Penny (comic strip)

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title: "Penny (comic strip)" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1943-comics-debuts", "1970-comics-endings", "american-comics-characters", "american-comic-strips", "teenage-characters-in-comics", "comics-about-women", "female-characters-in-comics", "gag-a-day-comics", "teen-comedy-comics", "comics-characters-introduced-in-1943", "bobby-soxers"] description: "American comic strip by Harry Haenigsen" topic_path: "geography/united-states" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_(comic_strip)" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary American comic strip by Harry Haenigsen ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox Comic strip"]

Field	Value
title	Penny
image	[[File:Haenigsenpenny12151.jpg
caption	Harry Haenigsen's Penny (January 21, 1951). To see this image at full resolution, go to I Love Comix Archive.
creator	Harry Haenigsen
current	Bill Hoest (1965–c. 1968)
status	Concluded Daily & Sunday strip
syndicate	New York Herald Tribune Syndicate
genre	Teens, Humor
first	June 27, 1943
last	October 25, 1970
::

|title= Penny |image= [[File:Haenigsenpenny12151.jpg|230px]] |caption= Harry Haenigsen's Penny (January 21, 1951). To see this image at full resolution, go to I Love Comix Archive. |creator= Harry Haenigsen |current = Bill Hoest (1965–c. 1968) |status= Concluded Daily & Sunday strip |syndicate= New York Herald Tribune Syndicate |publisher= |genre= Teens, Humor |first= June 27, 1943 |last= October 25, 1970 Penny was a comic strip about a teenage girl by Harry Haenigsen which maintained its popularity for almost three decades. It was distributed by the New York Herald Tribune Syndicate from June 27, 1943, to October 25, 1970.

Publication history

Penny began because Helen Rogers Reid, the wife of the New York Herald Tribune publisher Ogden Mills Reid, wanted to see a girl as the central character of a new comic strip.

Haenigsen had been doing a strip about a teenage boy, Our Bill (1939–1963), when he launched Penny as a Sunday strip on June 27, 1943. A daily strip debuted September 3, 1945.

The prolific cartoonist Bill Hoest was Haenigsen's assistant on Penny. After an injury from a 1965 traffic accident kept Haenigsen away from the drawing board, Hoest took over most of the work, although Haenigsen still supervised and signed each Penny strip.

In 1968, Hoest left to start his own strip, The Lockhorns, for the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate. Haenigsen chose to end Penny in 1970 and retired.

Characters and story

Comics historian Don Markstein described the title character and her confused parents:

Reception

In 1947, Nancy Blair of Lambertville, New Jersey was the winner in a Penny look-alike contest staged by the New Hope Recreation Center in New Hope, Pennsylvania.

In 1955, Vladimir Nabokov wrote the following description of Penny into his novel Lolita: "Her eyes would follow the adventures of her favorite strip characters; there was one well-drawn sloppy bobby-soxer with high cheekbones and angular gestures, that I was not above enjoying myself."

References

References

1. (2012). "American Newspaper Comics: An Encyclopedic Reference Guide". The University of Michigan Press.
2. [https://books.google.com/books?id=IWqjaXc_4QUC&dq=%22harry+haenigsen%22&pg=PA65 Reynolds, Moira Davison. ''Comic Strip Artists in American Newspapers, 1945-1980''. McFarland, 2003.]
3. [http://www.toonopedia.com/penny.htm Markstein, Don. Toonopedia: ''Penny'']
4. "Most Like Penny", ''Nashua Telegraph'' (Nashua, New Hampshire), August 13, 1947.
5. [https://www.amazon.com/dp/1883011191 Nabokov, Vladimir. ''Lolita''.]

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