''And Her Name Was Maud'' is a comic strip by Frederick Burr Opper. It first appeared in the Hearst newspapers on July 24, 1904.''And Her Name Was Maud''
at Don Markstein's Toonopedia
Archived
from the original on April 4, 2012. After work as a magazine cartoonist, Opper was hired by Hearst in 1899 to draw comic strips for the ''

New York Journal :''Includes coverage of New York Journal-American and its predecessors New York Journal, The Journal, New York American and New York Evening Journal'' The ''New York Journal-American'' was a daily newspaper published in New York City from 1937 t ...

'', launching ''

Happy Hooligan ''Happy Hooligan'' is an American comic strip, the first major strip by the already celebrated cartoonist Frederick Burr Opper. It debuted with a Sunday strip on March 11, 1900 in the William Randolph Hearst newspapers, and was one of the first p ...

'', ''

Alphonse and Gaston ''Alphonse and Gaston'' is an American comic strip by Frederick Burr Opper, featuring a bumbling pair of Frenchmen with a penchant for politeness. It first appeared in William Randolph Hearst's newspaper, the ''New York Journal'' on September ...

'' and ''And Her Name Was Maud''.Ohio State University Libraries: Ohio Cartoonists: A Bicentennial Celebration: Frederick Burr Opper, 2003.

Characters and story

Maud was a revenge-seeking mule belonging to farmer Si Slocum and his wife Mirandy. Most of the action was a build-up to Maud kicking someone into the air. Si was the most frequent victim.
/ref> As was common in the early years of comic strips, the title under which Maud the Mule appeared might change from week to week. The character sometimes had crossover appearances in Opper's other strips, ''

'' and ''

''. Maud was phased out in the 1910s, but reappeared from 1926 to the last appearance on October 14, 1932.

William Randolph Hearst William Randolph Hearst Sr. (; April 29, 1863 – August 14, 1951) was an American businessman, newspaper publisher, and politician known for developing the nation's largest newspaper chain and media company, Hearst Communications. His flamboya ...

produced a series of four silent "Maud the Mule" animated cartoons in 1916, directed by

Gregory La Cava Gregory La Cava (March 10, 1892 – March 1, 1952) was an American film director of Italian descent best known for his films of the 1930s, including ''My Man Godfrey'' and ''Stage Door'', which earned him nominations for Academy Award for Best ...

for

International Film Service International Film Service (IFS) was an American animation studio created to exploit the popularity of the comic strips controlled by William Randolph Hearst. History In 1914, William Randolph Hearst expanded his International News Service wir ...

. The four titles are "Poor Si Keeler" (Feb 4), "A Quiet Day in the Country" (June 5), "Maud the Educated Mule" (July 3) and "Round and Round Again" (Oct 2).

Exhibition

A century after it was created by Opper, ''And Her Name Was Maud'' was included in an exhibition at Ohio State University. This exhibit, Ohio Cartoonists: A Bicentennial Celebration, was mounted during the summer and early fall of 2003 at two venues, the Philip Sills Exhibit Hall, William Oxley Thompson Memorial Library and the Reading Room Gallery of Ohio State's Cartoon Research Library. It included work by Opper,

Edwina Dumm Frances Edwina Dumm (1893 – April 28, 1990) was a writer-artist who drew the comic strip ''Cap Stubbs and Tippie'' for nearly five decades; she is also notable as America's first full-time female editorial cartoonist. She used her middle name fo ...

Richard F. Outcault Richard Felton Outcault (; January 14, 1863 – September 25, 1928) was an American cartoonist. He was the creator of the series ''The Yellow Kid'' and ''Buster Brown'' and is considered a key pioneer of the modern comic strip. Life and career ...

and many of the cartoonists who took Charles N. Landon's Cleveland-based correspondence course and were hired by Landon to create cartoon features for

Newspaper Enterprise Association The Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA) is an editorial column and comic strip newspaper syndication service based in the United States and established in 1902. The oldest syndicate still in operation, the NEA was originally a secondary news ...

Maud the Mule in folk art

The "Allen Bluff Mule" is a painting of a mule on a limestone bluff on U.S. Route 70 in Liberty, Tennessee. Some residents say a local man named Lavader Woodard painted the mule; other residents contend that it was painted as an advertisement of a local stock farm. Dr. Wayne T. Robinson has claimed to be the original painter of the Liberty Mule:

"In early October 1906, I climbed up the face of the Allen Bluff to a ledge and with some coal tar made a flat picture of a character from a famous comic strip of that day. Everybody remembers Maud, the mule. That was 51 years ago, and even though it has been exposed to the elements and to nearby earth-shaking explosions, erosion has dimmed it very little.""Historian unravels Liberty Mule mystery"
by Thomas G. Webb, DeKalb County Historian, ''The Smithville Review'' November 11, 2006. By this account, Dr. Robinson painted the original mule while a 21-year-old college student inspired by Maud the Mule, from the Frederick Burr Opper comic strip ''And Her Name Was Maud''.

References

{{King Features Syndicate Comics American comic strips 1904 comics debuts Gag-a-day comics Comics set in the United States Comics about animals 1932 comics endings