When William Randolph Hearst lured Opper from his cartooning duties at PUCK magazine, he was already a successful artist. Opper, however, jumped at the chance and produced Happy Hooligan, a vagrant anti-hero who comes out very badly from the end of each strip, no matter how much good he might mean. His perennial demise surely went on to influence Wile E. Coyote and Mr. O, especially as his own cowardice and unworthiness always contributes to his hilarious...