Books
Opper was one of the most popular comic creators of his time. Happy Hooligan and his other popular strips were collected in book form and developed into merchandise products. The comic got translated as well and was, together with the Katzenjammer Kids and And Her Name Was Maud, one of the first North American comics to be published in Argentina, as Cocoliche. The comic was also probably the very first American comic strip adapted for films, when J. Stuart Blackton directed six live-action shorts (1900-02). Some 15 years later, it was adapted for more than 50 animated cartoons.
Beginning in 1904, Opper drew And Her Name Was Maud, about the kicking mule Maud, into comic strips and books, but on May 23, 1926, he positioned And Her Name Was Maud as the topper to his Happy Hooligan, and it ran along with Happy Hooligan until both strips came to a conclusion on October 14, 1932.
As Opper did not use an assistant, the series ended in 1932 when Opper abandoned it due to failing eyesight. While lacking lasting popularity, the series remained influential and has inspired e.g. Jules Feiffer and Rube Goldberg and was arguably a major inspiration for Charlie Chaplin's The Tramp character. It was called "Opper's greatest comic character" by comics artist Coulton Waugh.Happy Hooligan is also cited as the first comic to use speech balloons on a regular basis as an integral part of the comic (The Yellow Kid used speech balloons as early as 1896 but did not use them as the main means of communication).
Read more about this topic: Happy Hooligan
Famous quotes containing the word books:
“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
“Writers ought to be regarded as wrongdoers who deserve to be acquitted or pardoned only in the rarest cases: that would be a way to keep books from getting out of hand.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Only in books the flat and final happens,
Only in dreams we meet and interlock....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)