I. Caniford Lotts (frequently referred to simply as "Mr. Lotts"), the elderly father of Cylinda Oyl and father-in-law of Castor Oyl, is a Thimble Theatre character created by E. C. Segar. Introduced in the summer of 1926 as a wealthy, aggrieved man (and, briefly, asylum patient) implicitly linked to Cylinda (then a displaced amnesiac rescued from a ransom-motivated kidnapping by Ham Gravy and her eventual spouse Castor), Lotts ultimately reunited with his daughter via Castor, then under Lotts' employ as a groundskeeper, bringing her to his workplace. Upon the reunion, however, Lotts shed his bereavement, thereby exposing his disgust at Cylinda's choice of husband (owing to his social standing). Throughout the subsequent months, Lotts resultantly gained prominence as a foil to Castor, with his stubbornly vindictive and misanthropic nature acting as an obstructive counterpoint to Castor's ambitious flights of fancy and devotion to Cylinda. Such was the newfound prominence of the Castor-Lotts dynamic that, by the close of 1927, Lotts had arguably become the simultaneous primary antagonist and deuteragonist of the strip, with the frequency and narrative significance of his appearances both increasingly marginalizing his own daughter into secondary roles and outright ousting long-standing regulars Ham Gravy and Olive Oyl from the strip for a prolonged period. In 1928, however, Segar opted to write both Cylinda and Lotts out of the strip, leading to their near-simultaneous exit in mid-June of that year.
While his prolonged bereavement in response to Cylinda's disappearance paints him as emotionally devoted (to an extent) to his daughter, Lotts is nonetheless primarily defined by his miserly and spiteful nature, chiefly manifesting in his outspoken disapproval of Castor, which frequently assumes the form of mockery or insults or, otherwise, endangerment of Castor and Cylinda's financial stability (via his refusal to grant Castor access to any of his fortune). Adding to the pleasure he derives from deriding Castor, Lotts is also, despite his age and financial power, prone to fixating on specific interests or routines in a gleefully childlike manner, as evidenced by his brief, profoundly naive foray into hobbyist radio and failure to comprehend the dubious motives of his short-lived (and significantly younger) lover Vera Zippy.
External links[]
[]
