Judge — December 23, 1905 — page 15: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

JUDGE’S FUNNIEST YEAR Will be JUDGE'S funniest year. For more than a quarter of a century the best work of 1 9 .@) 6 the foremost comic artists and humorous writers has been appearing week by week in these pages. Nearly every famous laugh-maker during that time has either been intro- duced to the public or forwarded on his career by JUDGE. This is the day of the statistician and JUDGE has been doing a little figuring. Some joke statistics may interest the reader. Upwards of 40,000 comic drawings and 500,000 jokes, skits, stories, epigrams and funni- cisms of all kinds is the approximate sum of JUDGE'S contribution to the entertainment of mankind. By way of illustration let us put the total number of JUDGES issued from this office at 10,000,000. It is fair to say that there are five readers to each copy. Let us say that each reader gets ten smiles, chuckles, grins, or laughs out of his copy, and that each one repeats at least one story, and so communicates another smile. Turn now to the comedians who take their jokes from JUDGE. Assume that an even thousand have done this. Each joke in this service is worked to its maximum capacity. A thousand comedians ought to appropriate one hundred jokes apiece. That's a good many, but we are giving them twenty-five years to do it, and a comedian can get away with more than that in a quarter ofacentury. A fair average of individual laughs evoked from audiences by each of these jokes would be 100,000. We must now compute the repetitions of these stage jokes by persons in the audience, who straightway go home and tell the funny things they saw and heard. Ten repeats will fall far short of the fact. Leaving out the miscella- neous after-life of the exceptionally good jokes, we are now ready to assemble the results of our figuring in the following amazing total : ONE HUNDRED AND TEN BILLION, FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILLION SMILES brought by JUDGE to this poor old sorrow-laden world! The dull face of care broken into the sunny ripples of mirth 110,550,000,000 times! One hundred and ten laughs for every dollar of the national debt. The statesmen who piled up that debt are honored, if dead, in all the cemeteries, and if living they are looked up to and admired and lauded by everybody in the community. JUDGE asks no other title to fame than those billions of dimpl«s of laughter. We submit that on such a record JUDGE is either indictable for a high crime or deserving of the chap- let of immortal renown. There is no middle course. JUDGE is proud of his comic progeny and looks upon his growing family of the children of mirth with paternal fondness. JOKE STATISTICS JUDGE would like to be able to follow the prac- JUDGE tice of the other big magazines and entertain his FORECASTS | reacers at the first of the year with the tale of his big projects, the immense cost of his under- takings and the stunning catches he has made of big frogs in the liter- ary puddle. But because of the very nature of humor he cannot do this. His best work springs out of the events as they occur. It may be possible to predict the big storms that will thrash round the world in the year to come, but no weather expert can tell what zephyrs and wanton momentary wisps of wind will cool the cheek during the days to come. JUDGE will evoke the lighter breezes of laughter and good cheer that will blow refreshingly round the events of 1906, But there are enough special features besides already determined upon to make an announcement of unusual interest. First of all, the political cartoons in color will be continued. At the head of the cartoon staff stands the prince of American caricaturists, Eugene Zimmerman, who is known and admired all over the world through his unique work in JUDGE. In Great Britain and on the continent, “ ZIM" is almost as weil known as on this side of the Atlantic. ZIM" will also appear in funny black-and-whites during the year, and line-drawing is his best and funniest work. Then comes E. Flohri, whose cartoons have created only less comment than “« ZIM’S” in the past year. E. W. Davis is a newcomer on the JUDGE staff? whose work, both in color and black-and-white, gives promise of another notable JUDGE success. Mr. Davis is also art director. James Montgomery Flagg has gone to the FLAGG'S first rank in the past two or three years as a NERVY NAT] master of comedy in drawing. His Nervy Nat, a new series of which has just begun, is one of the really laughable creations of the year. Flagg’s captions, the readers that go with the “ Nat” pictures, are inimitably and irresistibly comic. C. J. Taylor, Art Young, A. Levering, Hy Mayer, Fred Lewis, P. Stan- laws, Charles Sarka. J. R. Shaver, A. S. Daggy, J. H. Smith, J. R. Bray, H. R. Daugherty, W. O. Wilson, J. Conacher, Harrison Cady, L. E. Foster, H. M. Wilder, and others will be contributors during the year. A feature of unusual interest planned for the new year will be a series of short biographic sketches of the artists and writers who are entertain- ing JUDGE readers. JUDGES expert answers will be a comic feature of the year, and more short stories will appear than heretofore. Some of the foremost writers of humor will contribute their best work during the next twelve months, Prominent in the list are W. J. Lampton, J. W. Foley, W. D. Nesbit, S. E. Kiser, L. H. Robbins, F. P. Adams, J. L. Harbour, Carolyn Wells, Joe Cone, Harriette Wilbur, Roy Farrell Greene, Homer Croy, J. H. Lambert, Strickland W. Gillilan, Eli Perkins, Will Reed Dunroy, Willis J. Clanahan, Lowell Otus Reese, Ora Parker, P. P. Shevlin, ‘T. E. McGrath, Victor Hermann, McLandburgh Wilson, Edwyn Stanley, C. M. West, Emma C. Dowd, etc. EXPERT ANSWERS MORE TIMELINESS, a closer touch with men and events of the hour, will be JUDGE'S rule in the new year. THE NATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMOR is the ideal to which we shall approach nearer than ever before. comicbooks.com