Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, March 1922 · page 16 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #31 — page 16: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from the satirical magazine presents philosophical musings on love and marriage through labeled sections rather than traditional cartoons. The content satirizes early 20th-century romantic and modernist attitudes. The opening passage romanticizes first love with flowery, almost religious language. The "MARRIAGE" section mocks the period's relationship dynamics through paradoxical dialogue—a couple unable to communicate honestly, where admitting love becomes a reason *against* marriage. "PROTEST AGAINST REALISM" appears to critique modernist disillusionment: the speaker laments that experience destroys innocence and yearns impossibly to relive emotions "for the first time again," suggesting futility in seeking authentic feeling after past relationships. "DISILLUSIONMENT" (incomplete) hints at anxiety about what wisdom to pass to the next generation—implying society's uncertainty about modern love and values. The satire targets post-WWI intellectual cynicism and the tension between romantic ideals and harsh experience that characterized 1920s cultural discourse.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
14 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang "She was the first person he had ever loved. He had trembled when he touched her. His spasms of passion had been like spasms of pain, his face contorted and his voice rough, and then there had followed intervals of wretched shyness. When he had thought of possessing her he had become a saint waiting for a divine manifestation." MARRIAGE—"We just are hopelessly unsuited to each other. Do you seriously think that you want a wife like me?" * * * "Marriage will modify you." * * * "Marriage might modify me if I married the right man. Marriage to you would bring out everything you hate." * * * "Helena, do you realize that I love you?" "You don't know what love means." * * * "Of course I don't. If I did I might want to marry you." PROTEST AGAINST REALISM—"What is it one yearns for? It is to be able to do a thing for the first time again. And that is impossible. When I love, what do I want? I want never to have kissed, never to have given myself before. It is in vain, I say—'Never before was I awake—I was a dummy in the hands of fate—now I am alive.' I was shut up perhaps, but my outer petals were touched. Oh, my God, make me again the child I was—but He cannot answer." DISILLUSIONMENT—What are we to tell our children? How are they to know that