Happy Hooligan — "Wins Out!"

Nine panels follow Happy Hooligan — the round-faced tramp in his tin-can hat — as he helps two children coast a wagon downhill, the ride accelerating through loops and crashes before a cop appears and the children escape unharmed. Speech balloons carry vernacular dialogue: *"Whats de matter, kid?"* and *"Dis ozone is great for my lungs."* Frederick Burr Opper's linework is loose and kinetic, crowd-pleasing slapstick compressed into a strict grid. Launched in 1900 for Hearst's syndicate, *Happy Hooligan* was among the first strips with a fixed recurring character and weekly continuity — the very mechanism that would eventually migrate from Sunday broadsheets into the collected pamphlets we now call comic books.