Herky, the title character of a short-lived Sunday page by cartoonist Clyde Lewis (Private Buck), has often been cited as a “superbaby” and compared to the slightly later work of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. But there was no intention on Lewis’s part to do something that would fit in the soon-to-be-burgeoning
superhero genre. Herky was about his parents’ exasperation in dealing with a prodigy even more capable than Bunker Hill Jr., who starred in the topper to Billy DeBeck’s Barney Google. He may (at least at first) have had a superbaby’s strength, intelligence and maturity, comparable to those of Baby Weems or Farley Tibbit, but he wasn’t a junior member of the spandex-and-mask brigade.
“Herky” was short for “Hercules”, not that he was much like Marvel’s Hercules (or even Disney’s Hercules) — his mom and dad called him that because he was so strong. But he was also articulate beyond his larynx’s years, and not inclined to take a lot of kitchy koo-ing from grownups. Lewis got a lot of laughs out of people being surprised to find themselves suddenly dealing with, in effect, a miniature adult.
Herky 1935-1937
Newspaper Comic Strips 
