Obscurity of the Day: Daffy-Dinks

Daffy-Dinks was a local strip drawn for the Lancaster (PA) Semi-Weekly Intelligencer by Tom Doerer. The pun-filled strip ran there from May 14 to November 22 1919.

Many of the puns in Daffy-Dinks are based on the names of local businessmen. This may seem an odd subject for gags in a comic strip, but small local papers like the Intelligencer were often looking for excuses to mention people in the community. It was good business because those people would invariably buy the paper, perhaps even multiple copies, to see their names in print. More importantly, though, businesspeople got mentions in hopes that they would in return place advertising in the paper. Doerer's Daffy-Dinks is by no means unusual in that many cartoonists were tasked with putting local people's names in their cartoons, but it certainly was unusual in making them the subject of some of the most excruciatingly bad puns you'll ever encounter.