Sad Sack is an American comic strip and comic book character created by Sgt. George Baker during World War II. Set in the United States Army, Sad Sack depicted an otherwise unnamed, lowly private experiencing some of the absurdities and humiliations of military life. The title was a euphemistic shortening of the military slang "sad sack of sh*t", common during World War II. The phrase has come to mean "an inept person" or "inept soldier". Originally drawn in pantomime by Baker, The Sad Sack debuted June 1942 as a comic strip in the first issue of Yank, the Army Weekly. It proved popular, and a hardcover collection of Baker's wartime Sad Sack strips was published by Simon & Schuster, Inc. in 1944, with a follow-up, The New Sad Sack in 1946. The original book was concurrently published as an Armed Services edition mass market paperback by Editions for the Armed Services, Inc., a non-profit organization of The Council on Books in Wartime; it was #719 in the series of Armed Service editions. After the war ended, The Sad Sack ran in newspaper syndication in the United States from May 5, 1946 until 1958. Baker then sold the rights to Harvey Comics, which produced a large number of commercial spin-offs. (wiki)