John Hager (cartoonist)

His son, George Hager was also an artist in Seattle, working as an illustrator for the town's rival newspaper, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.[2] He also edited children's page for the Christian Science Monitor[2] George Hager studied art at the University of Washington and the Arts Student League in New York, where another Seattle cartoonist, William Charles McNulty taught.[2] Both Hagers participated in the Seattle Cartoonists' Club, contributing caricatures of the famous men of Seattle for the club's book, The Cartoon; A Reference Book of Seattle's Successful Men.[3]

Beginning November 1, 1909, Dok created a daily cartoon to accompany The Weather,[4] which featured a character who came to be known as the Umbrella Man, or "Sport". In the newspaper on May 3, 1913, the weather comic was called The Umbrella Man, in a front–page box naming the paper's features. Later on, as Dok began to do more cartooning, he gave Sport a sidekick, named the Kid.

The Kid was a talking duck. He was not part of the Dippy Duck or The Waddles cartoon strips, but was the sidekick to the Umbrella Man.[5] He became a regular feature on the front page of The Seattle Times. Like the Umbrella Man, the Kid sometimes sported an umbrella hat. The two wandered the streets of Seattle in the comic, dispensing wit and wisdom along with weather forecasts.[5]

Sample of Dok's Dippy Duck from the Seattle Daily Times, February 11, 1915. The comic strip ran on the first page. At the time the strip was dealing with the tensions in Europe and World War I.

DOK's comic strip, Dok's Dippy Duck started out as a daily comic strip without a name, May 31, 1912.[6] In the early strip, the unnamed duck stood around on the street corner picking fights with whomever passed by.[6] Doc's duck became a traveler during World War I and the cartoons show him interacting with both sides of the conflict.[7] The duck in this cartoon is also known as The Kid.[8]

On May 3, 1913, in a front-page box called "Features of Today's Paper", Dok's cartoon was called "The Duck. By Dok."

On February 10, 1915, the strip was named Dok's Dippy Duck with no change in what was happening in the plot; the February 10 strip addressed what had happened in the previous day's strip.[7] One change that did happen was to make the comic vertical and larger, with fewer frames; it had only four frames,[7] where earlier strips had as many as seven.[6]

This cartoon has been characterized by a comic historian as one of the pioneers of humanized animal comic strips.[9]

By the time that the artists of the Seattle Cartoonists' Club put together their book The Cartoon; A Reference Book of Seattle's Successful Men, the Kid was well enough known to be included in the book without the Umbrella Man. Other area cartoonists had a regular commentary animal, and the public recognized the talking duck as being Dok's.

Waddles was a duck drawn by George Hager for the Christian Science Monitor in the cartoon strip The Adventures of the Waddles. According to the Seattle Daily Times, Waddles was a continuation of his father's duck, associated with the weather man.[10] Dok had to discontinue his illustrating when his eyes went, and his children ran the Waddles comic strip.[11] Dok's daughter, Mrs. George Dearborn wrote the rhyming lines to go with the cartoon, while son George Hager did the illustration.[10][11]