INTRODUCING Dan ÓNéill AKA ODD BODKINS #1

Dan has granted Soñar permission

to publish his ODD BODKINS cartoon strip.

ODD BODKINS ON Soñar Vol. I No. I

Hugh Daniel ÓNéill

Thirty years ago Hugh Daniel ÓNéill was described as, “an innovator, a creator and a professional troublemaker” in a foreword to a collection of Odd Bodkins.

For seven years his Odd Bodkins cartoons ran daily in The San Francisco Chronicle and in 350 other newspapers throughout the world. At its peak, the strip had a readership of fifty million.

When he was hired at age 21 —the youngest cartoonist ever hired by a national syndicate— he was given three simple rules: no religion, no politics and no sex in the strip. He did his best to comply — he kept sex out of Odd Bodkins.

His characters began to discuss metaphysics and deliberately offend the powers that be. The strip was dropped by the papers in 1966; editors thought he was going too far out, and assumed that no one could possibly make any sense out of these mad scribblings.

No sooner had the deed been done, when thousands of readers demanded Odd Bodkins’ return to the comic pages. Fans jammed the switchboard and sent letters demanding the reinstatement of Fred Bird, Hugh, Were-Chicken, Norton Motorcycle, and the rest of the Bodkins world.

In 2002, Dan was elected to the Board of Directors of the Sixteen to One mine, one of the last working gold mines in California.

For further information on ÓNéill.

http://www.danoneillcomics.com/

http://origsix.com/index.asp

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