Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, August 1922 · page 5 of 67
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #36 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a **title page and editor's note** from *Captain Billy's Whiz Bang*, a popular American humor magazine of the 1920s. Rather than containing a cartoon, it features the editor's (Captain Billy Fawcett's) defensive explanation about why he can produce humorous content while managing multiple ventures, including the magazine itself and a new publication called *True Confessions*. The editor uses a self-deprecating persona ("backward hayseed") to preempt criticism about his divided attention. The inserted anecdote about "Fogarty"—likely referencing a real entertainer—illustrates the editor's philosophy: that the funniest people are often serious or melancholic by nature, a paradox meant to explain why he can produce jokes despite his current digestive troubles ("dyspepsia"). The tone is jovial but also somewhat defensive about juggling multiple publishing projects simultaneously.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
3 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang Drippings From the Fawcett Editor's Note—It was either Olaf or Aristophanes who once said: "No one ever reads a preface." So, this must not be construed as a preface—merely a beginning on Whiz Bang's August eruption of farmyard fun and foolishness. Someone pointed to the corrugations on my brow the other day and asked me how it was possible for me to sit down and pound out "phunney" stuff when I seemed to be so busy starting my new magazine, "True Confessions," besides attending to all the multitudinous details of running a modern farm. It is, indeed, a bold thing for a backward hayseed to sit down in the midst of statistics on hog cholera, spavin and asparagus beetles and try to run a humor publication. But my friend is mistaken when he thinks that the rollicking, rosy-cheeked, happy-go-lucky fellow knows more of the deepest depths of humor than any other type of human. Usually the antithesis is true. A gloomy looking man once called upon a doctor friend of mine for treatment.. After an examination the doctor said: "You are suffering from Hypochondria. You need someone to make you laugh. Go and hear Fogarty at the Orpheum tonight." "I am Fogarty," replied his gloomy looking visitor. No matter what the filosophy of the matter is, the fact remains that the men of the most delicious wit ofttimes have the most pronounced tinge of seriousness. It is a strange alliance—yea, a paradoxical one—and leads me to express the hope that my Whiz Bang friends will find this August periodical of fun just as piquant and zippy as its predecessors even though Captain Billy has been suffering from temporary spare-time dyspepsia.—Skipper Bill.