Almost forgotten but remembered

Joe Palooka was an American comic strip about a heavyweight boxing champion, created by cartoonist Ham Fisher. With various assistants and successors, the strip lasted for over half of a century with spin-offs to radio, movies, television and merchandising.

In his home town of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Fisher devised the character in 1921 when he met a boxer outside a poolroom, as Fisher explained in an article in Collier's magazine.