The Education of Alonzo Applegate, 1910
For Week Two of this year’s Back-to-School College Comics, we present a few extracts from The Education of Alonzo Applegate and Other Cartoons, by cartoonist Jay Norwood “Ding” Darling. This 1910 collection reprints Ding cartoons which originally appeared in the Des Moines Register. Above, the cover of The Education of Alonzo Applegate, showing his start [...]
Tigwissel Tuesdays #8: Midsummer Musings, August 7th, 1875
The fourth published appearance of Professor Tigwissel, is found in an interior page of the August 7th, 1875 edition of the (New York) Daily Graphic. In Midsummer Musings by our Cynical Artist, Livingston Hopkins has assigned Tigwissel only a cameo role consisting of two of the near dozen cartoon panels. Tigwissel’s use here seems forced [...]
William T. Peters’ “Ichabod Academicus”, circa 1850: Sophomore Year
Last year, we presented on SuperI.T.C.H. several postings involving the theme of Back-to-School, each of them showcasing Victorian Age and Hearst Era comics published by college students. Amongst these postings was the first part of the circa 1850 sequential comic book, The College Experiences of Ichabod Academicus, written & drawn by Yale University student William [...]
Tigwissel Tuesdays #7: Professor Tigwissel’s Arctic Experience, July 28th, 1875
Professor Tigwissel‘s third published adventure — Professor Tigwissel’s Arctic Experience — appeared on July 28th, 1875, on the front page of that day’s (New York) Daily Graphic. Tigwissel creator — comic artist Livingston Hopkins — took his inspiration from contemporary accounts of Polar explorers (and popular cartoon parodies of same). Concocting a polar scenario during [...]
Tigwissel Tuesdays #6: Tigwissel Antecedents: Professor Prag
Professor Tigwissel was, of course, preceded by the comic misadventures of numerous other cartoon strip professors. Nearly all of these bumbling, bespectacled scientists were one-appearance wonders, or at best had a couple serialized appearances — nothing approaching the sporadic seven-year run of Hopkin’s Tigwissel. They certainly, however, influenced Hopkins, who would have seen at least [...]
Tigwissel Tuesdays #5: Professor Tigwissel vs. Dr. Jingo, July 3, 2025
With Professor Tigwissel’s second comedic adventure, Livingston Hopkins cements the funny-sounding name and bespectacled egg-head design of the character to which Hopkins repeatedly return to for parodies involving in inventors, academics, scientists, and explorers. On this second appearance, though, it was not yet clear that readers would (sporadically) be seeing Tigwissel again and again, over [...]
Tigwissel Tuesdays #4: Professor Tigwissel Debuts, May 28, 2025
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 [...]
Tigwissel Tuesdays #3: Livingston Hopkins Gets His Head Examined, Feb 22, 2026
Just a quickie this week, as we continue our chronological march towards to the first full-fledged Professor Tigwissel adventure (next week!) Above, a close-up from the bottom right corner of a full-page of cartoons by artist Livingston Hopkins, which appeared on the front of the February 22nd, 1875 issue of the (New York) Daily Graphic. [...]
Pre-YK Talkies: Parrots, Telephones, and Phonographs
Now that I’ve begun a series of articles intended to reveal all (that I’ve found) appearances of Livingston Hopkins’ recurring comic strip character, Professor Tigwissel (plus Hopkins’ Tigwissel-prototypes), it’s time to resume another Super I.T.C.H. series, Pre-YK Talkies. One major reason I’ve been offended by the insistence in published books & articles, that the comic [...]
Tigwissel Tuesdays #2: Professor Simple’s “Tales of the Comet”, July 8th, 1874
Above, we continue our study in the evolution of comic artist Livingston Hopkins’ recurring comic strip character, Professor Tigwissel, with the second appearance of Hopkins’ Tigwissel-prototype, Professor Simple. This occurrence — titled “Tales of the Comet” — appeared on the front page of the July 8th, 1874 edition of the (New York) Daily Graphic, eleven [...]
