![]() ![]() The sad, petty business that had brought things to this point had begun in the summer of 1933, when Ham Fisher, who drove a shiny roadster and lived in a grand suite at the Parc Vendome, took on an impoverished young assistant named Alfred Caplin, who, because he was a much better artist than Fisher, was shortly producing most of "Joe Palooka." Fisher felt like the kid's patron, though he paid him practically nothing, and he couldn't believe it when Caplin one day announced that he was leaving his tightwad employ to go start a comic strip of his own. Then Weiss called the cops and the widow. Fisher would have wanted his paper to get the tip first. The first call went to the city desk of the New York Daily Mirror, the "Joe Palooka" flagship from day one, back in April 1930. There was one final remaining kindness he could perform for his impossible old friend. ![]() ![]() Today he had plenty of work stacked up on his own drawing board, and he had no time to listen to much of this, and finally he showed Fisher the door. Weiss had been putting up with Fisher for more than 20 years. Now that he had been broken and publicly humiliated, he was unendurable. At 54 years of age, the fabulously successful proprietor of the world-famous "Joe Palooka" newspaper comic strip creator of beloved prizefighter Joe, cigar-chomping fight manager Knobby Walsh, Ann Howe, Jerry Leemy, Humphrey Pennyworth and Little Max, whose daily adventures were followed by millions of readers around the world had always been a tormented and self-absorbed man who talked about nothing but his ceaseless persecutions even during the good times. Fisher was just one of those people: The more the world gave him, the unhappier he got. Right before Christmas, Ham Fisher had driven over to Jersey to call on his old pal Morris Weiss, who was about the only soul left who could stand him anymore, and by now Weiss' patience was wearing thin too. ![]()
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