From the exhibition
Happy Hooligan — Omaha Daily Bee, May 18, 1913
· May 18, 1913

This Sunday page pairs two strips. The top six panels, *Happy Hooligan Makes a Hit!*, follow the familiar tin-canned tramp as he wheels an ailing uncle through the street, collides with a portly gentleman, and is promptly thrashed — the recurring loop of good intention punished that made Frederick Burr Opper's character a reader favourite from 1900 onward. Below, *Bongo Could Talk, Too!* works a talking-monkey gag through six panels of courtroom dignitaries and slapstick hat-trouble. Opper, a veteran of *Puck* magazine, was among the craftsmen who fixed the visual grammar still in use today: stable panel grids, speech balloons anchored to speakers, and a single costumed character whose misfortune readers tracked week to week — the direct ancestor of the comic-book page.
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