Against all odds, the early twentieth century ushered in the first golden age of Captain Useless. Although they were no easier to decipher than before, the cartoons steadily grew into a bona fide success. With Donovan’s death in 1907, his son Sterling Q. Donovan took over as Johnson’s assistant. A third man, a recent Irish immigrant with no family and no apparent expertise in art or writing, Jimmy O’Toole, was added to the creative team.
The 17-year-old O’Toole became the first of many Captain Useless creators to succumb to the "captain’s curse" (unless you count Ben Donovan, which most Useless experts don’t). O’Toole’s body was found in his apartment drained of most of its blood. This strange fate was met by five more Captain Useless assistants, most recent immigrants living alone, between 1910 and 1914. This led police to speculate that a killer was targeting the strip’s creators. However, as furor over the killings reached a fever pitch, they stopped. Over the next 20 or so years, Captain Useless assistants would disappear from time to time, never to be heard from again, but the fact that no more bodies were found meant that the fervor over the killings died down.
Despite—or perhaps due to—the turmoil and instability inside the creative team, the Captain Useless cartoons enjoyed a surge in popularity that lasted into the 1930s. The good Captain kept up with the times by changing after World War I from an army man to an adventurer in the mold of pulp fiction heroes of the time, but always with the patented Useless futility in everything the Captain did.
Five novels were written in 1928 to be part of a series of pulp-style adventures featuring Captain Useless, but the books were stolen before their release, making them one of the most elusive of all Captain Useless collectables. Even so, the Captain’s popularity continued to skyrocket.
But despite this phenomenal success, the captain’s curse was about to re-emerge.
Next: Trouble during the Great Depression
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