Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum Blog

Looking to finally cash in on that Funny Money, but fresh out of ideas? Presenting, The Gag Master! Over 30,000 hilarious gag possibilities!

This delightful relic from 1963 accompanied Glenn Bretthauer’s How To Make Money With Simple Gags: A Complete Course in Gag Writing!, the cover of which can be seen below. One spin, and you too could be riding that G-Nib of success to the big paycheck in the stars.

Here’s how it works folks: the largest pink disc gives you drawings of 50 CHARACTERS who are sure to be ripe for shenanigans, such as: Bathing Beauty, Witch Doctor, Nagging Wife (did Bill Hoest use this?), Drunk, Plumber, Chinese Laundryman (yeah, we know), Mailman, etc. The second-to-largest wheel in blue contains 25 drawings of PLACES for these characters to interact, such as: Airport, Orchestra Pit, Barber Shop, Courtroom, Department Store, Small Island, etc. Lastly, the small yellow center wheel contains 25 different BASICS OF HUMOR, including: Failure To Accept Custom, Animals Doing Human Things, Loss of Dignity (hilarious!), Curiosity, Absent Mindedness, Doing Things The Hard Way, and so on.

Brett recommends the “ROTATE AT RANDOM” method, though he notes that it’s one of “many” (unnamed) methods for using the ‘master.

A testimony by one Gag Master convert describes it as “a thrilling mental sport and a real challenge to one’s brain and imagination.”  Here at the Cartoon Library we hope that you too will be inspired to build a life of opulence by joining the ranks of other money-making behemoths through the fine art of gag writing.

[Special thanks to Tom Gammill for help with this post.]