When I lived on the East Coast, I knew a lot of old school cartoonists like Jerry Marcus and Orlando Busino. I’d met Mort Walker and his son Brian and Ron Goulart and comics historian Rick Marschall. The cartoonist and their friend Dik Browne, creator of Hagar The Horrible, had long left Connecticut for the warmer pleasures of Florida so I never got to meet him.

But they spoke of him with such awe - of his abilities as a cartoonist and how his irreverent sense of humor was perfect for his chosen profession - that I was really sorry I hadn’t moved to the area much earlier.

By the time Dik Browne created Hagar, he was already a success: he was the co-creator with Mort Walker of Hi & Lois (in 1954), he had a huge side career in advertising (he created the Chiquita logo, for example) and he did strips like The Tracy Twins for Boy’s Life.

And then on his own in 1973, came Hagar The Horrible, the daily comic strip about a goofball Viking leader who wanted nothing more than to pillage villages and celebrate his victories and his defeats with alcohol. It was boisterous, smart, fun, and above all else, extremely well-drawn.

Browne wasn’t some kid learning on the job - he was a working professional at the top of his game. He brought everything he’d learned over the years to his new strip and poured it all into each panel. It wasn’t just funny, it was great to look at.

Britain's Titan Books has recently released The Epic Chronicles of Hagar The Horrible: Dailies 1974-1975, covering the second and third years of the strip and it really is a revelation. Browne played around with strip layout, sometimes using one long panel, worked with light and shadow, spotted blacks beautifully, and even varied his word balloons. And he did all this with Hagar while still drawing Hi & Lois.

Best of all, he made the strip more than just a set-up-then-punchline about a Viking. Hagar the Horrible had a rich supporting cast of family and friends and Browne’s skills managed to turn a sword-wielding, ale-guzzling, ready-to-fight, hardly-a-role-model-husband into a sympathetic character. Chris Browne, Dik’s son, took over the strip after Dik passed away in 1989.

Brian Walker (Mort’s son) contributes an introduction to this volume that describes the family-based creative process of producing Hagar during this period and it sounds like a raucous blast. Brian quotes Dik saying, “We like to show the whole Hagar family during the course of a week, plus other aspects of Hagar’s life - sailing, raiding, eating, partying... there’s no continuity, but different aspects.

The Epic Chronicles is thick with cartoons, reproduced 2-to-a-page in black and white. It’s a nice size for the daily presentation: the cartoons are very readable and it allows for quality reproduction of the artwork. Like all Titan Books products, it’s an excellent package all around and the dustjacket even includes a quote from a fan letter written by Charlton Heston.

Highly recommended.

[Artwork: Hagar The Horrible, © King Features]