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Hatlo’s Inferno

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My Favorite Comic Strip When I Was a Kid

While I was researching the subject of yesterday’s post, I came across one of Jimmy Hatlo’s “They’ll Do It Every Time” comic strips. At home, we subscribed to the Sunday Cleveland Plain Dealer, where it appeared regularly in the color funnies section.

The general idea of the strip was memorializing the cartoonist’s pet peeves, which were legion. I particularly remembered the “Hatlo’s Inferno” strips, in which various doofuses one encounters in everyday life received the punishment that they deserved—for all eternity. The cartoon panel above shows a typical Inferno setting in the upper left.

According to journalist Bob Greene, writing in The Wall Street Journal:

Hatlo’s genius was to realize, before there was any such thing as an Internet or Facebook or Twitter, that people in every corner of the country were brimming with seemingly small observations about mundane yet captivating matters, yet lacked a way to tell anyone outside their own circles of friends about it. Hatlo also understood that just about everyone, on some slightly-below-the-surface level, yearned to be celebrated from coast to coast, if only for a day.

As a youngster, I loved cartoon strips like “Pogo,” “Dick Tracy,” “Li’l Abner,” and “Steve Canyon.” Looking back, they were infinitely more satisfying than what passes for comic strips today. Of course, there’s always “Peanuts.”

Tarnmoor’s Inferno

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Dante’s Inferno as Visualized by Gustave Doré

Of course, Dante Alighieri was the first poet to give us the Grand Tour of Hell, but I am also influenced by a comic strip from my earlier years called “Hatlo’s Inferno,” by Jimmy Hatlo (1897-1963). In the same vein as Mr. Hatlo, I would like to mention a number of my pet peeves that deserve eternal punishment in the flames of Heck:

  • The guy who takes up a valuable parking space for what seems hours while he is finger f—ing his smart phone.
  • The freeway driver who has been warned by huge signs for miles to change lanes, and who does it at the last possible second with millimeters to spare.
  • The supermarket shopper who treats her shopping cart as an aisle blocker while she memorizes all the varieties of Campbell Soups.
  • The airport public address system which announces gate changes in demotic Urdu while passengers vainly attempt to unscramble what is being said.
  • The cyclists and e-scooter riders who insist on sharing the sidewalk with pedestrians.
  • The weather forecaster who’s always talking about a chance of rain, even if the probability is 0.0001%.
  • The guy who mumbles something about “freedom” while objecting to your wearing a face mask (naturally, they’ve never received their Covid-19 vaccinations).
  • The neighborhood kids who gleefully and maliciously play in your yard.

Hatlo’s Inferno: Hell for Funsies

Just let me catch my breath, and I’ll find a few dozen more things to complain about. At my age, I’m entitled.