Tag Archives: Weekly Weird

Peg-Leg Bates Gets a Cameo in Hank

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The Weekly Weird. Coulton Waugh’s experimental adventure hero Hank was the first disabled character to lead a comic strip. Shortly after losing his leg, the veteran Hank finds inspiration from real-life Broadway sensation, Peg-Leg Bates. Bates was a sensation on the stage show circuit around the country during the 30s and 40s on Broadway. The sharecropper’s son lost his leg in a cotton gun accident at the age of 12. He was determined to overcomethe disability and eventually turned it into a dance routine. More on Hank and Bates here.

The Impaling of The Brow

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Yeah, that’s gonna leave a mark. Impaled on an American flagpole, sadistic WWII spy and Dick Tracy villain The Brow gets poked by poetic justice. More grisly villain deaths from Tracy creator Chester Gould here.

Gould’s Dick Tracy is my lifetime favorite strip, which I have already recounted in our About Panels and Prose section. I have covered Dick Tracy from many angles since starting this site years ago. You can find pieces on Flattop, Flattop Jr. the arch conservatism of Gould and his here, as well as assorted short takes on Tracy here.

“Fake News” Hot Off the 1894 Presses

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The Weekly Weird. In 1894, Puck magazine took aim at the rising influence of increasingly sensational and less costly city newspapers. Here, Frederick Burr Opper, who would go on to be one of newspaper comics’ founding fathers, called out Joseph Pulitzer in particular as a purveyor of “fake news.” More on the full cartoon here.

Elmo Gets Hairy

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Force-fed a new brand of cereal by his kidnappers that grows hair uncontrollably, Cecil Jensen’s country rube Elmo is awash in a pool of his own tresses. More on this strange late 1940s satire here.