Stripper's Guide: Obscurity of the Day: Mr. Fergetit

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Obscurity of the Day: Mr. Fergetit

George Hopf, who has not yet made an appearance on the Stripper's Guide blog, had a delightful cartooning style and sense of humor that I really enjoy. He did a little work at the Philadelphia Inquirer, and then moved to the New York World where he stayed for the better part of a decade. At the World I guess he must have had other duties in addition to cartooning, because his short run strips were punctuated with long dry spells.

Hopf's first series at the World was Mr. Fergetit, which ran from August 21 to September 24 1904 as a single-tier quickie in the Sunday comics section. Why this delightful cartoonist wasn't given better billing is a mystery to me. Here was a guy who really 'got' how a newspaper strip worked when plenty of other cartoonists at the big New York papers still seemed pretty clueless.

Profuse thanks to Cole Johnson for the heads-up on the existence of this strip and the scans!

Labels: Obscurities