Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, December 1924 · page 41 of 71
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #67 — page 41: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a humorous poem from *Captain Billy's Whiz Bang*, a satirical magazine popular in the 1920s. The piece uses prehistoric caveman imagery as a comedic metaphor for male loneliness and romantic yearning. The narrative depicts a lonely caveman whose material needs (food) are satisfied, but who feels emotionally incomplete. He howls to the moon in existential frustration—a romantic gesture even in primitive times. Miraculously, a female creature answers his call, appearing with supernatural beauty ("starry nights" for eyes). Their meeting instantly resolves his melancholy. The satire mocks sentimental romantic conventions by literalizing them in crude prehistoric settings, suggesting that romantic longing is primal and timeless. The short motorcycle joke appended below undercuts any earnestness, typical of *Whiz Bang*'s irreverent tone. The piece reflects 1920s humor: combining faux-poetic language with crude subjects, and using evolutionary/primitive framing as comedy.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
[Captain Billy's Whiz Bang] An Old World Wooing A CAVEMAN paused on a jagged crag, In the sheen of an Old World night; His steps had dragged with a listless lag In his heart was a lonely blight; He'd gorged himself on a feast of flesh— Had glutted on raw, red meat, But there glimmered a gleam in his skull bone mesh— That his evenings were incomplete. He felt the woof of the wolfish shag, That grew on his cranial bone, And fingered his beard, with a weary wag Of his head, and a dreary moan; He clutched the club in his hand, he'd hewn, With a savage and snarling growl, Then threw up his head to the full, round moon, And uttered a strange, weird howl! From out of the thicket of forest dense, That was strewn with mastodon bones, Came an answering call, that was shrill and tense, And blended with his own tones! The caveman paused in his hill-top howl, And his eyes flew open wide, And he clutched his club, with a gutteral growl, And a SOMETHING was at his side! The THING had hair that was dark and thick, And shimmered with glinting lights; Its bosom heaved, and its breath came quick, And its eyes were like starry nights! Of a sudden it vanished, the lonely blight, That had filled him with discontent, And the two stood there in the Old World night, And howled to their hearts' content! * * * Motorcycles do remind us We can ride o'er hill and dell, And, in parting, leave behind us Fifty different kinds of smell. [36]