Alexander King, editor. 9 x 12 ins., approx.30 pp.each. Profusely illustrated with black-and-white cartoons. Seven issues of a remarkable, short-lived magazine of utterly irreverent left-wing caricature: Vol. 1, Nos.1-6 (Nov., Dec. 1932; Jan.-Apr. 1933), plus one incomplete issue (lacking 2 text pages) of an earlier “Vol. 1, No. 1” from Feb. 1932. In addition to the missing pages and detached covers of the 1932 issue, there is also damage to the rear cover of Vol. 1, No. 6.
There were only 17 issues of this irreverent journal, beginning in Feb. 1932, with three more issues irregularly appearing by July, then resuming with a new series issued monthly between Nov. 1932 and Nov. 1933. The contributors’ list of both artists and writers is remarkable: Majeska, Orozco, George Grosz, Miguel Covarrubias, Art Young, Percy Crosby, John Sloan, Gilbert Seldes, E.E. Cummings, M.R.Werner, Lynd Ward, Al Hirschfeld, William Steig, James Thurber and Nathanael West.
Most of the magazines were taken up with caricatures, but there were also some articles and photographs. No sacred cow was spared – high society grand dames, politicians of all stripes, Blacks and Jews, Gandhi and Einstein, were all fair game for what Gilbert Seldes cheerfully called “unpleasantly sadistic…savagery”. Writing in the issue that followed Franklin Roosevelt’s election, Seldes joked, “I will suggest to the editors of Americana that they reform. No more sadism. Only pretty pictures of sweet communists welcoming Trotsky back from exile; sweet capitalists washing the feet of the ten million unemployed, and sweet editors of liberal magazines smiling broadly at love triumphant.”