WHO’S-WHO IN THE COMICS
By Fred Schaefer
Some years ago a gentle inoffensive stranger landed on this terrestial sphere with no luggage but a notebook. Since then “he has tarried with us, pussyfooted and unobtrusive as a Japanese spy, picking up information and knitting his intellectual brow over the incomprehensible things so different from those on his own planet. This was Mr. Skygack from Mars. It is, however, not clearly known how long he will continue his earth study of earth beings at their earth work’s, nor how he will get back to Mars when he concludes to return. It will probably be by the same means by which he arrived, unless by chance he came as a meteorite.
We have conceded that Mr. Skygack is harmless. His cherubic countenance, however, has proved to be very irritating to one of our friends, Adolf. The sight of Mr. Skygack aggravates Adolf. Mr. Skygack is really one of the trifles of life and Adolf makes a mistake by noticing him. Adolf can’t get used to the appearance of Mr. Skygack’s calabash, which is covered with a fuzz like a bath towel. Adolf is some times very brutal towards him, but Mr. Skygack is invulnerable, Like the Phoenix, he smilingly rises when you light a fire under him.
Snooping is Mr. Skygack’s only fault. But that is because he has difficulty observing our etiquette . We can’t tell him better, because his language is not ours. It is a shrill, barbaric tongue that sounds like clipping finger nails. It’s about as musical as the crackling noise which you hear in some telephone receivers. Few can communicate with him intelligently, although one day a gentleman carried on quite a conversation with him by filing a saw.
Mr. Skygack is experiencing the same difficulties as did Gulliver among the queer creatures encountered in his travels. We must be very puzzling to him. For instance, when we refer to a “Big Smoke,” how is he to know whether we mean a forest fire, Jack Johnson, Pittsburgh or a nickel cigar. Our every action puzzles him. When we shake hands he doesn’t know- whether we are rubbing, our antennat or trying to pull each other, limb from limb. Street cars to him are just little sardine boxes into which we rashly swarm, only to emerge from just as distractedly.
False teeth are a strange thing to him he suspects that all of us can take ourselves entirely apart if we have a mind to. And what must be his impressions when he dissects a mince pie?
Naturally scientists take a lively interest in Mr. Skygack. Prof. Dopemoutsky of the University of Rawhide, has written a paper which argues that Mr. Skygack’s feet are so exceedingly flat from standing on a canal boat and poling it through the canals of Mars.