Moon Mullins - Origins and History

Origins and History

Frank Henry Willard was born on September 21, 1893 in Anna, Illinois, the son of a physician, who early on determined to become a cartoonist. After attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago in 1913, he was a staff artist with the Chicago Herald (1914–18), where he drew the Sunday kids' page Tom, Dick and Harry and another strip, Mrs. Pippin's Husband. He next wrote and drew The Outta Luck Club for King Features Syndicate (1919–23).

In The Comics (1947), Coulton Waugh described Willard's art style as "gritty-looking." In 2003, the Scoop newsletter documented the 1923 events that led to the creation of the strip:

Moon was a tough-talking, if generally good natured, kind of guy who took (and dealt) plenty of punches during his run. And actually, those are very appropriate characteristics. See, back before Moon was created, Frank Willard was working on a strip called The Outta Luck Club for King Features Syndicate. That's when he got the notion that some of his ideas were being slipped to fellow cartoonist George McManus (creator of Bringing Up Father). So, in typical Moon Mullins fashion, Willard approached McManus and gave him a wallop that knocked the latter out cold and got the former fired. That little episode didn't stop Captain Joe Patterson's interest from being piqued, however, and Willard soon set to work on a new strip for the Chicago Tribune Syndicate. That strip was Moon Mullins...

Ah, Moon Mullins! He made a horrible role model but a hilarious star nonetheless—as did his assorted pals... Adventures included stints in jail, trysts with stolen cars, failed employment opportunities, misunderstandings and plenty of black eyes for all. Yet, there was a certain lightness to all of Moon's debaucheries that made his low-down ways pretty charming...

Reportedly, the strip was originally intended as a rival for King Features' Barney Google, also about a lovable, banjo-eyed lowlife at home in the sporting world. It proved so popular that men named Mullins, born from about the 19-teens through the 1960s, were as likely as not to be nicknamed "Moon." Willard was in tune with the working class characters he created, as noted by David Westbrook in From Hogan's Alley to Coconino County: Four Narratives of the Early Comic Strip:

Some comic strip artists laid claim to a similar working-class authenticity by representing themselves in the position of employee. When Frank Willard, author of Moon Mullins, narrates a scene from his workplace, he portrays himself as a rowdy underdog much like The Yellow Kid. He becomes, in effect, the "tricky and roguish" character cited by Gilbert Seldes as the quintessence of the comic strip.

When Brennecke (in "The Real Mission of the Funny Paper" by Ernest Brennecke, from The Century Magazine, March 1924) locates the truth of comic strip realism in the comics' habit of "commenting trenchantly" on "the life of the middle classes," it is comics like The Yellow Kid and artists like Willard that he has in mind...