They'll Do It Every Time by Jimmy Hatlo (and later Bob Dunn and Al Scaduto) was a staple of the funnies when I was a kid. It was kind of an ongoing study of the endless capacity for contradictory behavior and outright hypocrisy in which we humans indulge.
This was evident in that most of the strips included a "Thanks to..." a reader who had contributed that particular panel's gag.
If this wasn't quite a classic on the order of Blondie or Bringing Up Father, it at least was pretty consistently funny, in a "yeah, I
know that guy" kind of way.
Hatlo's strip received the highest form of flattery through copycat strips, most notably
There Oughta Be a Law. As a youngster, I couldn't really tell the difference between the two, except that Hatlo's strip appeared in Saturday's
Buffalo Evening News, and
There Oughta Be a Law was in the Sunday
Courier Express.
One of the things that struck me back then about this strip is that it depicted average adults engaged with each other (instead of their kids, like
Hi and Lois) in mostly ordinary settings (unlike the
more fantastic or adventurous settings, like
The Phantom or
Steve Canyon).
Much like J.R. Williams and H.T. Webster (featured in this space in past weeks), it was also a strip that defibned a particular moment in time, linked to post-War America and suburbia as much as those others defined small-town life in an earlier generation.
I also liked that Hatlo occasionally turned his attention to history, with a similarly bent perspective on the great figures of the past.
I wonder if this strip is still appearing anywhere. I haven't seen it in at least twenty-five years, but I suppose it's possible that someone new is continuing to document the latest generation of those whose behavior induces head-scratching among those who observe them.
They'll Do It Every Time by Jimmy Hatlo (and later Bob Dunn and Al Scaduto) was a staple of the funnies when I was a kid. It was kind of an ongoing study of the endless capacity for contradictory behavior and outright hypocrisy in which we humans indulge.
This was evident in that most of the strips included a "Thanks to..." a reader who had contributed that particular panel's gag.
If this wasn't quite a classic on the order of Blondie or Bringing Up Father, it at least was pretty consistently funny, in a "yeah, I know that guy" kind of way.
Hatlo's strip received the highest form of flattery through copycat strips, most notably There Oughta Be a Law. As a youngster, I couldn't really tell the difference between the two, except that Hatlo's strip appeared in Saturday's Buffalo Evening News, and There Oughta Be a Law was in the Sunday Courier Express.
One of the things that struck me back then about this strip is that it depicted average adults engaged with each other (instead of their kids, like Hi and Lois) in mostly ordinary settings (unlike the more fantastic or adventurous settings, like The Phantom or Steve Canyon).
Much like J.R. Williams and H.T. Webster (featured in this space in past weeks), it was also a strip that defibned a particular moment in time, linked to post-War America and suburbia as much as those others defined small-town life in an earlier generation.
I also liked that Hatlo occasionally turned his attention to history, with a similarly bent perspective on the great figures of the past.
I wonder if this strip is still appearing anywhere. I haven't seen it in at least twenty-five years, but I suppose it's possible that someone new is continuing to document the latest generation of those whose behavior induces head-scratching among those who observe them.
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