Henry, Will

I first encountered Will Henry's work when Alex Johnson posted this wonderful example in his CAF gallery. After seeing Alex's daily, I started reading Wallace the Brave online, eventually picking the book collections. Will Henry is the pen name for William Henry Wilson, who first had a comic strip titled Dormmates while a student at the University of Connecticut. Will then created another strip, Ordinary Bill, featuring a beach bum type character, but found the subject matter too limiting to his Rhode Island locale. Wallace the Brave first appeared on the GoComics website in 2015, making it's newspaper debut in 2018. The comic strip takes place in Snug Harbor, a coastal town, likely based a bit on Will's hometown. The strip stars Wallace McClellan, a wiseguy dreamer of a kid, along with his kid brother, parents, best friend Spud, and Amelia, a sharp classmate who acts as a great foil to the guys.

Will has counted Calvin and Hobbes and Cul de Sac as influences, and you can really see light touches of those wonderful strips in Wallace the Brave.

Will Henry won the National Cartoonist Society's Silver Reuben Award for best newspaper comic strip in 2018.