Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #32 — page 34: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is primarily a **contest announcement page**, not satirical content. It advertises a $10,000 short-story contest for *True Confessions* magazine, a Fawcett publication based in Robbinsdale, Minnesota, dated February 15, 1922. The page features a **facsimile bank check** (No. 2701 from Security State Bank of Robbinsdale) as a promotional visual, legitimizing the prize fund. The contest offered substantial rewards: two $1,000 grand prizes, smaller prizes down to $25 entries, across two submission deadlines (June 30 and October 1, 1922). Contest guidelines requested "unusual" confession-based stories—about Magdalenes, Jimmy Valentines, faithless lovers, dopey friends, and hate—explicitly rejecting "cut and dried fiction." This reflects early-1920s **pulp magazine culture**, when publishers competed aggressively for content through high-prize contests. The bank check imagery was a marketing technique to demonstrate financial credibility and encourage submissions from amateur writers.