Here are some of the many illustrations I found from William Wallace Denslow’s Billy Bounce book from 1906, which is presented in its entirety on Google Book Search here.
Denslow is better known as the illustrator of The Wizard of Oz, and he also created the Billy Bounce comic strip. We previously presented some Billy Bounce comic strips from 1903 and 1904 by C.W. Kahles, who followed Denslow on the comic strip feature.
The book being published in 1906 indicates that Denslow must have still had controlling interest of the comic strip feature after his departure from it. It is also interesting to note that none of the other regular characters from the Billy Bounce strip appear to be in the book, although I haven’t read it so I may be wrong.
Although Billy Bounce is pretty thorougly forgotten at this point, in his time he was apparently popular enough to be featured on a wide array of merchandise… including cigars! Read more about Billy Bounce at Toonopedia.
See more Billy Bounce comic strips at Barnacle Press here (by both Denslow and Kahles).
You can download the full book as a pdf here.
Larger versions of all images can be seen by clicking on them, which will take you to the appropriate page of the book on Google Book Search.
Great stuff, here! I adore the flying bears!
Glad you enjoyed it Holmes! Your comment made me realize I neglected to mention your wonderful collection of Billy Bounce strips in this post… a link has been added above.
Wow. This is some really creative stuff. Shaggy flying bears? Talking tomatoes? Creepy looking cat-o-nine tails? This is like a victorian age version of Pokemon.
I haven’t seen any Pokemon cigars yet, though.
I Have a 1906 Billy Bounce Hubley Co Penny Bank.Grey suit Red hat nice and fat Billy Save a poenny on front.
And while that might’ve seen like the end of Billy Bounce, someone tried to resurrect him in the 1960’s as a limited animated TV cartoon series!