Obscurity of the Day: Hi and Si

As we've discussed many times before, the history of early newspaper comics is cluttered with a seemingly endless list of Katzenjammer Kids rip-offs. Here's yet another one.

Hi and Si was done for the McClure preprint Sunday comic sections by Mark Fenderson from March 29 1903 to July 31 1904. Fenderson saw no reason to give them a colorful nationality, or provide them with a memorable nemesis, or a hook of any kind. No, they're just two rotten kids pulling pranks, and their pranks don't even exhibit any particular ingenuity. The feature is badly drawn, badly lettered and just so perfunctory that it makes me wonder if some series truly are better off left forgotten.

But since I did bring it up, lets not be perfunctory about the write-up. Strips from this series were reused by McClure in their sections of 1906-08, no doubt reprinted by popular demand (he said sarcastically).

Thanks (he said without any sarcasm at all) to Cole Johnson, who provided the samples!