Jim Henson Company developing Hägar The Horrible TV series

By Sam Barsanti | November 10, 2020 | 11:04pm

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Jim Henson Company developing Hägar The Horrible TV series

A viking (not Hagar The Horrible) Photo: Chris Furlong

Good news for people who like to read bad comic strips that have been running for decades but wish those bad comic strips would move around: King Features and The Jim Henson Company are developing an animated Hägar The Horrible TV series with Fresh Off The Boat, American Dad, and Don’t Trust The B— In Apartment 23 writer Eric Ziobrowski. For those who aren’t familiar with Hägar The Horrible, the comic is about a viking who… is easily baffled by everyday occurrences? Sometimes makes snide comments? Shrugs his shoulders while comical misunderstandings befall his friends and family? It’s honestly unclear. Take yesterday’s strip as an example. In it, Hägar is brought before an English king and asked to surrender, to which Hägar responds, “What?!” The king asks if he needs a translator, and Hägar responds, “No, I understand crazy talk!” Hilarious. Maybe?

Anyway, comedy(?) aside, one of the big hooks for the series is that it will be made with the Henson Digital Puppetry Studio, which allows the Henson Company’s puppeteers to control digital characters in real time (you know, like puppets). This news comes from Deadline, which says that the Digital Puppetry tech makes for an “organic, spontaneous performance.” As for King Features, it’s the studio behind Netflix’s upcoming Cuphead adaptation, which happens to be a cartoon that looks really nice and—like Hägar—is based on something of dubious quality. (Cuphead the game is fine, some people like it, and its extreme difficult is at least more appealing than the average Hägar comic strip.)