Simplicissimus was a satirical magazine famous for its excellent illustrators, published in Munich 1896-1944.  All the issues are available for browsing in an online archive at the Klassik-Stiftung Weimar. Yet another reason to love the internet!

Browsing the pre-WW1 issues (without a doubt the ‘golden age’ of Simpl, while the brief Weimar era could be called the ‘silver age’), I started collecting the advertisement pages for my own nefarious scrapbooking purposes and came upon this “Black Prophet” – Nyarlathotep in a turban?!

THE BLACK PROPHET!
Man of mystery! A reliable guide, learned in all secret sciences of Ancient Egyptian wisdom! Does not ask for money, nor fame! [etc...]

Interestingly, the ad claims that the prophet is a “Hindoo seer”, born in an unnamed “faraway land of mysteries”, mixing two Western stereotypes of contemporary India and ancient Egypt.

While Professor Zazra claims to work for good and noble purposes, with no desire for personal gain, the same cannot be said for the gentleman to the left, another incarnation of the demonic wisdom personified in Nyarlathotep. Written well after the discovery of Tutankhamon’s tomb in 1922, the story of The Mummy (1932 – watch it on YouTube) picks up some much older themes of pseudo-Egyptian magic in Western pop culture: immortality, reincarnation (borrowed from Hinduism?), hypnotism, mind-control (frequent in Western sci-fi since Romanticism). But Imhotep, no matter how unnaturally aged, is a mere human being. His desires are just human desires as impossibly preserved and prolonged as his lifespan. His burning gaze, drawing his long-lost lover to him, inspires fear but also pity.

Prof. Zazra, on the other hand, seems like a much more suspicious character. I quote his ‘own’ words: This is the moment when I can enter your life. Do not hesitate to capture this opportunity. Whatever can be done to help you, I will do it. Let me do it now, for I shall not walk down this path again. Rub some soot or ink on both of your thumbs, make therewith prints on white paper, send it to me with information of your birthdate (on the hour, if known) and enclose an envelope with your address. You may enclose stamps for any country to the value of 50 Pfennig for postage expenses.

Now, what kind of scam is this?…

As Halloween creeps closer, I felt inspired to draw scary stuff… Not that I’m afraid of the advances in the field of reproductive health during the 20th century. I’m quite grateful for them.

Sometimes people ask what historical period I would like to live in. Well, the last 30 years have been pretty okay. Antibiotics and developed contraception methods guarantee that I can live my life without many of the worries that Mayann and her friends would have to deal with in reality. In biographies of people living in the 1910′s and 1920′s, it’s striking how many suffered and even died because of sexual health issues, even well-to-do people. Others were victims of psychiatric issues, and we still haven’t found solutions for many of those. And then there were countless quacks wreaking havoc on people’s savings and sanity.

Goldie is not a quack, of course. She represents the cutting edge of science with a feminist goal. Just look through her bookshelves for inspiration! The book right behind Falco’s ear is titled Idéologie d’hier: Dieu, la morale, la patrie (“Ideology of Yesterday: God, morals, fatherland”), by Dr Madeleine Pelletier, a famous French feminist doctor and social activist. No wonder our dear deacon recoils in horror. So what might Goldie be concocting? What makes even convinced animal rights activist Mayann beam with glee?

By the way, the word Guinea Pig in the sense of ‘object for experiments’ was first recorded in the English language precisely in the year 1920.

Continuing the horror theme, today it’s Father Pietro’s turn to face his worst nightmare – a garden full of pests*) such as a wild sow and her farrow, a raven, sparrows, a mole, and three unruly seminarians. Falco is playing Saint Francis to a young raven, Nino is feeding his feathered friends instead of sowing, and I don’t want to know what Zeppe is going to do with his little spade.

I got the idea from studying Parisian argot, the famous slang of the underworld, which contains many imaginative, rude but sometimes poetical synonyms to the regular vocabulary. A priest, for example, could be called sanglier (wild boar), marcassin (wild piglet), corbeau (raven), or taupe (mole); all animals could be described as black like the priest’s cassock. In the days of Victor Hugo, seminary students were called mômes noirs (black kids: see also la môme Piaf).

There is an even more interesting explanation to the term sanglier. According to the Dictionnaire Du Jargon Parisien by Lucien Rigaud from 1878, “Le sanglier est sauvage ; le prêtre vit retiré du monde comme le sanglier au fond des forèts”. The wild boar prefers the deep forests, the priest must keep away from worldly life – being “in the world, but not of it”. From the point of view of the urban proletariat, the clerical class seemed as removed from their world as the wild boar in the forest.

*) N.B.: Pigs can be very useful helpmates in the garden. Our potbellied pig Sergei kept the lawn neat and free from weeds, trimmed and fertilised the rose bushes, and kept the ant and slug population in check.

Since I started studying Paris argot, it was only logical to continue with the Apaches of Montmartre. Looks like Mayann is ready to give them a taste of their own dance.

… And that was how I came to know Julot and Gigolette,
And we would talk and drink a bock, and smoke a cigarette.
And I would meditate upon the artistry of crime,
And he would tell of cracking cribs and cops and doing time;
Or else when he was flush of funds he’d carelessly explain
He’d biffed some bloated bourgeois on the border of the Seine.
So gentle and polite he was, just like a man of peace,
And not a desperado and the terror of the police.
(Robert Service, 1921)

Lord knows what Falco thinks he can do with his umbrella. Perhaps it’s something he learned as a missionary in Japan, or maybe he is familiar with the Cunningham system.

Studying popular imagery of the clerical class over the centuries, one is struck by the ubiquitous umbrella, if you pardon the pun. Here some Jesuits chase away a secular scientist from a Bavarian university in the German satirical magazine Jugend (1913).

Inspired by “Dulcy, the Beautiful”, a comic strip in the British movie magazine Picture Show 1924. It’s not very funny but rather cute anyway, and supposedly written by silent star Constance Talmadge… Both Connie and her sister Norma were a bit dog-crazy.

Name the characters whose eyes you see above! It’s nice how humans (and dogs!) belong to a small gene pool but still manage to show beautiful variation in their phenotype. Dog eyes, by the way, differ from human eyes in interesting ways – the tapetum lucidum, which reflects light, gives a dog’s eye colour an iridescent effect which can be seen up close. I was always fascinated by the irises of our Akita Mitsu, which were dark brown but softly scintillating in rainbow colours. I’ve tried to imitate that effect to give Mochi’s eye an ominous glow.

Colouring is fun, but so time-consuming… I guess I just need more practice.