You couldn't find a more likable person than Sherman ... except that he's a shark. Make that a great white shark and the star of Jim Toomey's Sherman's Lagoon, one of the funniest takes on life to be found above or below the water. So sit back and watch this shark hit his mark in The Shark Diaries: The Seventh Sherman's Lagoon Collection. Once again, the big-hearted but thick-skulled Sherman is joined in the deep by his Louis Vuitton-packing wife, Megan, Fillmore the sea turtle, and a hermit crab named Hawthorne, among others. This salty crew swims through a world of witty observations, sharp rejoinders, and crystal clear views of everything from "hairless beach apes" to bulk shopping at the local Price Club store. The result is humor soaked in fun yet just a shade drier than the Sahara. The Shark Diaries includes the most recently published Sherman's Lagoon cartoons, picking up where last year's Another Day in Paradise left off. The daily and Sunday strips are here. The silly yet sophisticated setups are front and center. Sherman and his buddies' numerous neuroses can't be missed. The fun returns with a splash, and this one promises to be a whale - um, shark - of a winner.
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.
