rawhidebill061018

While looking around the site recently, I thought to myself, where are all the cowboys?  And who should come moseying along the trail at that very moment but Heppner Blackman’s Rawhide Bill. This may be a lesson in being careful what you wish for, pardner. Pulse pounding action in the Wild West has been traded for culture shock in the Effete East and six-guns have been traded for bad puns. Well, that’s not entirely true – there actually is one episode where Bill shoots a man in cold blood but it just so happens it also features some overt racism…forgive me if I do not highlight it further. I realize we’re looking at strips printed over a century ago and this stuff comes with the territory, but my first reaction is always “how were people okay with this?!” Maybe I should take a cue from the song and not try to understand ’em.

happihome060327

Speaking of Walter Wellman, what do we have here? Why, it’s a long forgotten strip featuring the domestic comedy of Mr. Happihome and spouse. While I’d like to find some strips from If or Oh, Where, Oh, Where, Has That Willie Boy Gone, I’m pretty excited to present these today; I’d never heard of it before. Happihome is pre-television sit-com for sure, there’s hi-jinks aplenty of the 1906 variety. You can count on him to pull the ol’ apple pie switcheroo or mistakenly bring home a cat instead of a hat…cue the laugh track.