In 1913, invited to New York by
Arthur Brisbane, he became a sports cartoonist at the
New York Journal. Later that year, he was given only a weekend to devise a comic strip, and he created
Jerry on the Job, about pint-size Jerry Flannigan, initially employed as an office boy and then in a variety of other jobs. The strip was launched on December 29, 1913. Comics historian
Don Markstein described Hoban's character and work situations: :Jerry was about the size of a five-year-old who was small for his age, and proportioned like an infant (larger head as compared with the rest of his body) only more so—Jerry was only two heads tall; i.e., the remainder of him, all put together, was about as big as his head... After a year or two, he began moving from job to job. He was a retail clerk, a messenger boy, even a prize fighter (at his size!) and other things before Hoban went off to fight World War I, and the strip went on hiatus. When it returned, Jerry was working at a railroad station under the supervision of Mr. Givney, the station's manager. His job included just about everything that went into making a railroad station function—selling tickets, sweeping floors, toting baggage, running little errands for the boss, etc. Sources of humor included the eccentrics who hung around the station, Mr. Givney's peevishness, and Jerry's own ineptitude. Also, Hoban pioneered in the use of humorous signs posted here and there in the background, a motif also seen in
Smokey Stover,
Mad and elsewhere. And practically everyone commenting on the strip has praised Hoban for putting his characters through spectacular "takes", that is, exaggerated physical responses to surprising or disconcerting events. He specialized in what some call the "flip take", which left the character undergoing it (usually Givney) as flat on the ground as Charlie Brown after trying to kick Lucy's football. During
World War I, Hoban was a sergeant in the military police. In 1918, he attended the divisional training school for officers at
Camp Meade in Maryland. In 1922, Hoban provided illustrative slides to accompany songs in the
Greenwich Village Follies revue. He was a member of the Pen and Pencil Club of Philadelphia and took part in their annual
Nights in Bohemia roof garden show. The
Jerry on the Job Sunday page began in 1919, but it later became a
topper strip above another Hoban feature,
Rainbow Duffy. The
daily strip came to an end in 1931, and the topper was dropped in 1932. During the late 1930s, Hoban's character was used to advertise
Post Grape-Nut Flakes. After Hoban's death in 1939, his former assistant, Bob Naylor, revived Jerry on the Job as a syndicated strip for King Features, starting on Oct. 21, 1946. However, Naylor's revival was not as successful as Hoban's original strip, and the strip was canceled in 1949. Hoban was 49 when he died in 1939. His brother, newspaperman Edwin A. Hoban, died August 23, 1931, at the age of 38. ==Animation==