Precursors

Here's a precursor to David Lynch's comic strip "The Angriest Dog in the World," about a dog "so angry he cannot move; he cannot eat; he cannot sleep; he can just barely growl; bound so tightly with tension and anger, he approaches the state of rigor mortis."  This vintage angriest dog appears in Puck, 1886.

Over a century before they called Shaggy "Mr. Boombastic," General Boombastes commanded the dancehall.  From Punch, 1892.

Five years before the birth of the Elephant Man, Joseph Merrick, an elephant man appeared in Punch (1857).

Here's a precursor to the song "Me and Mrs. Jones," who had a thing goin' on all the way back in 1857.  (Punch)

The "Cone of Silence," made famous in the Get Smart comedy series, first appeared over a century earlier, in Punch, 1857.

[For Jonathan.]

We discovered a precursor to the film A Cry in the Dark (1988).  A dingo took her baby in this image from The Wide World Magazine, 1900.

When pigs fly!  Lewis Carroll is popularly credited with the earliest reference to pigs flying (1872).  But here's one from the May 23, 1857 issue of Punch.  (We do what we can!)

Star Wars' light sabre prototypes:  an illustration from an 1896 issue of Scientific American magazine.

Here's a precursor to the motto, "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas."  Via our friend at Frog Blog.

Four months before the publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, we find this illustration in Punch:

Scream in ecstasy: we located ancestors of Salvador Dalí's moustache fairies, in The Californian (1891).

We say this in infinite jest: here's a precursor to Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (1,088 pages), from Punch, 1853.

Here's a precursor to the "wire fu" genre of Hong Kong action cinema, by nearly 70 years.  It's from Appleton's magazine, 1909.

A precursor to the cult television series The Prisoner: Number Six hails a cab.  From Punch, 1853.

Music piracy, 1906-style.  From Punch.

Here's an illustration from forty years before the musical Damn Yankees.  (From Everybody's Magazine, 1915).

An illustration from a 1900 issue of The Strand magazine, predating the hilarious series "Arrested Development."  The caption reads: "Maybe you are not my cousin, after all."

Here's a double-whammy: a precursor to René Magritte's The Treachery of Images as well as his The Son of Man.  From Punch, 1859, thirty-nine years before Magritte's birth.  (Previously re: Magritte.)

A precursor to Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman?  From Everybody's Magazine, 1906.

The internet isn't especially forthcoming about the origin of the "shoe tree" phenomenon.  But here's a precursor to the world's largest shoe tree (of Hawthrone, Nevada, callously felled by vandals in 2011).  This vintage shoe tree appears in Punch, 1848.