Above — emerging two years after Hopkins’ prototype versions Professor Simple and Mr. Tigwissel — we at last arrive at the true debut of Livingston Hopkins’ recurring comic strip character, Professor Tigwissel. The above comic — “Professor Tigwissel’s Life-Saving Apparatus” — appeared on the front page of the (New York) Daily Graphic newspaper, on May 28, 1875.

(NOTE: Click on the comic pages above & below, to open versions large enough to read!)

Nearly a decade later, Hopkins moved to Australia, hired as a featured artist on the Sydney Bulletin. Hopkins created several full pages of cartoons every week for the Bulletin — a far heavier schedule than his sporadic appearances in various U.S. periodicals. During his first year on the Bulletin particularly, Hopkins could hardly be blamed for occasionally swiping artwork & ideas from his own U.S.-published cartoons, given that few Australians would have seen that work! Below, in a page from the April 5th, 1884 issue of the Sydney Bulletin, Hopkins returned to the idea of special shoes to walk across the ocean, used in his first Professor Tigwissel comic strip. All the other imagery on this same page, also derives from earlier Hopkins cartoons in the Daily Graphic — with the exception of the shark — added for Hopkins’ Australian audience!

For prior entries in this series, click here on Tigwissel Tuesdays.

Doug Wheeler

ProfTigwissel NYDailyGraphic