Is part of your question about the pseudonym Carl Byng? There have been some very good articles on the question of whether or not SLC used the name while working at the Buffalo Express. I think he did, by the bye, and I think he did it because he had trouble believing the Mark Twain would last any longer than most newspaper comics of the era, a decade at most. With Bret Harte in ascendance and himself stuck in some godawful outpost, he wanted a new comic identity through which to build new fame.