Fish are people too. Or so it seems on the imaginary island of Kapupu, the setting for the wet and witty sea creatures of Sherman's Lagoon. For more than a decade, creator Jim Toomey has delighted readers with his off-center look at pop culture through the eyes of its namesake character, Sherman, and his coral-reef companions. Now, for the first time, the very best of this cast of lagoonies is captured in a treasury of classics. Sherman's Lagoon 1991-2001: Greatest Hits and Near Misses gives readers the opportunity to follow the evolution of the satirical strip from the first day it ran in the Escondido (Calif.) Times-Advocate on May 13, 1991, all the way up to the present day.This comprehensive collection highlights the complete history of the adventures of Sherman, the happy-go-lucky, brain-go-slow shark, and his lagoon-dwelling friends, including:o Fillmore the turtle, Sherman's sensible sidekicko Hawthorne, the cranky, beer can-dwelling hermit crabo Megan, Sherman's pearl-clad wifeo Ernest, the big-brained philosophical fisho And Thornton, the surfboard-toting polar bearThe compendium also features the funniest moments from the occasional humans who have inhabited the make-believe lagoon, such as Captain Quigley, the vengeful fisherman who lost his leg to Sherman years ago.This master collection of Jim Toomey's colorful cast of creatures will be treasured by longtime fans-and provide those new to the satirical strip an opportunity to catch up on all the underwater fun they've missed during the last decade.
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.
