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 [...]
Keeping Cool: C.M. Coolidge, and Hopkins at the Daily Graphic Office
The variety of methods for keeping cool before the age of air-conditioning, could be an endless source of inspiration for early cartoonists (who, due to the nature of deadlines, may have been producing these in the winter!) Below, from 1883, a series of trade cards by one of our eternal favorites, Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, who is [...]
Professor Tigwissel’s Glorious Fourth (2nd Appearance by Name)
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Fourth of July was commonly referred to as “The Glorious Fourth”. American comic periodicals often published cartoons both to honor of the day, and to celebrate its self-inflicted injuries via fireworks. Cartoonist Livingston Hopkins, who wrote/illustrated a Comic History of the United States was a frequent contributor [...]
A Few Suggested Alternate Methods for Crossing the Atlantic…
With thousands of travellers trapped on both sides of the Atlantic, by the vulnerability of modern jet engines to the ash spewing out of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano — and with still further disruptions likely - time has come for us to re-examine a handful of the more innovative transportation ideas offered, and dismissed, over a century ago. The following woodcut cartoons are the [...]
