Tigwissel Tuesdays #1: Professor Simple’s Baseless Vision, August 6, 2025
Multiple sources make note of 19th century comic artist Livingston Hopkins‘ continuing comic strip character Professor Tigwissel (often getting dates wrong, facts wrong, failing to name their sources, and — with most making the same mistakes — obviously stealing info from each other rather than conducting any research themselves).
None that I’ve seen, however, mentions Hopkins’ Tigwissel prototype — Professor Simple — who gets into the identically same type of misadventures, closely resembles Tigwissel (Tigwissel’s head is yet larger), and notably, preceded Tigwissel by more than two-and-a-half years.
This first Professor Simple adventure above — “The Baseless Fabric of a Vision” — appeared (as Tigwissel later will), in the (New York) Daily Graphic, and was published on August 6, 1873.
(NOTE: Clicking on the comic picture above, will open a version large enough for you to read!)
It’s also an appropriate strip to show at this time, given that this week marks the conclusion of NASA’s decades-long visionless trip-to-nowhere known as the Space Shuttle (and this comment, is coming from a space exploration-enthusiast).
ProfTigwissel NYDailyGraphic
— Doug
[...] Graphic, eleven months after Professor Simple’s first appearance (shown last week — click here to see it), and ten months prior to the first official Professor Tigwissel [...]
[...] are numerous prior examples I can cite off the top of my head, starting with Hopkins‘ own Professor Simple, two years before Tigwissel. Still earlier examples would include: Toodles by John McLenan, in [...]