Judge — September 18, 1909 — page 5: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a humorous comic strip about Captain Fibb, an elderly military storyteller. The narrative follows his tall tales: he claims to have been in the army during peacetime, then describes increasingly implausible war experiences—hiding in ammunition before sunrise, escaping as a mummy before sunset, and surviving a cannon blast that lifted him across a field. The satire targets the exaggeration common to military veterans' reminiscences. The final panels show Fibb as a charlatan peddling "pieces from the old Half Moon and Clermont" as souvenirs at 25 cents—playing on gullible tourists. The joke is that his fabricated war stories match his fraudulent souvenir scheme: both are invented tales meant to deceive for profit.