Obscurity of the Day: Adventures of Handsome Hawtrey and Faithful Fritz

 

The great Walt McDougall was a fixture of the front page of the Philadelphia North American's comic section for eight years, from 1901-1908. He would occasionally be asked to illustrate a series like Peck's Bad Boy, but in general his own comics never had a continuing character or title -- his pages were about whatever happened to tickle his funnybone that week. To every rule there must be an exception, though, and today we shine the spotlight on Adventures of Handsome Hawtry and Faithful Fritz, a series McDougall produced in place of his weekly untitled page from June 16 to October 27 1907*. 

The strip features a pair of ne'er-do-wells who each week steal something, or cook up a scheme, that inevitably backfires. There's nothing particularly creative about it, and I doubt that readers were too miffed when McDougall switched back to his usual weekly one-shot gags. 

A note about the listing for this feature in my book -- somehow an error snuck in (surely the only one!) and I gave the wrong end date. The dates reported here are certified grade A corn-fed verities, though, guaranteed to hold up in court against even the most blistering cross-examination.

* Source: Philadelphia North American, which is missing the June 16 section, but start date verified by Washington Times.