'The Triplet Boys' (15 January 1905).
Hy Leonard was an early 20th-century American newspaper cartoonist and comic artist, notable for his gag comic 'The Triplet Boys' (1905).
Life and career
Almost nothing is known about Hy Leonard (referred to as H.T. Leonard in Allan Holtz's 'American Newspaper Comics' guidebook). In the early 1900s, he was a newspaper cartoonist for The New York Herald and The Philadelphia Press. Between 1 January and 2 April 1905, he drew the Sunday gag comic 'The Triplet Boys', about a mischievous bunch of triplets, named Freddie, Eddie and Teddie. The feature was obviously inspired by the success of Rudolph Dirks' 'The Katzenjammer Kids', only with three little tricksters instead of one. Just like Hans and Fritz from the Dirks comic, Leonard's Freddie, Eddie and Teddie also have a corpulent mother with a bun haircut, whom they call "Mamma".
'The Triplet Boys' (26 March 1905).