After I announced my 'Hierarchy of Beards' poster, a fine Marksman named Dan I. shared the following with me. It's a Beard Photo-Spread from the April 24, 1939 issue of LIFE magazine, full of such gems as the "Norse Skipper", "Oom Paul Kruger Beard", and "Double Spitzbart". The best part is that, as far as I can tell, these are more-or-less accurate names, unlike mine, which are 100%… Read more...

These "True Stuff from Old Books" entries are from Punchinello magazine, 1870. Punchinello was a short-lived New York City spinoff of the popular British satirical weekly Punch, and like its cousin across the pond, it championed the causes of a new and growing demographic -- an urban literate middle-class -- while skewering the pompous in politics and society. An example (click any of the images in this post for bigger versions)… Read more...

This "True Stuff from Old Books" entry is from Scientific American magazine, 1883. Sci-Am is pretty interesting to read back issues from, because as goofy as we sometimes think the 1800s were technology-wise (full of penny-farthing bicycles and steam locomotives), this was the height of the Industrial Revolution and the future literally seemed limitless for inventors. Any tinkerer with a few tools and a subscription to Sci-Am felt he could… Read more...

In my new irregular series "True Stuff from Old Books", I present unaltered excerpts from some of the books I've collected to use as Wondermark source material. In particular, I thought the cartoons below were apropos to the election season. All three are from the 1911 collection Caricature: The Wit and Humor of a Nation in Picture, Song and Story, an anthology of sorts that's a really wonderful peek into the… Read more...

While at the library yesterday hunting through old books for Wondermark source material, I came across this article in the 1891 volume of a magazine called The Illustrated American. Entitled "Is Polygamy a Success?", it's letters from readers responding to a previous article written by a self-described "ex-Mormon," in which the writer denounces Mormonism with claims that its members practice polygamy.

These letters were just the beginning of a huge… Read more...