The Teddyssey

You know how kids today think they're all cool with their zombie/Austen mashups and Lincoln-hunted-vampires conceits? Check out The Teddyssey, a 1907 retelling of Teddy Roosevelt's life as though it were The Odyssey, which I discovered on Google Books when I was supposed to be researching something else for work. It is hi-larious.

A book of caricatures of T.R., organized loosely around Homer’s Odyssey, Cushing’s parody consists of eleven “books”: Infancy, Youth, San Juan, Glorification, Inauguration, Temptation, Arbitration, Prevarication, Incantation, Iteration, Apotheosis. Cushing’s Roosevelt, however, though drawn with his glasses on from infancy, is not a figure of fun. He is the hero of this story, living up to his image as a reformer by refusing to kowtow to American capitalists and by exposing governmental corruption. Cushing, a staff artist at Life, made frequent use of the Greek pantheon to satirize contemporary politics and society, of which The Teddyssey is only one example.

— From Theodore Roosevelt In His Own Right, 1904–2004,
Naomi Pasachoff, Chapin Library, Williams College

I very much enjoy this image, with Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Pierpont Morgan as the Sirens:

Book VI: Temptation

"The Sirens try to lure Teddysses to the 'Rocks,' but having bound himself to the Ship of State, Columbia steers him through."