by Frederick Burr Opper

Opper was already a quite successful cartoonist/illustrator for the prestigious Puck magazine when William Randolph Hearst lured him out to create a comic strip for the New York Journal. While a step down from (relatively) high to low brow, Opper jumped at the chance and out came Happy Hooligan, an un-heroized vagrant who ends up very badly at the end of each strip, no matter how much good he might mean. His perennial demise surely went on to inspire Wile E. Coyote or Mr. O, especially as his own cowardice and unworthiness contributes to his hilarious woes. This second entry in Forever Nuts, a series showcasing early strips so ingeniously nutty they're forever fresh and off-the-wall, presents here a collection of the better early full-color Sunday strips.