Judge — December 5, 1896 — page 16: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This comic strip satirizes gender dynamics and marksmanship pretense in the 1890s. A man boasts to a woman about his hunting prowess, claiming he never misses—that he "wings" ducks rather than kills them cleanly. When an actual duck appears, he shoots and misses repeatedly while the woman watches. The punchline reveals the woman has unknowingly been carrying a loaded umbrella for a year. The satire mocks the man's exaggerated claims of skill and masculinity; his demonstrated incompetence contrasts sharply with his initial braggadocio. The woman's innocent comment about the umbrella being "loaded" provides ironic wordplay, as she's been literally armed without knowing it—a subtle jab at male presumptions of superiority and female naiveté during this era. The title's question mark suggests skepticism about the hunting narrative from the start.