Judge — December 20, 1902 — page 23: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This 1902 Judge comic strip satirizes colonial-era anxieties about "savage" peoples. Captain Scuttlebutt, apparently a seafarer, encounters cannibals on a beach. The humor derives from racist stereotypes: the cannibals are depicted as primitive and dim-witted, speaking broken English and obsessing over eating people. The satire's actual target appears to be Scuttlebutt himself—a comedic buffoon whose repeated captures and escapes mock melodramatic adventure narratives popular at the time. The cannibals' recurring refrain "he's been eaten before" suggests the joke is on the Captain's ridiculous ineptitude rather than genuine danger. The strip reflects turn-of-the-century attitudes treating non-Western peoples as entertaining curiosities for American audiences, while simultaneously mocking overwrought adventure fiction popular in American magazines.