Little Jimmy

James Swinnerton was among the very first American newspaper cartoonists to turn a recurring character into a daily habit. Drawing for William Randolph Hearst's papers from the mid-1890s, he filled the margins with a menagerie of little cartoon bears and tigers — playful creatures often counted among the earliest recurring newspaper comic features, appearing years before the form even had a name. He went on to create his signature strip, Little Jimmy (shown here in a 1901 Sunday installment), about a small boy so easily distracted that he never quite completes the errand he is sent on. Swinnerton's long, prolific career helped establish the cartoonist as a permanent fixture of the American newspaper, and proved that readers would return day after day for characters they had come to know. He is one of the medium's true founding figures.