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The Comic Life of Horace Greeley, New York, “Wild Oats” Office, 1872, 30 pp., illustrated by Livingston Hopkins and others. Read the comic HERE. More on Wild Oats HERE.

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Wild Oats – subtitled “An Illustrated Weekly Journal of Fun,  Satire, Burlesque, Hits at Persons and Events of the Day.” – cover by C.J. Howard, No. 28, Vol. III, April 11, 1872.

The dominant humor magazine in America in the 1870s was Wild Oats. When it was launched as a monthly in February 1870, in New York, it joined a crowded field. Four other folio monthlies were by that time well-established. Frank Leslie’s Budget of Fun (1859-78), The Comic Monthly (1859-81), and Phunny Phellow (1859-73) were all over a decade old. The Jolly Joker (1866-78) was nearing its fiftieth issue. None of them was particularly healthy (though the Budget of Fun was still the best of the four), but New Yorkers were well accustomed to seeing them around town. There were also three comic quartos that vied for the railroad passenger crowd, Yankee Notions (1851-75), Nick-Nax (1856-75), and Merryman’s Monthly (1863-75). They had all seen better days. So when Wild Oats hit the newsstands it actually stood a good chance of success.

It was edited by 35-year-old George Small, aka Bricktop, perhaps the most prolific comic writer of the post-Civil War period. Born in Maine, raised in Massachusetts, the eldest in a family of nine children, Bricktop earned his sobriquet due to his shock of (rapidly thinning) red hair. He was a gentle humorist, a specialist of the mildly amusing yarn told at a glacial pace. Previously he had been the editor of The Jolly Joker, both when it was owned by the Leslie brothers, Alfred and Henry, and then after they sold it to their father Frank Leslie in the summer of 1868.  Bricktop had joined with the advertising manager of The Jolly Joker, Jinks Winchell, to establish Wild Oats. Winchell was a half-dozen years younger than Bricktop. He (and his mother) boarded with the Bricktop, his wife, and child in a New York City rooming house.

Full-page comic strip, titled: “ ‘Turning Over a New Leaf,’ or, Mr. Nogg’s New-Year’s Calls.” During its first four years  or so Wild Oats printed a good deal of sequential art,  some of it pirated, but most of it original.

The monthly appeared to prosper from the start. It was not a polished effort, but it exuded energy, which was more than could be said of its older competitors. It employed the drawing talents of Currier and Ives artist Thomas Worth, C.J. Howard (not to be confused with the more talented J.H. Howard), and the youthful Livingston Hopkins, fresh to New York City from his native Ohio. As a sign of its success, after two years as a monthly, the owners converted Wild Oats to a fortnightly, just in time for the 1872 presidential campaign. The magazine did not seem to care one way or the other about President Grant, but it vilified Horace Greeley. More talent came Wild Oats’ way. By the turn of the year, Mike Woolf, Frank Bellew, Frank Beard, and W.H. Shelton were contributing cartoons and John Harrington, writing as ‘John Carboy,’ and ‘Tom Wonder’ were contributing fiction.

In November of 1872, for reasons unknown, Winchell dropped out as co-owner and was replaced by 30-year-old John Collin (no ‘s’), a New York printer. Usually when this happened in 19th century journalism, it meant that the publisher could not keep up with the printing bills and in lieu of payment deeded over his share of the magazine to the magazine’s printer. While this seems the likely explanation for Winchell’s departure and Collin’s arrival, it would have been considered a surprising development since by all appearances Wild Oats was prospering.

In early 1874, James A. Wales, following in the footsteps of his fellow Ohioan Hopkins, began drawing for the magazine. Frank Bellew stepped up his contributions when The Fifth Avenue Journal, the Democratic weekly he had been working for, fell on hard times and eventually folded. On the literary side, sometime during the year, John Harrington became assistant editor. In October, Collin and Small converted Wild Oats into a weekly, making it the only comic weekly magazine in America at the time.

