The title character is a young bald boy who is mostly mute in the comics (and sometimes drawn minus a mouth).

The Saturday Evening Post was the first publication to feature Henry, a series which began when Anderson was 67 years old.

[2] After seeing a German publication of Henry, William Randolph Hearst signed Anderson to King Features Syndicate and began distributing the comic strip on December 17, 1934, with the half-page Sunday strip launched March 10, 1935.

[1] Henry was replaced in The Saturday Evening Post by Marjorie Henderson Buell's Little Lulu.

Cartoonist Art Baxter analyzed the appeal of the character and the strip: Henry appears (and speaks) alongside Betty Boop in the Fleischer Studios animated short Betty Boop with Henry, the Funniest Living American (1935).