Happy Hooligan — 1911-05-28

Six panels follow Happy Hooligan — identifiable by his tin-can hat and polka-dot costume — as he stumbles through a circus-pole-balancing act. Hired to steady a pole, he ends up spinning atop it like a human pinwheel, crashing headfirst into the ground while a ringmaster narrates his "superb grace and ease." The final panel finds him home, battered and black-eyed, to his family's dismay. Opper's line is loose and kinetic, his speech balloons packed with vaudeville dialect. Launched in 1900 for Hearst's papers, *Happy Hooligan* ran over two decades and helped standardize the recurring-character Sunday strip — the direct ancestor of the comic book page. Opper's signature sits bottom-right.