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.
Walt Kelly’s POGO had some kind of line like: “How much ground round would a groundhog hog…” etc.