It’s one of those “Evolution of Man” drawings where a monkey transitions to a modern man as it walks. Walking next to the modern man is a monkey who has not evolved. The Monkey says: “You’ve changed.”
This joke must have been done before, but that’s not my problem. Nothing is new, ever.
Here’s an odd early Peanuts parody that was originally published in 1957 in The California Pelican, the University of California student humor magazine:
There’s another page of it, but it’s pretty much the same. Weird violent nihilism. Nothing to do with Peanuts. There’s some old-timey sexist jokes at the top of the page, too, if those interest you (though they aren’t Pelican jokes — they’re from Campus Humor, the magazine that reprinted the cartoon).
The Pelican was an interesting magazine. It was founded by a Cal student named Earle C. Anthony in the early 1900s; he went on to become a famous crazily wealthy and eccentric Los Angeles car dealer. He built the first gas station in California, helped move the Dodgers to the West Coast, and created several radio and TV stations, including KFI and KABC. He built an office for The Pelican on the Cal campus, but the university eventually took it over when the magazine folded. The late 60’s were a hard time for campus humor.
Pelican alums included playwright Frank Chin, jazz singer Susannah McCorkle, and its first great cartoonist, Rube Goldberg. The magazine’s last great cartoonist was early underground legend Joel Beck. Beck didn’t actually attend Berkeley. He was a high school drop-out who just started slipping drawings under the editor’s door. Everyone assumed he was a student.
Be like Joel Beck and draw. My cartoons.