Judge #1732
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeJudge #1732 belongs to a pivotal moment in the long tradition of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson appearing in American humor-magazine cartooning. By 1914, Judge was one of the three dominant weekly satirical publications in the United States, sharing the market with Life and Puck, and its cartoonists regularly riffed on the cultural figures of the day — Holmes and Watson among the most recognizable on either side of the Atlantic. A gag cartoon or illustrated parody featuring the duo in a mass-circulation humor weekly like Judge represents an early node in the sprawling American comics tradition of Holmes adaptation, a tradition that by this period already included Gus Mager's newspaper strip Sherlocko the Monk (debuted 1910) and Sidney Smith's Chicago Tribune strip Sherlock Holmes Jr. (1912–1914). The appearance of Holmes and Watson in Judge's format — primarily single-panel cartoons and short comic sequences — documents how thoroughly the characters had permeated popular visual culture well before the modern comic-book era.
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Judge was founded on October 29, 1881, by a group of cartoonists who had seceded from the rival Puck, with co-founders including cartoonist James Albert Wales, publisher Frank Tousey, and author George H. Jessop. By 1914, the weekly New York-based magazine had a circulation of approximately 110,000 and was a major venue for cartoon-based humor and political satire. Holmes and Watson had been targets of parody in American periodical cartooning since at least the early 1900s, making their appearance in Judge's pages entirely consistent with the magazine's editorial practice of lampoooning well-known cultural figures. No creator credit for the specific Holmes/Watson content in issue #1732 has been located in any accessible archive or secondary source.
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- Judge was a weekly American satirical magazine published from 1881 to 1947, founded by artists who left the rival humor magazine Puck.
- By 1914, Judge had a circulation of approximately 110,000, making it one of the three largest humor weeklies in the United States alongside Life and Puck.
- Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson were among the most widely parodied fictional characters in American popular culture by 1914, appearing in newspaper comic strips, stage parodies, and humor magazines.
- The earliest Holmesian comic parody traceable in American media is Gus Mager's newspaper strip Sherlocko the Monk, which debuted December 9, 1910, with Watson's counterpart named 'Watso.'
- Holmes and Watson appeared as characters in Judge in a humor-magazine context, which typically meant single-panel gag cartoons or short illustrated sequences rather than ongoing narrative strips.
- In 1914, Conan Doyle's lawyers were actively pursuing creators who used the Holmes name without authorization — a pressure that caused Sidney Smith's Chicago Tribune strip Sherlock Holmes Jr. to be renamed Pussyfoot Sam in January 1914.
- No specific creator credit for the Holmes/Watson content in Judge #1732 has been identified in any digitized archive, key-issue database, or Sherlockian scholarly resource consulted.
- Judge carried no issue-level copyright renewals, meaning its 1914 content has passed into the public domain and is theoretically accessible via institutional collections including the New York Public Library.
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