The Terrors of the Tiny Tads ran in the New York Herald for several years and its style, both graphic and narrative, changed considerably. The more obviously nonsense-influenced strips tend to be the early ones, which are rougher in appearance and tell more violent stories.

The series is famous for its hybrid animals, but several episodes included vegetable beings in the tradition of Edward Lear’s “Botanies.” The June 23, 1907 episode, for instance, presents a series of predator-flowers that are probably at least in part based on Lear’s “Tigerlilia Terribilis” and “Barkia Howlalowdia” (click to read the whole strip):

Verbeek’s Dandelioness, which does not really look particularly ferocious, will reappear in the October 3, 1909 strip in a much less violent context:

Sometimes the vegetable nature of the hybrids is dominant, as in the examples above, sometimes the animal part is the stronger and the creatures can move, and often become dangerous, as in this December 1, 1907 strip:

Here comes the Rockefellerphant, so wealthy and so bold,
His stomach like a money bag, all full of shining gold.

He eats the Cinnamoney tree that grows upon the plains.
The Tiny Tads they see him, and they envy him his gains.

They tempt him with Subpoeanuts, but he turns away with fright,
And after following him for miles, they lose him in the night.

Click on the image for the full strip which — as is often the case with the Terrors of the Tiny Tads — ends with the Tads feasting on one of the “jumbled beasts” that live in their land.

Meanwhile, in his indispensable Stripper’s Guide blog, Allan Holtz has a post on the 1909 rerun of a series Verbeek had published in Judge in 1900-03, not 1901-02 as Holtz states. Three examples of the original pages can be seen on the Ohio State University’s Treasury of Fine Art:

• 22 December 1900 (The Dog And The Glove And The Bug)
• 28 June 1902 (A Striped-Bass Strategem)
• 19 December 1903 (Cupid Learns Something From A New York Girl)

(Make sure you read them in Full Screen XXL mode.)

Verbeek had been producing such wordless strips for several years since — according to Andy Konkykru — a very similar one, “The Hunter’s Strategy,” appeared in Harper’s Round Table’s Annual for 1897.

Teddy Roosevelt in Peter Newell's Jungle Jangle

Roosevelt’s hunting mania was the subject of a 1909 booklet by Peter Newell, Jungle Jangle, and of one of the earliest animated shorts.

Gustave Verbeek’s Terrors of the Tiny Tads, which ran in the New York Herald Sunday comics supplement from 28 May 1905 to 25 October 1914, did not usually refer to contemporary political or social issues, but did not miss an opportunity to introduce a “cowboysterous” “Kangaroosevelt Bear” in the stip for 21 April 1907. The arrival of this heroic chimera saves one of the Tads ― who, perhaps in honour of his saviour, becomes a “Taddy” in the next panel ― from the terrible Hippopotamuskrat:

Verbeek's cowboysterous Kangaroosevelt Bear (click on the image to read the whole story)

This kind of picture appears to have been very popular in Japan from the beginning of the century, according to a post at the Pink Tentacle blog:

Joge-e, or “two-way pictures,” are a type of woodblock print that can be viewed either rightside-up or upside-down. Large numbers of these playful prints were produced for mass consumption in the 19th century, and they commonly featured bizarre faces of deities, monsters or historical figures (including some from China). Only a few examples of original joge-e survive today.

All of these images represent only the faces of characters, just like the pictures in Dreh’ mich um, rund herum! by Otto Bromberger, published in Germany in the 1890s.

Other interesting items at Pink Tentacle include:

Mythical 16th-century disease critters
Edo-period monster paintings by Sawaki Suushi

The architect, John Prentiss Benson (1865-1947), had always dreamed of becoming an artist like his older brother Frank. In 1905 he lived in Flushing NY with his wife and four children and worked at his architecture firm of Benson and Brockway. He kept a studio in his home where he dabbled with paints, brushes, and canvases. His dabbling in 1904, probably to amuse his children, resulted in The Woozle Beasts (the cover and spine say Woozle Beasts but the title page reads WOOZLEBEASTS: today under the influence of computerese the title would be WoozleBeasts).

On his fifty-sixth birthday in 1921, John received a telegram from brother Frank that read “John, if your are going to paint —PAINT!” And surprisingly, John Prentiss Benson gave up architecture and took up serious painting. He became one of the world’s leading maritime painters with over 500 paintings.

Arthur Deex, author of the preceding blurb, has given in to my insistence and scanned the book, so we are now in a position to offer the largest collection of Woozlebeasts ever published: it includes an almost complete run of the strip as it appeared in newpapers in 1904 (in the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune from 21 August 1904 to 1 January 1905; the New York Herald had started publication on 5 April 1904, according to Allan Holtz’s Stripper Guide) and the 1905 Moffat, Yard & Co. book. Even The Artistic Legacy of John Prentiss Benson. Compiled and edited by Nicholas J. Baker. Sheridan Books, 2003; p. 251, only lists 94 beasts, our index includes 154 as well as three single-panel panoramic cartoons. According to the same source (p. 250) Benson “had a book of original Woozlebeast drawings bound in hard cover and presented to his four children. The inscription written inside the front cover reads as follows: ‘Dedicated to Marjorie, Philip, Gertrude and little Mary – 30 years ago.’ It was signed, ‘John P. Benson, May 13th, 1935.’”

The use of the limerick verse and the careful drawing style clearly differentiate the Woozlebeasts from the average newspaper comic of the period, and place it in the 1904-05 drive to please middle-class readers after the first wave of attacks against the new medium. The short-lived strip would start a minor tradition of depictions of fantastic animals which includes Helen Stilwell’s 1906 Laughable Looloos and Gustave Verbeek’s The Terrors of the Tiny Tads (28 May 1905-25 October 1914) and The Loony Lyrics of Lulu (17 July 1910-23 October 1910), the latter also using limericks, sometimes written by the readers, to describe invented animals.