Our local newspaper, The Corpus Christi Caller-Times, was one of the first to carry Jim Toomey's "Sherman's Lagoon" comic strip about a bunch of wild and crazy reef critters, their underwater antics, and interaction with humans known as "hairy beach apes".
The "star" of the comic strip is Sherman the shark, a laid back fish who loves to eat, but is too lazy to work for dinner so he devises all kinds of easy ways to entice "hairy beach apes" into his clutches (very seldom successful, but such is the life of a loafing shark!) He's joined by his wife Megan, his sea turtle friend Fillmore
(the "nerd" of the underwater world), and the polar bear Thornton who somehow drifted to the tropical island on an iceberg.
One of my favorites - Hawthorne the hermit crabhas gone from living in a beer can to a dog food can when he grew bigger and had to find a new home.
Captain Quigley, an old sea captain, occasionally turns up to do another caper with Sherman to see who can catch whom! There's lots of other great characters and creatures adding to the continuous amusement, such as Frank and Louise who had a very short love affair!
I really liked this cartoon and when Valentine's Day came along, I asked Jim for permission to animate the "loverly fish" -- click on the cartoon above to see them in action!When our daughter moved "up east" and alas, could not find the comic strip in the local paper, she set her browser's opening page to Sherman's daily cartoon at www.slagoon.com so she wouldn't miss her traditional morning chuckle. Jim has added lots of other interesting goodies to the web site besides the 'toon du jour -- the last two weeks worth in case you go on vacation and need to catch up, icons of his characters, a free screensaver for PCs and MACs, and a graphic link gallery.
After following the daily capers of Jim's reef critters
, I was absolutely delighted when he published a 127 page book filled with a collection Sherman's cartoons. We ordered $10 copies as gifts for everyone in our family and they were a great hit with the whole mob from age 4 to 84!
While browsing through the book, our son let out a huge cackle when he discovered that Frank and Louise are featured in a very special way. You'll have to look for it when you get your copy!
Don't miss ordering your own Sherman's book and I bet you'll want some for your friends and family too! Here's all the details:
SHERMAN'S LAGOON: Ate That, What's Next?
Paperback 127 pages; ISBN: 0-8362-3660-2
Price: $9.95 ($13.95 CANADA)On-line orders through Amazon.com at
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0836236602/7070-3932452-102163If you can't find the book at your local bookstore, you can purchase it directly from the publisher for only $2 postage and handling in the U.S., $4 in Canada, and overseas orders can add $5.50 for surface mail and $10.75 for airmail. Call 1-(800) 642-6480 (In USA), (816) 932-6700 (Outside USA).
Or visit Sherman's Web Site for a whole page of online bookstores and how to order. (Plus see his cartoon of the day, a free screensaver, icons, and other neat stuff!)
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Jim Toomey is a scuba diver, and his underwater adventures inspired the creation of Sherman's Lagoon which is distributed in 125 newspapers around the world by Creator's Syndicate.
