Charlie Chaplin’s Comic Capers is not a great strip.

This is a fact which is difficult to reconcile, as it was an intersection of two lions of comedy. The strip was launched in March of 1915, and it was clearly never given much thought beyond attaining the license. The character bears little resemblance to the Chaplin we love from the movies, and the cartoonists given the assignment were not very good. Just how little they cared about the production of the strip is shown by who they hired to take it over in 1916: an absolute nobody named E.C. Segar.

Segar would develop into one of the all-time legends of the funnies, but Thimble Theater, Sappo, and Popeye were still years away at this point. The 21 year old kid just wasn’t fully baked in this, his first comic outing. Still and all, it’s a part of both his and Chaplin’s story, so it has inherent value and it’s worth taking a look.

The strip isn’t terrible, by any means, but just don’t get your hopes up for a magnificent merger of brilliant comic minds.