Alex Heberling

Not too long ago, in the course of my work at the CRL, I scanned many pages of La Baïonnette, a French magazine from the first World War.  It was apparently a much more political publication than what I grasped while flipping through the pages looking for my next scanning victim, though I did tend to see “La Guerre” quite a bit in the titles of things.  I got the impression that it was just a really cool illustration magazine, especially since the majority of the pictures I scanned were of voluptuous French women sporting the fashions of the day.  (Much of which I will take advantage of for future costume designs in my comics.)  The magazine had many beautiful illustrations, but four images in the collection stuck out to me:

Observe: In all four images there is a couple in a restaurant consisting of a stylish young woman and an apparently older monsieur of average looks.  The woman is sitting quite primly beside her date, applying powder from a compact in two of the images, while the man appears to be having some kind of altercation with a waiter while looking at the menu.

There seems to be a meme here, but since I can’t read French, the images are taken completely out of context for me, and I just have to puzzle and puzzle over them.

(Also, I have a theory that illustrators only draw tableclothes because they’d have to draw people’s legs and such underneath them otherwise.  Ingenius.)