NySocBoy's Beefcake and Buddy-Bonding: Gay couples from your grandfather's comics: Mutt and Jeff, Alphonse and Gaston, LIttle Nemo and Flip, Chip and Dale....

Jun 7, 2026

Gay couples from your grandfather's comics: Mutt and Jeff, Alphonse and Gaston, LIttle Nemo and Flip, Chip and Dale....

Comic book historians call the period from 1890 to 1930 a golden age, with The Yellow Kid, The Katzenjammer Kids, Moon Mullins, Barney Google, Krazy Kat, Little Nemo, and so on. I've read selections: they haven't aged well. Even when I can understand the slang, the jokes don't make much sense. They seem to be mostly about people hitting each other.

But there are a lot of gay subtext couples. Did readers in 1926 wonder what Mutt and Jeff are planning, or was it obvious that they are on their honeymoon?

Did they wonder why Flip, nephew of the Dawn Guard, was so obsesseed with preventing Little Nemo from reaching the Princess? Did they wonder about his cigar? (Left: Flip tries to seduce Jimmy in the Return to Slumberland graphic novel).

And what about Alphonse and Gaston?

The invention of prolific cartoonist Frederick Burr Opper, the two Frenchmen, one tall and one short, first appeared in The New York Journal in 1901, and continued intermittently until 1937.

Jokes involved them being urbane, sophisticated, and foppish, traits antithetical to the big-shouldered Yankee masculinity of the era.

And over-polite, each graciously refusing to leave before the other as the building burns down or the bull charges at them.

More after the break

Soon they were having adventures in exotic locales like Africa and the Middle East, refusing to escape from more and more serious life-threatening situations, while their friend Leon looked on in exasperation.

"After you, my dear Alphonse!" "No, after you, my dear Gaston!" became a popular catchphrase, used endlessly by journalists, political cartoonists, and sports commentators.

They became a staple of Vaudeville and the subject of a stage play, plus several one-minute long comedy shorts (1901-1903). Only one seems to have survived, but plot synopses suggest that the couple lives together. And shares a bed.

In 1947, Bob Clampett of Looney Tunes adopted the characters with the overly-polite gophers Mac and Tosh. They appeared in nine cartoons (1947-1965), and in 17 episodes of the recent Looney Tunes Show (2011-13), where they are even more obviously a gay couple.