Judge — April 25, 1925 — page 23: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This satirical comic rewrites famous historical moments through absurdist humor. Each panel pairs a well-known historical event with contemporary social commentary: 1. **Eden Museum**: Adam and Eve feeding animals—mocking popular dime museums. 2. **Sir Walter Raleigh and Elizabeth I**: A beauty bath joke (Raleigh's famous cloak gesture reimagined). 3. **Jonah and the whale**: Standard biblical reference. 4. **St. Patrick and snakes**: Irish historical legend. 5. **The final panel**: The key satire—"Stern West officials enforce the Eighteenth Amendment—making liquor compulsory." This mocks Prohibition (ratified 1919) by reversing it: instead of banning alcohol, officials *force* its consumption. The advertisement for "Jenk's Malt Syrup" with "almost no kick" satirizes how Prohibition-era beverages claimed medicinal purposes to skirt alcohol laws. The humor lies in the absurdist inversion of recognizable history.