Happy Hooligan 1904-1905


By Frederick Burr Opper (Hyperion Press)
ISBN: 0-88355-658-8

While I eagerly await the arrival of my copy of the recent “Forever Nuts” hardback collection of Happy Hooligan I thought I’d dip again into the first collection of the eternal indigent that I ever saw: long ago whilst still a spotty, mildly angry punk art student…

Frederick Burr Opper was one of the first giants of comics, a hugely imaginative and skilled illustrator who moved into the burgeoning field of newspaper strips just as they were being born, and his pictorial creations (and even more so his dialogue) have forever changed the English language…

Born in 1857 the son of Austrian immigrants, Opper grew up in Madison, Ohio, and at age 14 joined the Madison Gazette as a printer’s apprentice. Two years later he was in New York. Always drawing, he worked briefly in a store whilst studying at Cooper Union (The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art was and is a magnificent experiment in education and excellence: look it up and be amazed…) before linking up as student and eventually, assistant, to illustration giant Frank Beard.

Opper sold his first cartoon to Wild Oats in 1876, swiftly following up with further sales to Scribbner’s Monthly, St. Nicholas Magazine and Frank Leslie’s Weekly, before joining the prestigious Puck in 1880, drawing everything from spot illustrations, gags, political cartoons and many of the new, full-colour, Chromolithographic covers. He was also a book illustrator of major renown, an incisive humorist, poet and creator of children’s books.

After 18 lucrative, influential – and steady – years, Opper was drawn away to join William Randolph Hearst’s growing stable of comics pioneers in 1899, joining the New York Journal’s Sunday Color Supplement, where Happy Hooligan first appeared on 11th March 1900. Although not a regular feature at the start – many cartoon strippers of the fledgling art form were given great leeway to experiment with a variety of ideas in those early days – before too long the feature became simply too popular to play with and settled into a stable tenure that lasted until 1932 when the artist’s failing eyesight led to his retirement and the tramp’s demise. Opper passed away at the end of August 1937.

Opper never used assistants but his imagination and unsurpassed creativity made Hooligan and other major features Alphonse and Gaston and the astoundingly madcap Mule strip And Her Name was Maud household favourites around the world, appealing equally to Presidents and public alike. As the feature became ever more popular experimental and lesser strips such as Howsan Lott and Our Antediluvian Ancestors had perforce to be abandoned.

Happy Hooligan is an affable, well-meaning but bumbling tramp who wears an old tin-can for a hat. Wishing nobody ill, this gentle vagrant is usually the inadvertent tool of better bred folks who should know better, cops a little too fond of the truncheon and nightstick, and harsh, unforgiving cosmic ill-fortune. It is a strip brimming with invention, pathos, social commentary, delightful wordplay and broad, reckless slapstick. More than one source cites Happy as having a profound influence on Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp in both content and tone…

This black and white volume, compiled and edited in 1977 by unsung hero of American comic strips Bill Blackbeard, with a fascinating introduction from historian Rich Marschall, reprints the entire continuity from 1904 and 1905, and follows the simple sad-sack across the USA and, after many abortive and hilarious attempts, across the sea to England. After weeks of raucous calamity trying to see the King and falling foul of the equally high-handed British constabulary, Happy, with brothers Montmorency and Gloomy Gus (yep that’s one of Opper’s…) in tow, the clan Hooligan then proceeded to make themselves unwelcome throughout Europe. These hilarious, rowdy escapades are often exacerbated by occasional visits from the ultra-polite Alphonse and Gaston, Opper’s legendary duo of etiquette elitism…

Crossovers were not Opper’s only innovation. Happy Hooligan is considered to be the first American strip to depend on word balloons rather than supplemental text, and the humble, heartwarming hobo was also the first strip character to jump to the Silver Screen in six movie shorts between 1900-1902. He was also probably the first mass-market merchandising comics star…

Both Opper and his creations become less well-known by the year, but the quality of the work can never fail to amuse and inspire. If I could have only found a way to play bass and keep that tin can on me head back then, you might be buying my comeback album about now rather than reading a recommendation to track down one of the very best cartoon masterpieces of all time…
© 1977 Hyperion Press. All rights reserved.