02/19/2025
Throwback Thursday-The drill sergeant still gracing some Aggie merchandise was first a cartoon character in the 1930s. Howard âPeteâ Tumlinson, class of 1942, gave the character a name: Magarkin, an ex-con sentenced to A&M because he was considered âtoo toughâ for Alcatraz, according to a June 2008 article in The Battalion. In 1939, Tumlinson gave Magarkin a sidekick, Fish Blotto, who depicted the day-to-day life of a freshman in the Corps, according to a November 1988 Houston Chronicle article. Other student illustrators would continue drawing comic strips with the Olâ Sarge character in The Battalion and Aggieland yearbooks.
Tumlinson went on to be a comic book artist in the 1940s and â50s for companies that would later become known as Marvel Comics. He covered several genres in the 1940s and â50s, including outlaw Westerns, horror, war and biblical. During the mid-1950s, he shifted to book illustrations. He died in Caldwell in 2008.
In 1987, football coach Jackie Sherrill initiated the creation of an Olâ Sarge mascot costume for a student to wear outside Kyle Field and on the alumni side of the stadium during games. The costume was not well received by the student body. Cadets called for the costume to be destroyed, according to a December 1987 Battalion article.In a nut shell, Olâ Sarge was never really the official mascot of A&M, however he was quite a known character among the Corps of Cadets. Olâ Sarge entertained cadets in illustrations throughout the 1940s, â50s and early â60s, when the university was still an all-male military school. Although heâs no longer in a monthly comic strip, he remains an enduring symbol of Texas A&Mâs history and Old Army days.
