When a tough character turns up in a children's cartoon or comic, it's very often the case that they have a tattoo that looks very much like this. How did it come to be the go-to tattoo example for this purpose?
I don't have specific answer that I can document, but I can tell you that nearly all of what we now think of as "traditional" tattoos --anchors, swallows, hearts and the like-- have a nautical origin and that as such, it's a good bet that "Mom" does too. (A tattoo artist acquaintance of mine just texted me back that it's from the song "The Rocky Road to Dublin" wherein the singer says "kissed me mother dear," which I suppose is a possibility, but it sounds way too specific and I am a skeptic.)
Dye, Ira. "The Tattoos of Early American Seafarers, 1796-1818." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 133.4 (1989): 520-554.
