As earlier promised, Tigwissel Tuesdays has returned in January! Next week I’ll present the eighth appearance of re-occuring comic strip character, Professor Tigwissel. First, however, during the three month Tigwissel hiatus, I came across the above cartoon, rather obviously ripped off from the first appearance of Professor Tigwissel by Hopkins.

A Tale of a Great Invention was scanned from the 1883 first issue of Pickings from Puck, which like Puck’s Library, reprinted material that had earlier appeared in Puck magazine. This same cartoon was later itself directly ripped off, in 1885, by the British periodical Illustrated Bits, which thrived on unauthorized reprints of foreign (mostly American) cartoons.

Click on the above & below pictures, to view them in detail, and read the accompanying text.

Below, for comparison, is the May 28th, 1875 first appearance of Hopkins’ Professor Tigwissel, from the front page of the (New York) Daily Graphic, featuring Professor Tigwissel’s Life-Saving Apparatus.

And below next, the same idea again, re-used by Hopkins himself, in the April 14th, 1884 issue of the weekly Australian comic publication, the Sydney Bulletin.

Tigwissel Tuesdays will continue to appear sporadically, on those Tuesdays which are neither holidays nor have primaries or elections. Next Tuesday, we’ll feature the 8th appearance of Professor Tigwissel.

Doug Wheeler