Clare Briggs / Comics

Days of Real Sport: The Hard Hit

by Clare Briggs · April 20, 2019

Tags: Days of Real Sport love

Clare Briggs

Clare Briggs is a famous cartoonist who lived from 1875 to 1930. Poems by Wilbur Nesbitt.

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Gabriel Conroy says:

April 20, 2019 at 12:38 pm

I’m not sure I get it. Does somebody have any thoughts?Report
- North in reply to Gabriel Conroy says:
  
  April 21, 2019 at 4:11 pm
  
  That little lad is hard struck by a crush. The gal is on his mind and he’s probably responsible for that sentimental tree graffiti you see carved on the innocent deciduous he’s leaning against.Report
  - Gabriel Conroy in reply to North says:
    
    April 21, 2019 at 7:18 pm
    
    Thanks (I’m not sure I noticed the tree graffiti), but I guess I just don’t get the joke. However, maybe there doesn’t always have to be a joke, but most of these Clare Briggs things seem to have some sort of, if not punchline, then a message or a “thesis.” Not that there needs to be a message or thesis.Report
    - Marchmaine in reply to Gabriel Conroy says:
      
      April 22, 2019 at 9:44 am
      
      Seems a pretty clear inclination that the fellow is rather homely and the gal is quite cute.
      
      For maximal poignancy, you could read it as remembering a previous time when they were even younger and great pals… puppy love… until they entered the phase where looks and social status start to separate friends and (innocent) crushes of earlier childhood.
      
      But couldn’t hazard more than that as a possible guess without more social context.Report
- Will Truman in reply to Gabriel Conroy says:
  
  April 21, 2019 at 9:50 pm
  
  I sort of touched on this way back when I introduced Briggs:
  
  Some are jokes that still resonate today, while others seem a little foreign or aren’t really punch-line jokes but what can only be described as “tickling familiarity” (The equivalent of tweets that start with TFW or “That Feeling When.”) Many of the themes he touched on would be familiar to today. Some would be considered sexist or racist, while others were surprisingly progressive in their own way.
  
  This falls more in the TFW category.
  
  There will be some I’ll introduce (called “Old Songs”) that I really have no idea what they are or what they represent. I’ll mostly be introducing them as filler but will be included for completeness sake.Report
  - gabriel conroy in reply to Will Truman says:
    
    April 22, 2019 at 6:41 am
    
    Thanks. That makes a lot of sense.
    
    (Tangentially speaking, I’m reminded of the Far Side cartoons. I loved them, but there were (and remain) a few I just don’t understand. But with that cartoon, there seems to have always been a punchline intended.)Report
    - Kolohe in reply to gabriel conroy says:
      
      April 22, 2019 at 9:21 am
      
      I’m guessing also that ‘hard hit’ is a play on words for the term used in many sports (nowadays, American football, but back then, maybe also football, but perhaps boxing, or even baseball) and Cupid hit the young lad so hard he’s got to go under the concussion protocol.Report