Hawkshaw the Detective was a comic strip

Comic strip

A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....

 character featured in an eponymous cartoon serial by Gus Mager

Gus Mager

Charles Augustus Mager , better known as Gus Mager, was an American painter, illustrator and cartoonist during the first half of the 20th century...

 between 1913 and 1922 and again from 1931 to 1952. (The revival was a topper

Topper (comic strip)

A topper in comic strip parlance is a small secondary strip seen along with a larger Sunday strip. In the 1920s and 1930s, leading cartoonists were given full pages in the Sunday comics sections, allowing them to add smaller strips and single-panel cartoons to their page.Toppers usually were drawn...

 to The Captain and the Kids.) The name of Mager's character was derived from the common American slang

Slang

Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...

 of the time, in which a hawkshaw meant a detective

Detective

A detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators or "private eyes"...

 — that slang itself derived from playwright Tom Taylor

Tom Taylor

Tom Taylor was an English dramatist, critic, biographer, public servant, and editor of Punch magazine...

's use of the name for the detective in his 1863 stage play The Ticket of Leave Man.

Sherlocko

Hawkshaw the Detective was based on one of Mager's "monk" characters (so called because they looked a lot like monkey

Monkey

A monkey is a primate, either an Old World monkey or a New World monkey. There are about 260 known living species of monkey. Many are arboreal, although there are species that live primarily on the ground, such as baboons. Monkeys are generally considered to be intelligent. Unlike apes, monkeys...

s), "Sherlocko the Monk," who made his first appearance in 1910. That name was scrapped after Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...

, the creator of Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...

, threatened legal action over the parodied name. (Sherlocko's bumbling partner Watso did not survive the renaming, either; he became "The Colonel.")

Groucho

An earlier version of Sherlocko, entitled Knocko the Monk, spawned a fad of nicknames ending in O, which prompted a vaudeville monologist

Stand-up comedy

Stand-up comedy is a comedic art form. Usually, a comedian performs in front of a live audience, speaking directly to them. Their performances are sometimes filmed for later release via DVD, the internet, and television...

 named Art Fisher, while playing poker with four brothers

Marx Brothers

The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act, originally from New York City, that enjoyed success in Vaudeville, Broadway, and motion pictures from the early 1900s to around 1950...

 who performed together, to give them all such names. One of the brothers got a name that belonged to one of the characters in the strip: Groucho

Groucho Marx

Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx was an American comedian and film star famed as a master of wit. His rapid-fire delivery of innuendo-laden patter earned him many admirers. He made 13 feature films with his siblings the Marx Brothers, of whom he was the third-born...

, one of the monks. Fisher named the other brothers Harpo

Harpo Marx

Adolph "Harpo" Marx was an American comedian and film star. He was the second oldest of the Marx Brothers. His comic style was influenced by clown and pantomime traditions. He wore a curly reddish wig, and never spoke during performances...

, Chicko (later re-spelled "Chico

Chico Marx

Leonard "Chico" Marx was an American comedian and film star as part of the Marx Brothers. His persona in the act was that of a dim-witted albeit crafty con artist, seemingly of rural Italian origin, who wore shabby clothes, and sported a curly-haired wig and Tyrolean hat.As the first-born of the...

") and Gummo

Gummo Marx

Milton "Gummo" Marx was an American vaudeville performer and theatrical agent. He was the fourth-born of the Marx Brothers. Born in New York City, he worked with his brothers on the vaudeville circuit, but left acting when he was drafted into the U.S...

. At various times, however, the different Marx Brothers provided different reasons for the names, so Knocko the Monk may not, in fact, have been the inspiration.

Hawkshaw

Hawkshaw the Detective debuted in the New York World

New York World

The New York World was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 until 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers...

on February 23, 1913, and continued for many years in various Pulitzer

Joseph Pulitzer

Joseph Pulitzer April 10, 1847 – October 29, 1911), born Politzer József, was a Hungarian-American newspaper publisher of the St. Louis Post Dispatch and the New York World. Pulitzer introduced the techniques of "new journalism" to the newspapers he acquired in the 1880s and became a leading...

-owned newspapers. In 1917, some of Hawkshaw and the Colonel's newspaper antics were republished in book form by the Saalfield Company

Saalfield Publishing

The Saalfield Publishing Company published children's books and other products from 1900 to 1977. It was once one of the largest publishers of children's materials in the world....

.

External links

• Hawkshaw at Don Markstein's Toonopedia