Judge — September 1937 — page 15: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SEE YOU IN THE FUNNY PAPERS I HAVE just been to the doctor. First he took my family history. Not the exciting part about Aunt Agatha running off with the coal dealer, but just what the various members of my family had “a tendency to.” So I gave it all to him, including the fact that my father had a tendency to fly off the han. dle every time my mother mentioned going to a doctor. It wasn't that he was a Christian Scientist. He just mistrusted lawyers and doctors. All lawyers were crooks, my father used to say, and he never had any respect for doctors be. cause their profession allowed them to take the clothes off strange women. Maybe I shouldn't have told the doc- tor that, because he was pretty abrupt with me afterward. First he listened to my heart, and then he studied my blood pressure. Finally he looked at me and said, “We'll have to find a reason for that.” “For what?” I asked. His glance was steely. “Your heart is unding along much faster than it should—and your blood pressure is too high for a man your age.” Then he took my pulse and blood pressure again, and this time they were worse, because I was scared silly. “Do you drink?” he said, bringing out a multigraphed questionnaire. “Very occasionally,” I said. After the line which read Does the Patient Use Alcohol he wrote “Yes.” “Look here,” I protested, “if an occa- sional drinker is ‘yes’ then I'm really a teetotaler.”” He paid no attention. “Do you work hard?” ‘I told him that the boss didn’t think so. The doctor shook his head sadly. “Well,” he mentioned in a determined voice, “we certainly have to find some reason for that heart.” He pursed his lips. Then suddenly: “I've got it! You read the Sunday comics to your child.” “That's right, but—" “You want to live to your normal expectancy, don’t you?” I had to admit it. “Well, then, lay off the funny pa. First I thought I'd got into the office of a povchistcis by mistake. Then I be. lieved maybe he was a nut, so I paid him in cash and fled. S I walked home (very slowly) I muttered angrily to myself. “You've been reading funny papers since you could spell out the words..." and then it occurred to me that the funny papers now weren't like the ones when I was young. There was Little Nemo and his dreams. There was a good deal of bouncing vases off Jeff's head, and considerable altercation between man and wife. But, compared with the con. temporary comic characters, those earlier boys were mild. It's funny, but my kid has never asked me why they call them funnies. And that's a break, because I couldn't tell him. Why, it's nothing at all to have him come up to me of a Sunday morning and say, “Come on, Pop, let's see whether Dewey the Dope got over his opium jag and put the finger on Dick Tracy.” Since they began advertising such products for kiddies as cigars and cig- arettes in the funny section the heroines of newsprint strips have grown increas. ingly comely. Time was when a female in a funny paper was as flat chested as I am. But now even Maggie has devel. oped, although I rather suspect her of wearing an uplift brassiere. I don't blame Maggie, though, what with the competition she gets from gals like Toots, and the Dragon Lady, and Buck MATERNITY __WARD Rogers’ inamorata, Wilma. No fooling, @ woman has to have Plenty of this and that since sex appeal hit the kiddies’ age. Fie most curious thing has happened since I wrote the above, on a Saturday evening. Today is Sunday and there has been a shooting next door. The little neighbor boy has explained it to us. “Papa wanted to read the funnies,” he said, “and Mamma wanted to read them, too—so they had an argument about who was to read them to me. And Mamma shot Papa. But it wasn’t a ray gun. It was just Grandpa's old army pistol.” But why would Mamma show such marked insistence, I asked myself. Then I recalled what the cake flour and lip. stick advertising had started in the Sun- day comics. I remembered invincible Flash Gordon, and that stalwart loin- cloth tragedian, Tarzan of the Apes. So now Papa lay in the hospital while they hunted a slug from Grandpa's army pistol. You bet your sweet life, I got a great little doctor! —Nakro Jones. "Who shall I say is calling, sir?” September 1937 comicbooks.com