In the early 20th century, the weekend only consisted of 1.5 days. Office workers still worked on Saturday mornings. As can seen in the jokes of this comic, people often resented working on Saturday and could not wait to leave for their weekend plans. It was not until the 1930s that getting the whole Saturday off became common.
Loam is the ideal type of gardening soil.
This comic is inspired by Mary Pickford, the biggest and most popular actress of the silent movie era. In the comic, little “Mary Toothpick” dreams of being a big star and returning to her hometown in Birdseye Center. She holds a newspaper with the headline “Mary Pickford Revisits Her Childhood Home”, which really happened. Mary Pickford was born in Toronto and grew up at 211 University Avenue. The actress visited Toronto with her husband, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., in March 1924, returning to her childhood home and posing in front of the house with her mother.
The scanned copy of this was poor, as the top right-hand corner of the comic was badly ripped in the microfilm. The text bubble in that corner is hard to read, but it says “What a tomboy she was – and so homely!”
The title for this comic comes from the song “Ain’t We Got Fun“, which was first published in 1921, so it would still be a recent and popular song.
It is interesting to note, that when Jim was drawing in a more realistic style in the early 1920s for Life’s Little Comedies, he does not draw black people in a stereotypical manner.
It is encouraging to see that very early in Jim’s career (when he drew his comic in a realistic style), that he did not resort to physical stereotypes, as was common in comics of the era. See my post on About Stereotypes for more information. Though Jim did not use a physical stereotype in this comic, the speech of the Black man still is.
This comic is in the period of transition from “Life’s Little Comedies” to “Birdseye Center”. It is also unusual as Jim wrote in a copyright statement next to his signature.
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