Life, 1922-01-26 · page 22 of 34
Life — January 26, 1922 — page 22: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical comic contrasts a businessman's public and private personas. The same man appears in six panels: **Morning office**: Austere, pompous, disagreeable. **Afternoon golf course**: Frantically competitive, rushing ahead of slower players. **On the course**: Obsessively boastful about minor improvements; cruel when opponents fail. **In the mud**: Willing to get dirty hunting for his golf ball—yet supposedly too dignified to search for his own watch elsewhere. **Locker room**: Suddenly genial and friendly. The joke satirizes hypocrisy and the dual nature of men in early 20th-century business culture: stern, disagreeable authority figures at work transform into petty, competitive, then charming versions of themselves depending on context. Golf reveals their true character—competitive and undignified—contradicting their cultivated professional personas. The title poses the central question: which version is the "real" man?
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
In his office in the morning—austere, pompous, disagreeable to everyone. On the golf course in the afternoon. Runs to first tee to get ahead of a slow four. Howls his delight when he lengthens his drive by five yards. Laughs uproariously when his opponent misses a short putt. Hunts for his ball in the mud. (He wouldn’t hunt ° for his watch in such a place.) The most genial soul in the locker room, Can This Be the Same Man? comicbooks.com