Hammond Edward "Ham" Fisher (September 24, 1900 [some sources indicate 1901] – December 27, 1955) was an American comic strip writer and cartoonist.

He is best known for his long, popular run on Joe Palooka, which was launched in 1930 and ranked as one of the top five newspaper comics strips for several years.

In 1928, after he secured over 20 sales, including to New York's Daily Mirror, Fisher informed his managers at McNaught, who decided to give Joe Palooka a trial run.

Searching for assistants to work on the strip, Fisher hired (among others) Al Capp, who later achieved fame as the writer-cartoonist of Li'l Abner.

While ghosting on Joe Palooka, Capp claimed to have created the storyline about a stupid musclebound hillbilly named "Big Leviticus", an apparent prototype for the Li'l Abner character.

After Fisher underwent plastic surgery, Capp once included a racehorse in Li'l Abner named Ham's Nose Bob.

Traveling in the same social circles, the two men engaged in a 20-year mutual vendetta, as described in 1998 by Jay Maeder in the Daily News: "They crossed paths often, in the midtown watering holes and at National Cartoonists Society banquets, and the city's gossip columns were full of their snarling public donnybrooks.

"[3] Capp's brother Elliot Caplin recalls the doctored strips as having been drawn upon, with additions of lines and shadows intended to simulate body parts.

[4] In 1954, as Capp was applying for a Boston television license, the FCC received an anonymous packet of pornographic L'il Abner drawings.