American cartoonist Jeff Kinney is widely known as the creator of the successful children’s book series Diary of a Wimpy Kid. The series was first published in 2004 on the website FunBrain, followed by a print series starting in 2007. Since then, the popular franchise has seen 18 main entries, as well as several supplementary books and spin-off projects. While characters like Greg Heffley, Rowley Jefferson, and Manny Heffley are widely recognizable by both children and adults, a lesser-known character created by Kinney is Igdoof.

The Villanovan, Vol. 65. No. 18, March 30, 1990, p. 22.

Igdoof was the eponymous protagonist of a comic strip that Kinney wrote and illustrated as a university student from 1989 to 1993. The series was originally published from September 8, 1989, to April 20, 1990, in The Villanovan, volume 65, issues 1-20; the rest of the series was published by the University of Maryland’s newspaper after Kinney transferred there. Unlike Kinney’s later creations, Igdoof did not feature entirely child-friendly humor, but was instead aimed at a college-student audience. In the comic strip, the character of Igdoof gets into trouble and has a hard time adjusting to college life, generally to comical effect. Sometimes, he makes jokes at the University’s expense.

The Villanovan, Vol. 65. No. 7, November 3, 1989, p. 28.

Kinney attempted to continue Igdoof in professional newspapers after his time at the University of Maryland, but never actualized this goal; this 1994 article from The Washington Post provides context for this period in Kinney’s career. However, Kinney was able to rework various aspects of Igdoof in Diary of a Wimpy Kid. While the jokes in Igdoof were often inaccessible to or inappropriate for younger children, the comic strip nonetheless influenced Kinney’s famous children’s book series. Several characters in Diary of a Wimpy Kid are based on Igdoof characters, most notably Greg Heffley’s younger brother Manny Heffley, who bears a strong resemblance to Igdoof himself.

The Villanovan, Vol. 65. No. 20, April 20, 1990, p. 21.

All Igdoof comic strips from the 1989 and 1990 issues of The Villanovan have been digitized and are available to view on the Villanova Digital Library. Later Igdoof stories have been digitized by the University of Maryland and are available to view here. Falvey Library also offers digital access to several entries in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, including Big Shot, The Deep End, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Special Disney+ Cover Edition).

Note: In recent years, Igdoof has attracted the attention of the internet’s lost media community, which seeks to track down and preserve media that is in danger of becoming lost to history. This page on the Lost Media Wiki website chronicles the attempts at uncovering the comic strip, which was believed to be lost for a time. The website credits Villanova University with making Igdoof available, but provides a hyperlink to digitized copies on the Internet Archive, rather than the Villanova Digital Library.

Episode two: “Hard Times at the Huskin’ Bee,” Cartoon Network, original air date November 3, 2014.

Fall, with all its gloomy skies yet cozy days, is known as time for a rewatch for fans of the cartoon, Over the Garden Wall. Since 2014 and with each passing year the cartoon has garnered new fans of all ages. The richness in storytelling interweaving childhood hurt, fear, insecurity, and sense of adventure against the backdrop of the unknown. The story draws on folk and fairy tale conventions and forms a story where the tone seems familiar yet unrecognizable at the same time that seems to keep audiences captivated. Adventure Time storyboard artist, Patrick McHale, created the ten-part Cartoon Network miniseries which draws inspiration from Dante’s Inferno, nineteenth to early-twentieth century Halloween cards, lithography, 1930s animation linework, the illustrations of John Tenniel, a 1890 board game called Game of Frog Pond, folk art, early twentieth century American music, and, for those in the know, McLoughlin Brothers children’s books.

The Three Bears. New York: McLoughlin Brothers, 1888.

Distinctive Collections has a small collection of McLoughlin Brothers Inc. children’s books in our Dime Novel and Popular Literature collections. McLoughlin Brothers Inc. produced children books, board games, puzzles, and paper toys between 1858 and 1920. The artwork was considered vibrant for the time as the company pioneered color printing technologies for children’s books with chromolithographs and photo engravings. The company specialized in retelling of classic stories for children. Their success and influence went hand in hand with the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries growth of children’s literature, also known as the Golden Age of Children’s Literature. Even many of the earliest board games in America were produced by McLoughlin Brothers, though, in 1920, the company’s board games were sold to Milton Bradley & Company. Today, the American Antiquarian Society holds one of the largest collections of McLoughlin Brothers archives including over 1,700 toy books, games, paper toys, publishers’ catalogs, and original art work. But you can view Distinctive Collections’ small collection in the Digital Library and/or in person in our reading room.

