Happy Hooligan — hh010602b

Six panels follow Happy Hooligan—tin-can hat, patched coat, eternally good intentions—as he spots a barrel labeled *Powder for Army Use*, decides someone nearby will be killed in an explosion, and heroically tries to drag the bystander to safety. The bystander fights back, a soldier intervenes demanding explanations, and the punchline reveals the barrel holds only baking powder. Opper's draftsmanship is crisp and economical: speech balloons arc naturally from each speaker, panel borders contain escalating physical chaos, and facial expressions carry the full comic load. Opper, a veteran of *Puck* magazine, brought genuine caricaturist's discipline to the Sunday page format that Hearst and Pulitzer were racing to perfect—pages whose recurring characters, sequential panels, and balloon dialogue assembled, strip by strip, the visual language the comic book would later inherit wholesale.