CRUMBLING PAPER: Billy Bragg

Here’s an example I scanned of Billy Bragg by C.W. Kahles (the man who brought us the previously posted Billy Bounce strips). I don’t know the year on this one. I don’t believe the prolific Mr. Kahles ever did a comic strip that didn’t feature a protagonist with an alliterative name describing their character.

Click the image to view the full strip.

Click here to read examples of Kahles’ Billy Bounce at Barnacle Press.

Click here to read examples of Kahles’ Clumsy Claude at Barnacle Press.

Click here to read examples of Kahles’ Hairbreadth Harry at Barnacle Press.

Click here to read examples of Kahles’ Foolish Fred and Clarance the Cop at Stripper’s Guide.

Click here to read examples of Kahles’ Optimistic Oswald at Stripper’s Guide.

Click here to read about Kahles at lambiek.net.

Click here to read more about Kahles’ Billy Bounce at Don Markstein’s Toonopedia.

Click here to read more about Kahles’ Hairbreadth Harry at Don Markstein’s Toonopedia.

Billy Bounce (1906)

Here are some of the many illustrations I found from William Wallace Denslow’s Billy Bounce book from 1906, which is presented in its entirety on Google Book Search here.

Denslow is better known as the illustrator of The Wizard of Oz, and he also created the Billy Bounce comic strip. We previously presented some Billy Bounce comic strips from 1903 and 1904 by C.W. Kahles, who followed Denslow on the comic strip feature.

The book being published in 1906 indicates that Denslow must have still had controlling interest of the comic strip feature after his departure from it. It is also interesting to note that none of the other regular characters from the Billy Bounce strip appear to be in the book, although I haven’t read it so I may be wrong.

Although Billy Bounce is pretty thorougly forgotten at this point, in his time he was apparently popular enough to be featured on a wide array of merchandise… including cigars! Read more about Billy Bounce at Toonopedia.

See more Billy Bounce comic strips at Barnacle Press here (by both Denslow and Kahles).


You can download the full book as a pdf here.

Larger versions of all images can be seen by clicking on them, which will take you to the appropriate page of the book on Google Book Search.

Crumbling Paper: Billy Bounce Takes a Picture- Not

Happy New Year! Here’s a new year’s strip from 1904, featuring bizarre ball-boy and ball-buster Billy Bounce, drawn here by C.W. Kahles. Note this strip uses a joke in the title I erroneously had attributed in my mind to Wayne’s World… apparently it is much older. A brilliant joke it is- not.

I posted Billy Bounce strip earlier here.

Click the image below to see the full page (warning: contains offensive racial depictions, as is often the case with old comics).

Crumbling Paper: Billy Bounce and The Teasers (1903) (strip #1)

Here’s the other side of the Uncle Pike page I posted the other day. Today we have Billy Bounce in “Billy Bounce Cheats the Cannibals Out of a Nice Stew” and The Teasers in “Bobby Gets the Reward.” Billy Bounce is a bizarre character… he’s a big, fat, bouncing ball-boy. His cast is very odd too… I have another one of these I will be posting sooner or later.

Billy was created by W.W. Denslow of Wizard of Oz book illustration fame, which makes a whole lot of sense looking at the characters. It was taken over in 1902 by C.W. Kahles, who did this one (Kahles later went on to create Hairbreadth Harry). This one is by Kahles… it’s a fun, weird strip.

The Teasers is also by Kahles… the main character looks pretty much like Billy Bounce after losing weight, although I actually hadn’t made the connection that the two were drawn by the same person until checking the Ohio State Cartoon Research Library site. Neither strip has a signature, and they have a stylistically very different feel to them. The Teasers uses a bizarre technique of using both word balloons and printed copy below the panels to convey dialogue.

Click the image below to see the full page (warning: contains offensive racial depictions, as is often the case with old comics).