Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, May 1922 · page 24 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #33 — page 24: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from *Captain Billy's Whiz Bang* contains no cartoon—it's prose travel commentary, likely satirical editorial content typical of the magazine. The author describes Spanish cities (Burgos and Barcelona) with deliberately exaggerated, moralistic language. The satire works through **contrast and excess**: descriptions of Barcelona's cultural achievements (cathedral, theater, art) immediately pivot to its "vice and crime," slums, and sex work. References to "Comprachicos" (historical child mutilators) and detailed descriptions of brothels, cabarets, and sexual establishments create deliberately lurid, sensationalized travel writing. The implied joke targets both: (1) **preachy travel writers** who moralize about foreign cities, and (2) **readers' prudish hypocrisy**—the detailed cataloging of "bad houses" and sexual venues appeals to the very vice being condemned. The tone suggests cynical amusement at European decadence and American moral posturing about it.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
22 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang ish disease, I know not. Burgos is a storied city, the birthplace of the Cid and site of the finest Gothic cathedral in Europe. The gar- goyle sculptures are fantastic but not more so than the grotesque and horrible beggars that besiege you everywhere. They look as if roasted on Hell's gridiron, and resemble the prize pro- ductions of the *Comprachicos* who, in the sev- enteenth century, carried on the trade of kid- napping, marring and mutilating children to furnish ugly dwarfs for the kings. With their sores and smells they suggested ambulatory hospitals. Barcelona is the liveliest city in the land, the heart, lungs and liver of Spain. Splendid are its churches, museum, art gallery, Colon statue, parks, prados, bull-rings and Liceo, largest theatre in the world. Its harbor is filled with ships from every clime, and its slums harbor every known vice and crime. Some of the side streets are as dangerous as those in London and Sydney. Off the *Rambla* you step into a rathskellar—a meeting place of the demimonde—incongruously fitted out in the style of a mediaeval church. Printed catalogs are furnished travelers with lists of bad houses, with names and accomplishments of inmates. Cabarets open about 10:30 and run till 3:00 A. M., with dance hall and roulette tables in conjunction. Everywhere you see “*posadas*,” infamous inns of liaison, and there are dives where “living pictures” of Sapphic and Sadic