Retrosnark

Humor, Depression-style

Amidst the usual dreck I make fun of, I present a completely different type of subject. To wit, scans from the April 1932 issue of Judge magazine that I snagged at the Crestwood Antique Mall, here in Birmingham. The mall is a delightedly jumbled-up place that would cause obsessive-compulsives to spontaneously combust, but which can deliver some primo, and cheap, goods to those willing to get their hands dirty, and to snort a little mustiness.

I had never before heard of Judge, but some Googling turned up several mentions of it, most of which said that it was a less-successful rival to Puck. (The magazine, not the spiky-haired "Real World" contestant.)

The humor is dated, of course, some more than others, but it's (to me, at least) a fascinating look at a fascinatingly bad time. The fact that a humor magazine managed to stay in business, however tenuously, during the Depression just blows me away.

I'll warn you that some of the pictures are more than a little crooked. I really didn't want to take this magazine apart, like I do with most of my victims, so I did the best I could. And as I've said before, you really see how crooked some magazines are cut when you go to scanning them on right-angled flatbed scanners.

Enjoy.

Ouch. I mean, a honkin' big ouch. Amidst all the cheesiness (even for the times, I would think) of the rest of the magazine, here's a comic that more than likely hit right in the collective solar plexus of anybody reading it at a time when keeping the wolf from the door was a screamingly literal expression.

Worthy of inclusion because of the vintage artwork, even if the humor is a little, um, limp.

Just imagine Grampa Walton sitting--excuse me, settin'--back on his rocker, opening up the latest dispatch from Judge headquarters hoping for a mental respite from Depression woes, and viewing this. I'll bet it was a knee-slapper.

Who knew that business euphemisms (like "downsizing" for "mass layoffs") dated back this far?

Lest you think in-your-face advertising is a recent development. "Is your child pathetic? Well, have the little useless clump of tissue chew Beeman's Pepsin Gum, and she'll be neat-o peachy-keen quicker than the President can lay the smackdown on boisterous Hooverville residents!"

What, no "Zoom, Zoom"? Oh, this is a different Mazda.

It's easy to sit here in 2006 and forget that it wasn't that many relatives ago that entertaining with electric lights was sufficiently avant-garde that the public still needed selling on the concept.

The written jokes are kinda eh, but the bottom comic is actually pretty good.

You know what you just don't see much of? Gandhi humor. (You're gonna have to embiggenate this one to read the jokes. Such as they are.)

They're rare now, but time was, French Foreign Legion jokes were as much standard comic fare as the secretary on the boss's lap or the angry housewife wielding a rolling pin toward a husband surrounded by those "hurry-up" lines. The FFL was the answer to anybody's problems. Got a mean wife? Consent to wear the kepi. Or, in this case, head out after the family business bites the Dust Bowl.