Goat? Yak!

As we saw in yesterday's promotional post, Old Doc Yak holds the Guinness World Record for being the First Animal Cartoon. (They leave subjective judgements like "funny" to others)

The man featured on the poster is Sidney Smith, the cartoonist famous for The Gumps - which is credited as the first continuity based comic strip, as opposed to unchanging gag-a-day comics. It's not entirely accurate, but the Gumps are the ones who made it popular and triggered the wave of continuity comics that followed.

Today, however, we're not really interested in them We're here for he who came before - Old Doc Yak and his family. While successful enough to spawn those ground-breaking animated shorts, Yak was only around for 5 years in his own strip. He returned as a Topper for The Gumps for another 5 year stint, from 1930-1934. Old Doc Yak was definitely an Odd Duck at times, but it was also wildly creative when the mood struck. Before we get to the end in 1917, let's jump back to the beginning in 1912.

In the February 5th edition of The Chicago Tribune, he made his 'smashing' debut. Keep in mind that this is 1912 - the comic is still a very young art form, and experimenting with the physical boundaries of comics is a pretty novel idea.

The final introductory strip there ran on 10 February 1912.
And Old Doc Yak's final daily comic ran on 10 February 1917. Just one more odd bit with Old Doc Yak.
It continued to mirror the beginning by having a multi-strip closing to the daily with the Landlord threatening to throw him off the comic page if he can't scratch up some cash:

That was Saturday. On Monday, the new family moved into the House that Yak Built:

We spoke briefly of them last time, and we'll do so again. For now, just note that Sidney Smith had his new strip move into both the vacated newspaper real estate and the home of the previous strip's cast. A most odd, likely even unique, beginning to a highly successful run lasting over 40 years.

Back at Yak -
Here's a half dozen Sundays, the first from 1912, the rest from 1917. They touch on three popular topics for the series:
1) Old Doc Yak trying to get paid...

2) Old Doc Yak trying to cope with his son, Yutch-

and 3) Old Doc Yak loves his #348-

He's a crusty old Goat. That's a common theme, too.
We'll not speculate on what sort of empathetic predisposition that might give me for the strip. I'm going to just presume i like it because this is one Odd critter, start to finish.

Sadly, i do not believe that any of his cartoon survive:

Old Doc Yak (1913)
Old Doc Yak and the Artist's Dream (1913)
Doc Yak's Christmas (1913)
Doc Yak, Moving Picture Artist (1914)
Doc Yak, the Cartoonist (1914)
Doc Yak, the Poultryman (1914)
Doc Yak's Temperance Lecture (1914)
Doc Yak, the Marksman (1914)
Doc Yak Bowling (1914)
Doc Yak's Zoo (1914)
Doc Yak and the Limited Train (1914)
Doc Yak's Wishes (1914)
Doc Yak's Bottle (1914)
Doc Yak's Cats (1914)
Doc Yak Plays Golf (1914)
Doc Yak and Santa Claus (1914)

Note:

Old Doc Yak is unrelated to Old Doc "Yak Yak" Yancy (played by Joseph Kearns) from the old Harold Peary Show radio program. I believe he has no connection to Louie L'Amour's Old Doc Yak, from the story of the same name, but Yondering is not in my collection, so i have yet to be able to ascertain for certain. With a character this old, one can never be sure who might have been a fan.