Fatty Finn

Fatty Finn
comic strip c1920s
Author(s)	Syd Nicholls
Launch date	16 September 1923
End date	July 1977
Alternate name(s)	Fat and his Friends
Genre(s)	Humor

Fatty Finn, was a popular long-run Australian comic strip series, created in 1923 by Syd Nicholls. It ran in syndication until the creator's death in 1977.

In 1923 Syd Nicholls, a senior artist at Sydney's Evening News, was asked by managing editor, Errol Knox, to produce a Sunday comic strip to compete with opposition paper, the Sunday News, hugely popular Us Fellers, produced by Jimmy Bancks. Knox reportedly requested a "domestic strip" stating that "The Sunday Times and Sunday Sun are both running a colour comic and we have to do something to compete". The strip was initially called Fat and His Friends and was first published in the Sunday News on 16 September 1923. Fat appeared as a Billy Bunterish almost bald, nasty schoolboy, complete with straw boater. Fat was usually the butt of his friend's jokes, with those early strips exhibiting much of the cruelty practised by children and reflecting a school system which believed in corporal punishment.

On August 1924 the title of the strip was changed to Fatty Finn, heralding a change in the strip's direction and the role of the main character, who evolved from an English boy lookalike into a knockabout schoolboy innocently living out his days in a never-never urban world. Over the next few years, Fatty gradually lost weight, gained a Boy Scout style uniform, a dog ('Pal'), a goat ('Hector') and permanent supporting characters including Headlights Hogan, Lollylegs, Bruiser and Mr. Claffey the policeman. Fatty adopted a more heroic role and the comic moved closer to the standard 'kid' strip with a distinct Australian flavour. In the opinion of Paul Byrnes, the curator of the National Film and Sound Archive, "Fatty Finn is highly influenced by C. J. Dennis’ classic story of a sentimental tough guy from a poor inner-city neighbourhood. Fatty is a half-pint version of the ‘Bloke’ with his own ‘push’ of tiny would-be toughs and molls, who already have a strong sense of how the world works." John Ryan, in his Australian Comic anthology, Panel by Panel, describes the strip as by the late 1920s having become the most visually pleasing strip in the country.