywood cutout. "You have been found guilty of forgery."
• Strange inventions: A man has a giant showerhead over his house. "I get a good deal on fire insurance."
• Medical: Doctor tells overweight patient "Walk two miles per day, but not on Morning Glory Circle."

Several collections of the comic strip were printed.