Judge — May 24, 1930 — page 12: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis This is a Judge magazine cartoon titled "In Ancient Times: The Hitch-Hikers," signed by Forbel. The satire depicts prehistoric humans attempting to hitch rides on dinosaurs—a humorous anachronism that plays on the modern concept of hitchhiking by transplanting it to an impossibly ancient setting. The joke works through absurdist humor: tiny human figures gesture and pose as if hitchhiking along a landscape populated by large sauropod dinosaurs. The cartoon satirizes hitchhiking culture itself, possibly mocking the practice or those who engage in it, by showing its apparent universality across time periods—even "ancient times" apparently had people seeking free rides. The artist's name appears to be Forbel. Without a date visible, the cartoon's exact historical context remains unclear, though Judge was prominent from the 1880s onward.