Original Book
From Homestar Runner Wiki
The Homestar Runner Enters The Strongest Man in the World Contest
This is the original children's book that started it all. The story is bizarre and has few of the regular characters but showed signs of the greatness to come. The archive includes the story plus some alternate cover ideas.
Strong Bad later made a revised edition of the story in the Strong Bad Email kids' book. The book was also spoofed in the 100th email flashback, which also both inspired Main Page 20.
Summary
Homestar, Pom Pom, Strong Bad, and three others enter the Strongest Man in the World Contest. "Whoever holds the most grapes, wins." Yeah. But Strong Bad cheats (guess who helps him? That's right -- The Cheat). Fortunately, Homestar notices this extra help, and as a result of his heroic sacrifice, Pom Pom wins.
From an interview with Mike Chapman
"Yeah, a friend of ours, Craig Zobel and I, wrote a story in 1996 that's got most of the main characters -- Strong Bad, Homestar, Pom Pom and The Cheat I think are the main ones. Just a story we made one afternoon, went to Kinko's, made about ten or fifteen copies of it, and kind of gave it to our friends, and that was it, really, for several years. We just did that in the summer. We were in college, and did it in a bored afternoon."
- See the book