This is a strip from 1904 about a pair of sisters and the hijinks that ensue as the local boys vie to make an impression on these delectable ladies.

And they are onions.

You’re welcome.

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Though neither the creator of this strip nor the protagonist is Jewish–as far as we know–Gene Carr’s Mr. Al Most provides textbook examples of a couple of Yiddish archetypes. One is “mensch”, as he’s truly a great guy; he’s selfless in his desire to help his fellow man, with no regard to his personal safety or comfort. He’s the model that all of us should aspire to in our daily lives.

Unfortunately, the other word that suits him to a “T” is “schlimazel”.

To many of us, “schlemiel” and “schlimazel” are just words that Laverne and Shirley intoned in the introduction to their show’s theme song, but their meaning is illustrated wonderfully in a classic bit of Yiddish explication: a schlemiel is the kind of guy who spills soup on a fellow’s lap, while a schlimazel is the fellow who gets it dumped upon him. Poor Al: he always tries–and succeeds!–to do the right thing, but he’s always put upon for his efforts; left bloodied, bruised, scorned, and occasionally in the cusutody of the authorities.

It’s a terrific formula; the strip is funny and the character is very sympathetic. For half of the run, anyway… Then the premise of the strip changes, going from a fellow who does good deeds to a fellow trying to ditch the penniless, zaftig woman to whom he’s become mistakenly engaged. You still feel kind of bad for him, but he’s kind of a heel to this poor girl as he cooks up ideas to trick her into breaking off the engagement. Though I will say that it’s a testament to his core mensch-ness that he can’t bring himself to simply skip town or let her down hard. Ah, maybe he’s still a good fellow, after all.

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Grimes’s Goat, that is!

William Steinigans is already represented here at Barnacle Press by the sublime The Bad Dream That Made Bill a Better Boy and the adorable Pups strips; they’re joined today by a very funny strip with a very odd premise.

Grimes’s Goat is centered around a publicity stunt for the Blue Front Clothing Store, owned by the titular Grimes. He’s set his goat loose in town, and if you can catch it and bring it back to the store, you win a new suit! Each strip is centered around an attempt to “get his goat” and win the prize. At first, the would-be goat wranglers were drawn from a variety of vocations–cowboys, escaped prisoners, football players–and they’re a lot of fun, to be sure. But eventually the strip settles in on the repeated tries of an unkempt sailor, and these are my favorites of the batch. The cat-and-mouse (tar-and-goat?) interplay between the single-minded swabbie and the rascally ruminant would make for terrific animated shorts, if only the idea had come along twenty years later…

Starting off with a genuine origin story (below), there are forty-six strips in the complete run, all accounted for here.

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I love all of the comic creators whose work is displayed here at Barnacle Press, but of course I’ve got my particular favorites. High on my list is F.M. Howarth, a fantastic artist whose work straddles the invention of the newspaper comic strip, having first created captioned comic vignettes for Puck, Judge, and Life in the waning years of the 19th century. To my eye Howarth’s work looks like terrific, boldly lined animation cels, or like Colorform pieces that you could peel right off of the page. His work is painstakingly exact and stylized, and always unmistakable for anyone else in the history of comics.

I’ve got two features to share today. The first is Ain’t Men the Wretches? This is a domestic comedy concerning Mr. and Mrs. Snooks, and the constant attempts of the mister to pull one over on his wife. The kicker? He succeeds! Read as Snooks gets out of trouble again and again, using his wits to avoid terrible fates such as divorce and attending church.

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Next we have a few examples of E.Z. Mark. The title says it all, really, as Mr. Mark gets inveigled by one scheme after another.

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