With a lot of these you’ll need to try to take yourself back to the period in order to appreciate the humor. For example, the first comic is about a lad in a soda shop who had no money to buy a delicious ice-cream soda, hence trying to hang on to his fragile dignity. :S
If you remember Our Gang / The Little Rascals, this is a perfect Spanky situation.
As for the last comic, uh…
“Sparky” is Charles Schulz, of course, and these are his pre-Peanuts work:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li’l_Folks
These come from the superb, incredible Fantagraphics collection:
https://www.fantagraphics.com/collections/peanuts
Good context on the first comic, I wouldn’t have gotten it otherwise. The last one is pretty good, kind of a weird joke in that the basic premise works for a Peanuts strip, or a Cyanide & Happiness strip (though the C&H one would likely be much more graphic)
