Welcome back to Horror Street, my ongoing journey in search of awesome yet spooky graffiti art on the streets and little-traveled corners of New York City!
What we have here is a bit of graffiti-mural nostalgia: a tribute to a popular cartoon character named Courage the Cowardly Dog.
In case you didn’t know, Courage the Cowardly Dog was an animated series that launched in 1999 on the Cartoon Network and ran for four seasons (52 episodes) and a special. Starring an easily frightened beagle ironically named Courage, the series involved him protecting his owners, an elderly farm couple named Eustace and Muriel Bagge, from all sorts of supernatural and sci-fi threats that showed up in the nearby town of Nowhere. Apparently, his last appearance was in a 2021 straight-to-DVD crossover movie, Straight Outta Nowhere: Scooby-Doo! Meets Courage the Cowardly Dog.
I don’t remember exactly when I took this picture, but it was probably in the early 2000s, at the height of the series’ popularity, as I was wandering through the Long Island City area of Queens. I do remember the mural took up a good share of the warehouse wall on which it was painted, that I shot this with one of those single-use disposable cameras you could buy at a pharmacy, and that I was aware of the series, but had never watched it.
If you’re a fan of Courage, it’s a pretty good likeness, don’t you think?
Interested in checking out Courage’s animated adventures (like I am)? Then head over to Tubi, where the series currently streams. (Unfortunately, the Scooby-Doo crossover is unavailable.) With Halloween fast approaching, it’ll help you get into the Spooky Season mindset.
Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! And be sure to check out my previous HS entries, including: Day of the Dead 2025, the Brooklyn Vampire, Where the Gene Wilder Things Are, a Beetlejuice sighting, the scarifying Ghoulmobile, the Spooky Forest, and a ride on the Spirit Halloween Terror Train!
Dear Mr Roman,
After owning the book for more than 20 years, I am finally reading your Chaos Engine trilogy.
I must say the the Head Physician reminds me of Patrick Troutan’s iteration of The Doctor.
I am enjoying this series very much.
(Sorry for hijacking this post, but I couldn’t find another way to contact you)
Thanks for the kind words! I’m glad you’re enjoying it. The Head Physician is actually based on Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh Doctor, but when you get down to it, Troughton did set the tone.