Happy Hooligan — 1901-04-20

Six panels follow Happy Hooligan — the good-natured tramp in his tin-can hat — as he spots a fallen man labeled "Brims the Hatter," bends to retrieve the man's hat, and attempts to return it, only to be set upon by a policeman and left in ruins by the final panel. The fat cop's speech balloon trails off mid-sentence; chaos accumulates with each tier. Opper's loose, rubbery line and his mastery of escalating slapstick made Happy Hooligan (launched 1900, New York Journal) one of the first recurring Sunday-page stars. Alongside The Yellow Kid and Katzenjammer Kids, these Hearst and Pulitzer Sunday pages codified the panel grid, the speech balloon, and the serial character — the direct structural ancestors of the comic book.