Our Boarding House

Our Boarding House
Bill Freyse's Our Boarding House (November 5, 1944)
Author(s)	Gene Ahern (1921–1936) Bill Freyse (1939–1969)
Current status / schedule	ended
Launch date	September 16, 1921
End date	December 22, 1984
Syndicate(s)	Newspaper Enterprise Association
Genre(s)	Humor

Our Boarding House was a long-running, American single-panel cartoon and comic strip created by Gene Ahern in 1921 and syndicated by Newspaper Enterprise Association. Set in a boarding house run by the sensible Mrs. Hoople, it drew humor from the interactions of her grandiose, tall-tale-telling husband, the self-styled Major Hoople, with the rooming-house denizens and his various friends and cronies.

After Ahern left NEA in March 1936 to create a similar feature at a rival syndicate, he was succeeded by a number of artists and writers, including Wood Cowan and Bela Zaboly, before Bill Freyse took over as Our Boarding House artist from 1939 to 1969. Others who worked on the strip included Jim Branagan and Tom McCormick. The Sunday color strip ended on March 29, 1981; the weekday panel continued until December 22, 1984.

In 1921, Gene Ahern created the comic strip Crazy Quilt, starring the Nut Brothers, Ches and Wal. That same year, NEA General Manager Frank Rostock suggested to Ahern that he use a boarding house for a setting. Ahern initially used his own experiences as a boarder while a Chicago, Illinois, art student as grist for his comic mill, and featured the picaresque peccadilloes and bickering of its residents, presided over by the no-nonsense Martha Hoople.Our Boarding House began September 16, 1921, scoring success with readers after the January 1922 arrival of the fustian, blustery Major Amos B. Hoople, Martha's husband, who'd returned after some long sojourn. "Hoople has been compared to the type created on-screen by W. C. Fields, but was probably closer to Falstaff," writes comics historian Maurice Horn. "A retired military man of dubious achievement like Shakespeare's [comic figure], he boasted of soldierly exploits that were perhaps not all invented, and his buffoonery sometimes concealed real pathos." That character depth diminished as the comic became more popular, with Major Hoople becoming "the one-dimensional figure of fun most people remember" of the strip. The primary boarders were the cynical Clyde and Mack, and the only somewhat more trusting Buster.