For years, fans of Sherman's Lagoon have been clamoring for a collection that captures the rarely seen early material from the popular strip. Now, here surfaces Greetings From Sherman's Lagoon, the answer to the long-time pleas of loyal followers of Sherman the shark and his sea urchin pals. Those who regularly read the silly yet sophisticated strip will enjoy seeing how its art, humor, and characters have evolved. Cartoonist Jim Toomey has mastered the look and personality of the creatures that his readers have come to love: Sherman and his significant-shark-other Megan, Fillmore the turtle, Hawthorne the cranky hermit crab, and other coral critters. "Just as early Snoopy drawings more closely resembled a beagle," says Toomey, "the characters more closely resemble fish." Toomey adds that his early strips adhered less to story lines and were more focused on delivering a "gag-a-day." Longtime fans and newer readers alike are sure to enjoy noting similarities and differences for themselves in this hilarious turn-back-the-clock collection.
For the past 13 years Jim Toomey has been creating the daily comic strip Sherman's Lagoon, which appears in over 250 newspapers in North America, including the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the San Francisco Chronicle. It also appears in over 30 foreign countries, in French, Portugese, Spanish, Norwegian and Swedish. Jim has just completed his tenth book, entitled "A Day at the Beach," published by Andrews McMeel Publishing.
Sherman's Lagoon is a combination of his two life-long passions: drawing and the sea. Jim's been engaged in the former activity since he could hold a crayon, and his love affair with the sea dates back to his early childhood. The inspiration for the comic strip can be traced back to a family vacation in the Bahamas where he saw a real shark swimming in a remote lagoon. Jim became a certified diver at the age of twelve, and, as an adult, has logged dives all over the world, including Asia, Africa, the Mediterranean, Latin America, and extensively in the kelp forests of California.
