'The Adventures of Waddles'.
George Hager was an American comic artist and magazine editor of The Christian Science Monitor. Together with his sister Mary Hager, he revived his father's popular 'Dippy Duck' newspaper character under the title 'The Adventures of Waddles' (1926-1945).
Early life and career
Luther George Hager was born in 1885 in Terre Haute, Viggo County, Indiana, as the son of John Ross Hager, a dentist-turned-cartoonist better known as Dok Hager. In 1889, the family relocated ot Seattle. George studied art at the University of Washington and the Arts Student League in New York, where cartoonist William Charles McNuity was one of his teachers. While his father Dok Hager worked for The Seattle Daily Times, George Hager chose for a rival newspaper, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In the 1920s, he also became an editor for the children's page in The Christian Science Monitor newspaper. A member of the Seattle Cartoonists' Club, he also illustrated several of the men in the club's book, 'The Cartoon: A Reference Book of Seattle's Successful Men'.
Waddles
When in 1925 eye problems forced Dok Hager to retire, George Hager decided to revive his father's popular creation 'Dok's Dippy Duck' in a new comic strip. The wisecracking duck had debuted in the early 1910s in his father's cartoons that accompanied the weather forecasts. By 1912, he had his own strip and became a local phenomenon. Gone from the Seattle Daily Times since late 1923, George Hager transformed Dippy Duck into Waddles, and introduced him and a host of other duck characters on the children's page of The Christian Science Monitor in 1926. Appearing in the funny animal cartoon feature 'The Adventures of Waddles', the comic was a true family affair. The cartoonist's sister Mary Hager Dearborn (1892-1950) wrote the rhyming text captions, and both siblings were credited as "The Hagers". After George Hager died in 1945, the 'Waddles' strip was continued by his daughter Carol Hager Carlson and her husband Ray Carlson until 1953.
Cartoon by George Hager.