Judge, 1907-07-06 · page 7 of 16
Judge — July 6, 1907 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a humorous six-panel comic strip satirizing early aviation enthusiasm and the absurdity of homemade flying machines. A father invents "The Scooter," an airship he believes will fly successfully. Little Johnny and teddy bears board it, but the craft inadvertently hooks a clothesline, then a cow's tail (via a bulldog), creating a chaotic trail of debris across the countryside. The satire targets the era's aviation craze and overconfident amateur inventors. The joke escalates from technical failure to slapstick chaos—the "flying machine" becomes less a marvel of engineering than a runaway disaster dragging livestock and laundry behind it. By 1907, when powered flight was still novel, Judge mocks both inventors' grandiose claims and public gullibility about miraculous new technologies. The teddy bears reference the popular "Teddy Bear" craze of the era.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
LITTLE JOHNNY AND THE TEDDY BEARS. ME TAKES THEM SAILING IN PA'S PLYING-MACHINE, AND THEY HAVE A REMARKABLE EXPERIENCE. 1. John's pa, we briefly now relate, As an inventor ‘s simply great. The ** Scooter” is his first real try, And Teds are going to steal a fly. Chock-full of happy Teddy bear, And still the Teds don't seem to mind ‘The load they're picking up behind. 5. And here misfortune further goes— The cow hooks up a line of clothes! If Scooter Just keeps on a-salling "Twill have a town behind it trailing. 2. Most alr-ships do not fly, you know: But, gracious! see the Scooter go! The Teds, so tickled with the view, Don't see what they have hooked into. 4. Up, up! The Scooter goes yet higher. Pa certainly has made a flyer! But bulldog now will end the sall— He's grabbed an old cow by the tail! 6. The queer proceeding ends at last ‘And pa looks on the wreck aghast. ‘The cow and dog and dame now know What ferked them ‘cross the country so COPYRIGHT 1907 BY JUDGE COMPANY, PUBLISHERS, 225 FOURTH AVE, NEW YORK. comicbooks.com