Happy Hooligan — St. Louis Republic, May 29, 1904

Six panels trace the familiar arc: Happy Hooligan, the good-natured tramp in his tin-can hat, attempts some small act of helpfulness and is predictably thrashed by the Fat Cop, who looms through every scene as a rotund, club-wielding foil. Fredrick Opper's line is economical — thick outlines, broad physical comedy, speech balloons integrated directly into the action. The strip ran in Hearst papers from 1900; by 1904 it was syndicated nationally, appearing on full Sunday color pages that were folded and sold separately, a direct ancestor of the comic book format. These Sunday pages — alongside The Yellow Kid and Buster Brown — established the repeating character, the sequential panel grid, and the speech balloon as the medium's core grammar.