These are joyously disreputable cartoons. When a restaurant customer complains that there’s a hair in his soup, he’s talking about a beanstalk-size affair boldly sprouting from the soup bowl. Martin’s sight gags go beyond simple cleverness, often shooting into the stratosphere of dada brilliance. A secretary sits at her keyboard, tapping away, her industriousness illustrated by Martin’s ever-present sound effects (“TIK-TIKATAK TIKKIK TIKKIK ...”). The final panel shows the letter itself, which begins, “Tikka tik tikka, Tikkak tikkak tikkik. ...” In the world of Don Martin, there’s no such thing as business as usual...

Martin’s women have the same long chins and bulbous noses, their hair piled in towering Marie Antoinette-style confections or sprouting from the scalp into a bicone of curls. Pneumatic princesses plant smooches on bug-slurping frogs; a bearded caveman, dressed only in tiny fur underpants, rejoices over the invention of fire; a mustachioed man in a pinstripe suit passionately kisses a comely, bosomy blonde — only to pull away, in the last panel, to reveal that the mustache actually belongs to her.