Judge, 1926-01-23 · page 5 of 36
Judge — January 23, 1926 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "Alley Up!" - Judge Magazine Cartoon Analysis This Hugh Wood cartoon satirizes the obsession with collecting valuable antiques among the wealthy Maloney family. The narrative follows a Ming vase discarded by Mrs. Maloney in 1902, which circulates through various hands—a junk collector, an antique dealer (Monsieur Fleurot), and eventually returns to the Maloneys in 1925 as a "rare" acquisition worth $10,000. The comic strip panels humorously depict the vase's journey, ultimately mocking upper-class pretension: the Maloneys treasure what they'd previously deemed worthless junk. The satire targets how wealth and social status drive artificial value in the antiques market, and how collectors mistake providence for connoisseurship. The title "Alley Up" plays on the vase's humble origins in an alley.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Alley Up! Ox THE morning of April 10, 1902, Mrs. Mickey Maloney opened the back window of her tenement and ruthlessly threw out into the alley a vase that “Pa” Maloney had picked up at the “5 and 10” as a birthday gift for the “missus.” ‘Sure and ye would think the loikes o’ him would bring me somethin’ a little better,” she snorted, wiping her hands on the tubs before continuing with the family wash. “Two years later, little Tony Es- posito, playing in a vacant lot, picked up the cracked vase and brought it home to his mother, who fingered it gingerly and threw it down the air shaft, where the handle broke off and it was later picked up by the janitor and put in the ash barrel. From 1905 to 1910 it re- mained buried under tons of refuse. In 1911 it was unearthed again and put in a wagon to be dumped over- board at sea. En route to the docks, it fell from the wagon and was picked up by Monsieur Fleurot, antique dealer, who threw it into his back yard, where it reposed for fifteen years half buried in the soil. On the night of April 10, 1925, the lights blazed in ‘“Stevedoria,” the beautiful country estate occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Mickey Maloney. Stevedoring had prospered. The Maloney Unloading Company had exclusive franchises along the city docks. Prosperity had brought dia- monds, limousines, the gout, mani- cures and other luxuries, not to mention mud massages. _ ‘Tis your birthday, ma,” whis- pered Mickey Maloney, dismissing the butler, “and I’ve brought ye a real antique vase from the Ming dynasty. "Tis $10,000 it cost. me, ma, but Jacques Fleurot says it’s 10,000 years old—that’s a dollar for every year.” He handed her a dusty, cracked, battered vase num- * bering well over 10,000,000 bacteria to the square inch. “Tis bee-u-tee-ful,” —_ gurgled Madam Maloney (née “Ma” Ma- loney), extending her jeweled hands. “°Tis rare and swell.” So saying, she rapturously and ecstatically clasped to her lavaliered bosom the same vase she had thrown away twenty-three years earlier. “Le’s go in this tea room, Ed, and get seven or eight lunches.” Hugh Wood = comicbooks.com