“HAW-W-W-W-W!” That sound can only mean one thing—it’s time to ring out the old year and ring in the new with that Bachelor of Artifice, Knight of Calamity and an alumnus of Doctor Merlin’s Camelot College for Conjurors—Phineas Pinkham.

According to Hoyle, the old authority on the pasteboards of ruination, there should only be one joker in a deck. But the fickle femme known as Fate does not deal her cards according to Mr. Hoyle. She sent the Rittmeister Gottfried von Bull over to Bar-Le-Duc one early morning in June 1918 with a particularly insulting missive for Lieutenant Phineas Pinkham. Phineas, Public Joker Number One, sat in front of his hut, after a blistering early patrol, striving to teach a certain canine named Rollo to say its prayers. In view of Rollo’s apparent age it was fitting that the Boonetown Spad pusher should prepare the subject for dog heaven. Add one Monk Flannigan—the Boonetown miracle man’s nemesis—to the mix and you’re holding a hand with little chance of winning. No holds are barred in another rollicking Phineas Pinkham Roar! From the July 1933 Flying Aces, it’s “Scratch-as-Scratch-Can!”

A flank movement by Flanagan started it. Then von Bull horned in. But Phineas knew that a man’s best friend is his pooch. And though it isn’t news when a dog bites a man, it certainly was when Napoleon, Josephine, Danton, and Dubarry sunk their incisors in poor Rollo.

• Download “Scratch-as-Scratch-Can” (July 1936, Flying Aces)