What this country needs is FOO (1939)

Bill Holman (American 1903-1987) created 'Smokey Stover' in 1935, a strip about firemen, distributed by the Chicago Tribune. In the Second World war, the figure of Smokey Stover appeared as paintings on several American bomber planes. The strip ran until 1973, and had a great, funny style with witty punchlines. Smokey "often called himself a foo fighter when anyone else would have said firefighter", according to comics historian Don Markstein. "The word foo also turned up on signs, lists, menus, and the lips of various characters at random but frequent intervals." Foo may have been inspired by the French word feu meaning "fire", as Smokey's catch phrase was "where there's foo, there's fire", but Holman states that he used the word due to having seen it on the bottom of a jade Chinese figurine in Chinatown, San Francisco, meaning "good luck".

In 1961. Bill Holman became president of the National Cartoonists Society. - Words and FOOsic by Mack Kay. Published by Joe Davis, Inc., New York City.