The cartoon pays homage to the McLoughlin Brothers in subtle ways as many believe in the opening credits the two boys playing with the steamboat in the creek to be the McLoughlin brothers. In the episode, “Lullaby in Frogland,” the steamboat Wirt, Greg, and Beatrice sneak on board is called the “McLoughlin Bros” steamboat. Throughout the episodes it’s easy to see the influence from color palette and style to characters.

Episode six: “Lullaby in Frogland,” Cartoon Network, original air date November 6, 2014

Attention all graphic novel and comic book fans! You are cordially invited to join us for our inaugural event celebrating comics, graphic novels, and sequential art on Wednesday, Sept. 27, from 6-7 p.m. at Villanova University’s Falvey Library. The event will feature professional cartoonist Brad Guigar and will be held in Speakers’ Corner on the Library’s first floor.

In 2000, webcomics grew out of dissatisfaction with gatekeepers (publishers and syndicates) and led to a new generation of creator-entrepreneurs who taught themselves about art AND business — and are currently finding a financially stable career in a climate in which “published” artists are struggling. What used to be known as “vanity press” is now offering a superior outcome for many creative professionals. Furthermore, it opened the door for marginalized voices that had previously been ignored by corporate gatekeepers.

Brad Guigar is considered by many to be an independent comics pioneer, having published his daily comic strips and other comics on the Web for over 20 years. His most well-known comic, “Evil Inc.,” is about supervillains who realized that most of their evil schemes could be enacted legally if they formed a corporation.

He has published over two dozen collections of his comics, and he is the author of three books on the subject of cartooning. The Everything Cartooning Book is an all-ages cartooning tutorial. Both How To Make Webcomics and The Webcomics Handbook break down the business of self-publishing comics using social media and crowdfunding strategies.

Guigar has been nominated for the Eisner Award in comics, as well as the ’Ringo Award and the NCS Silver Rueben. He co-hosts a weekly podcast, ComicLab, which has been described as “Car Talk for cartoons,” which will be entering its seventh year in January. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and two sons.

This event, co-sponsored by Falvey Library, the Idea Lab, Department of English, Creative Writing Program, Department of Communication, and the Writing Center, is free and open to all! Light refreshments will be served. Join us!

This installment of ‘The Printed Image’ highlights a scrapbook compiled by Fay King, a cartoonist and journalist who contributed to a number of newspapers in the early 20^th century, including The Denver Post, The San Francisco Examiner, and The New York Evening Journal. The scrapbook, compiled between 1916 to 1919, includes numerous articles about King and her visits to various cities, clippings of her own newspaper columns, photographs, and a complete copy of The Cartoon Book, which was distributed for the Third Liberty Loan drive during World War I, and which included a contribution by King.

“A Woman’s Bit” by Fay King, from The Cartoon Book.

Photograph of Fay King, from page 48 of the scrapbook.

Newspaper clipping from page 24 of the scrapbook.

The scrapbook includes a key feature of King’s style, single-panel cartoons that would accompany her articles and columns for newspapers. King would include herself in these cartoons, portraying herself with long, lanky limbs and wide eyes. This cartoon persona earned her a certain celebrity, and can be seen as an early forerunner of autobiographical comics that would flourish later in the century by the likes of Lynda Barry, Art Spiegelman, and Aline Kominsky-Crumb.

A Fay King column and cartoon, from page 85 of the scrapbook.

But as cartoonist and historian Trina Robbins observes in her book Nell Brinkley and the New Woman in the Early 20th Century, the norms of the time limited the subjects that King was able to address, both in her cartoons and columns. Robbins writes, “Although they (Fay King and Nell Brinkley) avoided the mother and child ghetto that most other women cartoonists and illustrators seemed to have inhabited, both artists were still ghettoized simply by drawing for women” [1].

One aspect of King’s cartoon persona that is widely noted is its similarity to another famous comic character: Olive Oyl, from E.C. Segar’s Thimble Theatre and Popeye comic strips. However, this comparison is somewhat inexact. A similarity can be detected, but King’s cartoon avatar predates the creation of Olive Oyl, whose first appearance was in 1919. While there is no definitive record that Segar was inspired by King, if an influence does exist, King would be the influence on Olive Oyl, and not the other way around.

Fay King, 1916

Fay King, 1917

Olive Oyl in Thimble Theatre, 1919.

Olive Oyl in Thimble Theatre, 1926

Fay King’s scrapbook can be read in its entirety in the Digital Library, and is available to be viewed in the Rare Book Room during walk-in hours or by appointment. Nell Brinkley and the New Woman in the Early 20th Century can be borrowed from Falvey Library’s circulating collection.

[1] Robbins, Trina. Nell Brinkley and the New Woman in the Early 20th Century. McFarland & Company, Inc., 2001. p. 37.