Muggy-Doo Boy Cat

    (Stanhall, 1953-1954)
©1953 Hal Seeger

Although it can’t match the sublime weirdness of Herbie, Muggy-Doo Boy Cat rates easily as one of the oddest comics ever published, if only for the name alone.

Of course, like any great oddity, Muggy-Doo’s strangeness plays out on several levels. The lead character is a junkyard cat, but in this case, he’s a an actual junk peddler as well, who pushes his junk cart through the town in search of someone gullible enough to buy something. Sometimes, he even sings, “Yo-Ho, Yo-Ho! I deal in junk y’know! I’m Muggy-Doo an’ warn you, I’m known as a soandso, oh—Yo-Ho, Yo-Ho!”

While stumbling from one misadventure to the next, the wording on Muggy’s trademark yellow shirt (sometimes miscolored) changes to comment on the situation. This is a tip of the hat to R.E. Outcault’s Yellow Kid, who appeared in the first major American comic strip, “Hogan’s Alley.”
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