Godspeed, Dwiggo!

It's time again for crazy screwed up comics from long ago that I swiped from Barnacle Press. Here, from 1913, we have Home Wanted by a Baby! in which little orphan Baby shows up on a doorstep, has to face terribly incompetent and neurotic adults, escapes, talks to some random animal, and continues on to the next doorstep. And this happens in every strip, every day, for months.

Here's another one if you don't believe me.


Yes, Baby's catchphrase seems to be "Wow!" I don't know if this is a horrible attempt at onomatopoeia in a strange, turn-of-the-century kind of way, but it may just be a very early occurrence of self-referential humor as even Baby can't believe what's going on in the strip.

In any event, it's attributed to one Clare Victor Dwiggins. I'd like to think that it's not just a pseudonym for some unknown stooge in the newspaper's rank and file. I know in my heart that Dwiggins was a real person, and that he ran around the sidewalks of New York honking a bicycle horn at pretty girls like Harpo Marx.

Screw it. I'm going to go on the record and admit that I love this strip.