Obscurity of the Day: Burglar Pete


Here’s Burglar Pete from Cole Johnson’s St. Louis Republic archives. I’d never seen this one before; a George McManus production that lasted just three episodes. The third and final episode has Pete getting a new moniker — Toothpick Pete.

The strip ran on 8/17, 8/24 and 8/31 of 1902.

3 comments on “Obscurity of the Day: Burglar Pete

  1. Hi Allan! Long time no hear! I was at the hospital for some month with a strange ailment, the Guillain Barré Syndrome (look to Wikipedia for the eerie details); anyway, now I’m well enough, back to home, to work and to write my comments to your wonderful blog.
    I think that neither Burglar Pete nor Alma and Oliver where the first McManus characters, At page 141 of “Here We Are Again” you ‘ill find a McManus Sunday page of ***1900*** DEC 23 (to see it download a padf file of pages 129-192 of the book by copying and pasting the adress below). I erroneusly thought that the unnamed character were Alma and Oliver, not suspecting that the former was a man (Alma was my mother’s name, and also in English Alma is a female name). Unless the couple is an early avatar for the 1902 series. In any case, note the husband’s Jiggesque top-hat.
    Best
    Alfredo
    EAQ download
    http://ftp.eaq.it/users/web7_castelli/EAQ/03.zip

  2. Hi Alfredo –
    Glad to hear That you’re feeling better. I always feel weak and listless but I don’t use that as an excuse to hang out in a hospital for months 😉

    Regarding your 1900 McManus piece, I’m afraid it’s not part of a series as far as I can tell from my fragmentary index. The Republic generally seemed to favor one-shots and published tons of them in 1900-01. McManus started appearing in the Sunday section in 1900, as you say, but apparently never did a continuing series until Burglar Pete. The 12/23/00 strip certainly isn’t part of the Alma & Oliver series.

    –Allan

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