Sol Hess was a comic writer born on a farm in Illinois in 1872. After moving to Chicago with his parents, his father died and Sol Hess started working at a jewelry company, travelling the country as a salesman. His comics career started more or less by accident. He was a friend of Sidney Smith, creator of 'The Gumps', and started writing the dialogues for this strip. By 1922, Hess proposed his own newspaper family comic, 'The Nebbs', drawn by W.A. Carlson. This comic, first published on 22 May 1923, became so popular that Sol Hess quit the jewelry business in 1925 and continued to write this strip until his death in 1941. He was the father of Betsy Hess, who would later create the long-running comic series 'The Toodle Family' (also known as 'The Toodles', 1941-1961) with her husband Stanley Baer and artist Rod Ruth. After 'The Nebbs' ended in 1955 its characters were fused with those of 'The Toodles'.