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''Room and Board'' was an American comic strip by Gene Ahern which was syndicated from 1936 to 1953, following Ahern's memorable ''Our Boarding House'' which he drew from 1921 to 1936. Ahern was making an annual $35,000 doing ''Our Boarding House'' for Newspaper Enterprise Association when King Features Syndicate offered to double that figure. Leaving NEA in March 1936 for King Features, Ahern created ''Room and Board'' which had more than a few parallels with ''Our Boarding House''. Debuting June 21, 1936, it revived the title of an earlier ''Room and Board'' strip, drawn by Sals Bostwick, which ran from 1928 to 1931, distributed by the King Features subsidiary, Central Press Association (best known for launching ''Brick Bradford''). However, Ahern's ''Room and Board'' had no connection with Bostwick's strip other than the similar title.〔(Markstein, Don. Toonopedia: ''Room and Board'' )〕 ==Characters and story== A resident in ''Room and Boards boarding house was Judge Puffle, very similar to Major Hoople, the central character of Ahern's ''Our Boarding House''. The moustache was slightly different, the nose was slightly smaller, and instead of a fez like that worn by Hoople, Puffle had a beret.〔〔("Hoople v. Puffle'', Time, May 11, 1936. )〕 Some strips featured a large roomer, that the landlord had rented a room to and asked various persons to evict.〔For example, 〕 Comics historian Don Markstein traced the proliferation of Puffle and other Hoople variations: :Knock-offs, such as Associated Press' ''Mister Gilfeather'' (which, by the way, was handled at various times by both Al Capp and Milton Caniff, before they hit it big with ''Li'l Abner'' and ''Terry and the Pirates'', respectively), began to proliferate. In fact, it was a knock-off that took Ahern away from his creation. King Features launched one called ''Room and Board'', starring the very Hoople-like Judge Puffle, in 1936, and hired Ahern himself to write and draw it. This was a reprise of a move King had made nine years earlier, hiring George Swanson (''Elza Poppin'') to produce a duplicate of his own NEA strip, ''Salesman Sam'', and it had a similar result — success, but not to the extent of the original. When, in 1953, Ahern retired, ''Room and Board'' ended. Today, its memory is overshadowed by its own topper, ''The Squirrel Cage'', where the enigmatically familiar phrase, "Nov shmoz ka pop?" was introduced.〔(Markstein, Don. Toonopedia: ''Our Boarding House'' )〕 The strip also adopted ''Our Boarding Houses format of a single panel daily with a multi-panel Sunday page. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Room and Board (comic strip)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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