Joe Palooka is an American comic strip about a heavyweight boxing champion, created by cartoonist Ham Fisher.

The strip was adapted to a 15-minute CBS radio series, 12 feature-length films (chiefly from Monogram Pictures), nine Vitaphone film shorts, a 1954 syndicated television series (The Joe Palooka Story), comic books and merchandise, including a 1940s board game, a 1947 New Haven Clock & Watch Company wristwatch, a 1948 metal lunchbox featuring depictions of Joe, Humphrey and Little Max, and a 1946 Wheaties cereal box cut-out mask.

As Fisher explained in an article[2] in Collier's: Here, made to order, was the comic strip character I had been looking for—a big, good-natured prize fighter who didn't like to fight; a defender of little guys; a gentle knight.

Other titles used during this period include The Atom Age, Captain Tommy, Could Be, Guy Who Married a WAC Sergeant, Fisher's Follies, How To Be Popular?, Letter From Home, Mebbe I'm Wrong, Now That It's Over, Smythe the Murp's Ex-Butler, and Two Thousand A.D.[1] Fisher originally changed the appearance of Palooka to fit each reigning real-life champ – until the coming of African-American Joe Louis in the 1930s, at which time the image of the cowlicked blond Palooka remained unchanged.

[citation needed] Though his adventures were mostly low-key, he was pumped up by a supporting cast led by girlfriend Ann Howe, boxing manager Knobby Walsh, his mute orphan sidekick Little Max, Smokey, his black valet and later sparring partner, and lovable giant Humphrey Pennyworth, a smiling blacksmith who wielded a 100-pound (45 kg) maul.

Like Ozark Ike McBatt in baseball, Joe Palooka was intended to exemplify the sports hero in an age when uprightness of character was supposed to matter most.

The character was part of an effort among top newspaper cartoonists to sell World War II-era Series E bonds to the public as a wartime financing initiative.

The engraved invitations for the event, sent to a select list of celebrities, read: "Mr. Ham Fisher requests the honour of your presence at the marriage of Ann Howe to Mr. Joe Palooka on the afternoon of June 24th in your favorite newspaper."

In September 1948, a limestone Joe Palooka statue (in a flowing cape) was erected on a hill overlooking Indiana State Road 37.

"[citation needed] In the 1977 film Smokey and the Bandit, after having been drawn into a fight and taking a beating, character Cledus "Snowman" Snow (Jerry Reed) tells his friend Bo "Bandit" Darville (Burt Reynolds) over the CB radio, "Look, you ain't gonna believe this, but I just did my imitation of Joe Palooka."

(made for Warner Brothers) All directed by Lloyd French and starring Robert Norton and Shemp Howard (except the last two with Beverly Phalon and Johnny Burkes).