There’s another gag on a similar theme, 2/22/2016. Horace is sitting with a French horn, and as soon as he starts to blow it, it uncoils itself across the rest of the panel like a New Year’s whistle. (I don’t have hundreds of these cartoons memorized—I just keep a copy of that one in my bassoon case!)
For years, I had a full-face beard and mustache. When the cheek areas turned too white for my taste, off they came, leaving a goatee and mustache. The goatee was next to go (same situation), and nothing remained but the mustache. Shortly thereafter, a friend noticed something was different. “Don’t tell me”, he said, staring at my face for a few moments, then: “Aah—you grew a mustache!”
Joe Btfsplk, a character in Al Capp’s strip “Li’l Abner”, was the perpetually unlucky schmoe who had a permanent dark cloud above him, following him around absolutely wherever he went. I don’t know the exact dates of the strip, but it was big in the 1950s.
Check out the song “In the Bath” by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann!