I really enjoyed this...especially the girl's description of her Chinese banquet. Nice color illustrations, stone lithographs I presume? I'd like to see more of these if you have them.
By crashryan
By the way, can someone explain the joke on the last page? I must be missing something. Kid wants the pear, cries, is told off by an adult, and then suddenly has a ladder as is eating the pear. What's the joke?
By jrasicmark
It is an odd gag. My guess is we're supposed to assume the adult told the kid he shouldn't be stealing pears anyway, so I'm assuming the gag is that the kid didn't listen to the adult and found a way to get the pear anyway.
In Jack Markow's classic, "The Cartoonist's and Gag Writer's Handbook", one of the gag writer's tropes is to have a character come up with an unusual and unexpected solution to a problem, often using objects in ways they were never designed to be used. I suspect that's what the cartoonist was aiming for here, but fell short since a ladder really isn't an unusual solution for this problem. The only unusual part is that the ladder is broken so that it's just the right size to reach the pear. Maybe we're supposed to guess the kid broke the ladder himself, but that's expecting too much of the reader in my opinion.
By jrasicmark
I just read about an obscure super hero called Atomas whose strip ran in the Mon Journal (issue #70). So I searched for that publication and it took me here. I think the story was published in the 1940s, but it was set in the 1990s. Interestingly, the art style looked much more sophisticated to me than much of the art running in American comics in 1940; to me, the style looked more like something that might have been published by Marvel in the 1970s. I would be interested in seeing issues of this publication from that era here if anyone has them.
By jrasicmark
I just read about an obscure super hero called Atomas whose strip ran in the Mon Journal (issue #70). So I searched for that publication and it took me here. I think the story was published in the 1940s, but it was set in the 1990s. Interestingly, the art style looked much more sophisticated to me than much of the art running in American comics in 1940; to me, the style looked more like something that might have been published by Marvel in the 1970s. I would be interested in seeing issues of this publication from that era here if anyone has them.
By SuperScrounge
Is the last page Proverbe a joke? Maybe it's just an illustration of an old French proverb that the readers of the time would have understood? Is there an old French proverb about not getting something by crying about it, but by doing something?
By lyons
Hi Scrounge - The message conveys a commonplace truth that emotional tears are purposeless.
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