This comic postcard has an interesting pedigree.

Douglas Tempest (born 1887) was a British illustrator and cartoonist who went on to become a pioneer in film animation.
Many Tempest cartoons were featured on postcards published by the English firm of Bamforth & Company.

Bamforth & Company had an fascinating evolution as a media company; their production of postcards was a sideline of their development of early motion pictures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamforth_%26_Co_Ltd

John Rodkey lived in Columbia, the transportation hub on the Susquehanna River in central Pennsylvania.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia,_Pennsylvania

Sometime around 1910, John was given this postcard.

The postcard was not mailed; we may assume that it was hand-delivered.
(I have several other postcards that were mailed to John Rodkey – in Columbia and in another community nearby.)

The illustration on the face shows a sleepy woman who confuses the sensation of an enormous mosquito with the very unruly bristles of the sleeping man’s moustache.

It may have been especially amusing because the enormous moustache adorns a person named, “John” – the same as the recipient of the postcard.

On the reverse, the sender writes a breezy note: “How does this strike you”.

The writer warns, “Don’t let that fellow kiss you”.

Unfortunately, the writer did not inscribe a name.

An internet search reveals that there are numerous collectors of Tempest illustrations, especially of
those published by Bamforth.
It appears that John was pleased by the postcard, as it was preserved with his large postcard collection for more than a hundred years.

#johnredkay #columbiapa #douglastempest #comicpostcard #moustache #bamforthcompany #circa1915