Ally Sloper

Alexander "Ally" Sloper is one of the earliest fictional comic strip characters. He is regarded as the first recurring character in comics. Red-nosed and blustery, an archetypal lazy schemer often found "sloping" through alleys to avoid his landlord and other creditors, he was created for the British magazine Judy by writer and fledgling artist Charles H. Ross, and inked and later fully illustrated by his French wife Emilie de Tessier—a rare woman comic-strip artist at the time—under the pseudonym "Marie Duval" (or "Marie Du Val"; sources differ).