Beginnings: Comic Strips, Part 4 Happy Hooligan and Buster Brown

Happy Hooligan

The next important comic strip was Happy Hooligan created and drawn by the already celebrated cartoonist Frederick Burr Opper. It debuted with a Sunday strip on March 11, 1900 in the William Randolph Hearst newspapers, and was one of the first popular comics with King Features Syndicate.The strip ran for three decades, ending on August 14, 1932.

The strip introduced the idea that a comic strip relate an adventure of a character. In this case, the adventures were of a well-meaning hobo who encountered a lot of misfortune and bad luck, partly because of his appearance and low position in society, but who did not lose his smile over it. He was contrasted by his two brothers, the sour Gloomy Gus and the snobbish Montmorency, both just as poor as Happy. Montmorency wore a top hat and monocle but was otherwise as ragged as his siblings.

Happy Hooligan initially did not run on a regular schedule, skipping Sundays from time to time, while some other weeks two pages appeared at once; the character also played a role in some of Opper’s daily strips. After a few years, though, Happy Hooligan became a regular feature with both daily strips and Sunday pages.

The Sunday strip changed titles and focus many times during the 1910s and 20s. The Happy Hooligan Sunday feature went on hiatus after January 16, 1916; when it returned on June 18, 1916, it was called Happy Hooligan’s Honeymoon, a title which stuck until April 7, 1918. The next week, it was back to Happy Hooligan until May 26. Starting June 23, the strip was called Dubb Family, and didn’t feature any appearances by Happy Hooligan; this title lasted until September 29. From October 6 to November 17, the strip was back to Happy Hooligan, and then switched to Mister Dubb from December 8, 1918 to April 24, 1921. For the next two years—May 1, 1921 to July 29, 1923—the Sunday strip was called Down on the Farm. The title swapped again—now called Mister Dough and Mister Dubb— from Aug 9, 1925 to January 9, 1927, and then reverted to Happy Hooligan for the rest of the run, until 1932.

Buster Brown

Happy Hoolgan introduced adventures and story lines into comic strips. Buster Brown added morals. Richard F. Outcault created the strip in 1902.

Buster was a young city-dwelling boy with wealthy parents. He was disturbingly pretty (contrast him to Outcault’s own The Yellow Kid, or Frederick Opper’s creations), but his actions belied his looks. He was a practical joker who might dress in a girl’s outfit and have her wear his clothes, break a window with his slingshot, or play a prank on a neighbor. The trick or transgression was discovered and he was punished, usually by being spanked by his mother, but it was unclear if he ever repented. Many strips end with Buster delivering a self-justifying moral which has little or nothing to do with his crime. For example, a strip from May 31, 1903, shows him giving Tige (his American Pit Bull Terrier) a soda from a drugstore soda fountain. The drink splashes, not only the front of his own clothes, but the skirts of a woman’s splendid dress. Horrified by his clumsy misadventure, Buster’s mother takes him home and flogs him with a stick. In the last panel the boy has written a message beginning, “Resolved! That druggists are legalized robbers; they sell you soda and candy to make you ill, then they sell you medicine to make you worse.”