By Albatross
December 26 2003

Hartlepool United's mascot H'Angus has made a guest appearance in a leading US Comic Strip. A cuddly H'Angus toy has turned up in cartoon form in Boxing Day's "Get Fuzzy" by Darby Conley. Will this launch him to international celebrity?

The American Cartoon Strip has yet to appear in the UK, but is rapidly growing in popularity in the US. I've been following it now for more than a year, after the strip was recommended by Scott Adams in one of his regular "Dilbert" Mailing list missives.

When I first tell people the premise behind "Get Fuzzy", the immediate reaction is "Oh, it's like Garfield". Essentially it's about a rugby-loving American bloke called Rob, who lives in a flat with Bucky Katt (a tuna-loving sociopath with a Monkey fixation) and Satchel Pooch (a dumb but kind dog who's idea of something scary is a Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner). There are similarities, but also many differences: both Bucky and Satchel can talk to Rob and each other, and some of the storylines are things you would simply never see in Garfield - for example, Bucky has a long-running feud with Fungo, a ferret that lives next door, that has included at one point Bucky going on "Judge Judy" to sue the ferret.

So where does a cuddly H'Angus toy come in?

As previously mentioned, Bucky is obsessed with Monkeys - specifically, with eating monkeys, as he thinks they look delicious. One recent storyline involved Bucky going to the Zoo and getting into the primate house armed with a Spork (a sort of spoon and fork in one) to try and devour what turns out to be a rather large monkey - with disasterous results for Bucky.

The cartoon for today (Boxing Day) shows Bucky opening one of his presents... a cuddly H'Angus. Satchel immediately identifies it for what it is, although Bucky is rather aggrieved at having received a fake monkey. The strip can be seen here together with a running 30 day archive of the strip.

Will H'Angus be making more appearances in the cartoon strip? Only Darby Conley knows that. It seems unlikely that this will spark huge interest in the club in the states, but you never know - Norman Wisdom became a huge star in Albania during the long years of communism there, so you could argue that stranger things have happened. Thousands of Americans will have opened their paper this morning to see H'Angus and Hartlepool in front of them - we may yet be better known over there than Manchester United!