The staff of Wild Oats. Pictured on the left shaking hands  are publisher John Collin and assistant editor John Harrington  (‘John Carboy’). In the foreground is editor George Small    (‘Bricktop’) greeting the Wild Oats fictional character ‘Elam.’  Waiting in line to say hello are the magazine’s artists,  from left to right: Livingston Hopkins (with cane)   Thomas Worth, Frank Bellew (in cape), a mystery figure,   James A. Wales, and two other mystery figures.

The New Year’s issue of 1875 contains a wonderful full-page cartoon by Wales depicting the Wild Oats stable of writers and artists. Here we find caricatures of Collin, Bricktop, and Carboy. The artists stand in a line waiting to share New Year’s greetings with the editor. In order, they are Hopkins, Worth, Bellew, Shelton or Howard (?), and Wales. The man between Bellew and Wales is the only questionable identification. Shelton or Howard are the logical candidates for such a position of prominence, certainly in front of Wales, but pictures we have of an older Shelton, when he attained success as a fine artist, do not match the visage of the man depicted here. And we do not know what Howard looked like. This is a mystery to be solved another day.

Yet another Ohioan, Frederick Burr Opper began contributing cartoons in October 1875. His work figures prominently in the magazine in 1876, especially after Wales departed for study in Europe and Bellew fell ill for much of the year. Wild Oats pulled off something of a literary coup in August when it pirated a chapter of Mark Twain’s forthcoming novel, already published in England. It became the first magazine in America to publish ‘How Tom Sawyer Got His Fence Whitewashed’ in the August 23 issue, several weeks before Tom Sawyer was published in New York. In the fall, Wales joined the staff of Frank Leslie’s, replacing Joseph Keppler, who had left to found the German-language Puck. Not long after, Opper would join Wales at Leslie’s. By the end of the decade, both of them were lured away by Keppler to help him illustrate the increasingly prosperous Puck.

Wild Oats, No. 181, Vol. XIV, June 14, 1876 front page.  Cover by F. Opper satirizing fellow cartoonist  Thomas Nast’s anti-Catholic fixation.

In 1877, Collin and Small dissolved their partnership and Small resigned as editor. The loss of comic talent both literary and artistic hit Wild Oats hard. In September Collin converted the weekly back to a fortnightly. The contents grew more and more bleak, as the magazine spiraled downward. To save money, Collin began printing second-hand engravings, an increasing number of which were not even comic in nature, and the unpolished work of his wife, Lucy. In 1880, Palmer Cox’s work was being printed alongside the occasional cartoons by old stalwarts Bellew and Worth, but their bright contributions failed to mask Wild Oats’ otherwise seedy state. It limped along into 1881, when it was discontinued, unnoticed and unmourned. By then, Puck was lighting up the skies and the world of the American humor magazine would never be the same again.


* Richard Samuel West’s new book Iconoclast in Ink; The Political Cartoons of Jay N. “Ding” Darling can be purchased HERE.

George G. Small, author, publisher and humorist died at the Hotel Hungaria, Union Square, NY, on 10 Mar 1886, leaving a wife and one child. Once a rich man, he was now comparatively poor and suffering from consumption. He was fifty-one years old. Fifty people attended his funeral. Among the mourners were Frank Tousey, Thomas Worth and J. A. Wales.

It was Collins and Small who first published the LAUGHING SERIES, BRICKTOP STORIES. No. 1 was illustrated by Thomas Worth and number two, “My Mother-in-Law sported fifty comic illustrations by Livingston Hopkins (creator of the famous Professor Tigwissel, collected together by Doug Wheeler HERE). They also published the humorist John Carboy and an illustrated Wild Oats Songster.

Bricktop and Hopkins photo Courtesy Daniel McKeown from Lone Hand magazine (Australia)

Tousey & Small’s partnership was short-lived and was dissolved on 21 Dec 1878 by mutual consent.  The firm and its publications were carried on by Frank Tousey alone. Small continued to contribute to the BONY; a mysterious hero (he wore a wolfshead over his brow) was introduced by him on 29 Oct 1881 in the serial “The Ocean Wolf,” and he contributed to the Detective Library. Other Tousey & Small titles were The New York Boys’ Weekly and The Boys Leader.