The Wish Twins are an obscurity by association. The strip ran for five years in the New York Herald, almost always as an inside third-page with only one spot color. Meanwhile on the other side of that sheet was usually something by Winsor McCay. Not quite well-drawn or interesting enough to compete with the master, they are ignored like the wallflowers at a dance. If you can afford to buy Little Nemo tearsheets you're among the few with access, but who could tear their eyes away from the full-color full-page glory of Nemo long enough to peruse the sparse monotone color of the third page Wish Twins on the reverse?The creator, W.O. Wilson, was a regular of the humor weeklies where he was never a star player but did turn out good cartoons. He spent most of the 1900s at the New York World where he penned this feature as well as a number of others that hid in the section's interior. His one breakout strip was Madge the Magician's Daughter which he did for the Philadelphia North American; this strip has lately been the subject of a Hogan's Alley article.
The Wish Twins ran in the Herald from October 30 1904 through January 5 1908. You'll find more samples of this strip over on Barnacle Press.
Did you know, speaking of McCay and the Herald, that for a very brief period of time, both McCay and Earl Hurd (one of the inventors of the cel-animation process) were drawing cartoons for the same paper?
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