This post is part of an occasional series dealing with magazine cover illustration. Here we feature Judge, an American humor magazine published 1881-1947 (Wikipedia entry here). To me, its most interesting covers appeared in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Judge was not a major magazine; circulation was well under that of Saturday Evening Post, Collier's and other general-interest magazine. Nevertheless, Judge did feature cover art by some talented illustrators and cartoonists -- and others who were less so. Here are some examples.

Gallery

[Image]By Lou May - 17 May, 1924
I think that's the artist's name; the signature is a little hard to read.

[Image]By John Held, Jr. - 3 January 1925
Held is considered the archetypical 1920s cartoonist. His highly stylized flappers and friends helped to define that era for many Americans then and later, including me.

[Image]By David Robinson - 16 October 1926
A lesser effort.

[Image]By an unknown artist
Well, I'd know the artist's name if I could decipher that squiggly little signature. Reader suggestions are appreciated, because it's a cute cartoon, though a bad pun.

[Image]By Enoch Bolles - 13 August 1927
Bolles did a lot of cover illustrations in those days. Most of them don't appeal to me, but this is better than most.

[Image]By George Eggleston - 28 September 1929
What would cartoonists do without desert islands?

[Image]By Ruth Eastman - 21 December 1929

[Image]By John Holmgren - 24 January 1931
Nice drawing. I wrote about Holmgren here.

[Image]By Gilbert Bundy - August 1933
Bundy's career peaked from the late 1930s into the early 50s, before his suicide.

[Image]By Gregor Duncan - June 1937
Could this over-stretched analogy cover be symbolic of Judge's decline?