SOCIAL SATIRE

The American funny paper has never been truly appreciated by the critics, in spite of its tremendous popularity with the public. But at last it has received its due attention. Mr. Ernest Brennecke, in the March issue of the Century Magazine not only traces the development of the comic sheet--beginning arbitrarily, as he says, with the medieval "Dance of Death" pictures but he carefuly analyzes the modern "funnies" with respect to their philosophy, intent, method and so on, in a most illuminating discussion.

The business man of whom he speaks, who keeps his children lined up patiently waiting for the comic section while he reads it himself is a very common type; and the anecdote about the congressman who bowed to his colleague with an "After you, my dear Alphonse,"--just one week after the first appearance of the "Alphonse-and-Gaston" strip illustrates admirably its far-reaching effects. Who is there, indeed, who is not--from time to time if not regularly--exposed to a funny paper? The circulation and wide popularity of the comic supplements have made them powerful factors in American life.

Of course, like the old discussion of the hen and the egg, it might be debated whether the American comic moulded American life or American life expressed itself through the comic. Actually, however, the comic has developed into an organ of social satire, an ogre which sees, as Mencken says of women, "with bright and horrible eyes" all of the weaknesses and vices of men and broadcasts this knowledge to the world. The "funnies" are terribly realistic, destructive, usually pessimistic criticisms of everything although the most popular subjects are domestic life, business and personal adventure. But the delight of ridiculing the vices of others makes the comics quite the most interesting feature to the populace; nothing is half so delicious as seeing A. Mutt revealed in all his shallow pretentiousness or Andy Gump annihilated at the very zenith of his unbearable pride and conceit.

The discerning, therefore, find in Mr. R. L. Goldberg the "disillusioned spirit of the grim, sharp-witted Schopenhauer"; in fact only "a thin veil of hilarity" disguises the very dismal outlook behind all of the so-called "funny" sections. But the genius of the artists has never received the recognition it deserves. It is time for the public to realize that "the funnies are animated with the spirit of Aristophanes, of Horace, of Rabelais, of Congreve, and of Sheridan, of Shaw and of W. S. Gilbert."