'The Umbrella Man' of 26 February 1910.
Dok Hager was an early 20th-century American cartoonist, who broke off his first career as a dentist to become the house cartoonist of The Seattle Daily Times. Between 1909 and 1925, he made the paper's daily weather cartoon, starring 'The Umbrella Man'. His duck sidekick Kid eventually inspired the funny animal cartoon feature 'Dok's Dippy Duck' (1912-1923), of which the main character had a short-lived popularity as a local pop culture phenomenon.
Early life and career
John Ross Hager was born in 1858 in Terre Haute, Indiana, as the son of Jacob H. Hager and Carrie Ross. He had the opportunity to study in Zürich, Switzerland, and when he returned to the United States, he started to work as a dentist in his hometown of Terre Haute. His profession gave him the nickname "Doc", or "Dok", but his ambitions actually lay elsewhere. In 1889, Hager moved his practice to Seattle, Washington, where he remained active as a dentist until 1906, when he became a full-time cartoonist for The Seattle Daily Times.
Dok's Dippy Duck
Starting on 1 November 1909, Hager mostly illustrated the paper's weather forecasts in the form of a one-panel cartoon with the uninspired title 'The Weather'. As a main character, Hager created Sport, a burly built man with a trademark suit, cane, long white beard and umbrella on his hat. On top of this hat he often had a flag with a one-word description or sketch of the day's predicted weather. The character was directly inspired by the real-life local eccentric Robert W. Patten, a Civil War veteran who invented the umbrella hat, and always wore one around town. On 3 May 1913, the feature's title was changed into 'The Umbrella Man', and Sport received a talking duck as a sidekick, named "Kid". Within no time, the cigarette-smoking, wisecracking womenizer duck took center stage.
On 31 May 1912, the bird already had its own spin-off strip, initially nameless, but eventually called 'The Duck. By Dok'. By February 1915, it had evolved into a gag-a-day comic under the title 'Dok's Dippy Duck'. In four to seven panels, the duck commented on the daily news, most notably the ongoing First World War. Several episodes took place in Europe, where Dippy mets with French leader Georges Clemenceau and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, as well as the French boxing champion Georges Carpentier. In the duck's conversations with women, Hager dared to include some risqué conversation for the time, for instance in an April 1919 episode in which Dippy comments on a woman's silk stockings.
'Voddyvills" (1911).
During the late 1910s and early 1920s, Hager's duck had become such a local celebrity that he inspired stand-up routines and a children's geography contest organized by the paper. In 1918 and 1920, a man in a Dippy Duck costume entertained audiences who came to the Seattle Times Building to watch the current election results on a bulletin board. In 1911, the Seattle Times also ran's Hager's obscure Sunday page 'Voddyvills', which ridiculed vaudeville theater.
By the early 1920s, Dok Hager's vision deteriorated, and in November 1923, he quit his 'Dippy Duck' strip. He managed to continue his daily 'Umbrella Man' cartoons for another two years, until in August 1925 he had to retire altogether.
Death and legacy
John "Dok" Hager passed away in 1932. By then, his cartoonist son George Hager had revived his father's duck creation and turned it into the humorous adventure comic 'The Adventures of Waddles', first published in 1926 in the Christian Science Monitor. Dok Hager's daughter Mary Hager Dearborn (1892-1950) was responsible for writing the new episodes. After George's death in 1945, 'Waddles' was continued by his daughter Carol Hager and her husband Ray Carlson.
'Dok's Dippy Duck' (The Seattle Times, 15 February 1915)..