Happy Hooligan — 1901-09-29

Ten numbered panels follow Happy Hooligan — identifiable by his tin-can hat and clown-checkered suit — as he spots a struggling balloonist and grabs the trailing anchor rope to help. The rope drags him airborne, smashes him through a brick chimney, then drops him in a heap while the balloon sails off. A policeman arrives, clubs him for causing a disturbance, and Hooligan protests, "I don't wanter be a angel." Opper's strip, launched in *New York American* in 1900, is foundational: its recurring protagonist, sequential numbered panels, and integrated speech balloons directly shaped the visual conventions that Sunday newspaper pages exported worldwide — the same pages that, bound and sold in the 1930s, became the first comic books.