Meet High Pressure Pete

Now it really gets surreal. Mr. Hookem is standing in his store. A small Krazy-Kat-type animal is swimming in a puddle. Hookem’s cigar has left a mound of ash, as though he’s been standing there for an hour. That’s one of the trademarks of a good High Pressure Pete cartoon: Swan lets time pass even though it clearly hasn’t.

Doc Bones. Starting to wonder where Robert Crumb might have picked up a few ideas?

This strip contains another HPP standby: the crowd. People seem to assemble to observe a character’s humiliation; they all enjoy a good laugh when someone’s flip-taked off the frame. Here the usual hats are ejected; a toothache towel levitates, intact; poor Hookem apparently explodes, and among the ejecta is the cigar from panel one.