A little weak, but I get it. Technology has marched past the older superhero. That said, I am dot sure “saving someone” has a different meaning today (though saving something might.)
Mike, it’s not a CIDU, it’s a NKANTS (“No, kids are not that stupid”).
Those darn kids today, so obsessed with their smart phones. Not like adults, who are . . . oh, right, also obsessed with their smart phones. nvm
Silence in the Library: “Donna Noble has left the library. Donna Noble has been saved” (Hey, who turned out the lights?)
The fact that the telephone booth joke was done quite wittily in the first Christopher Reeve “Superman” film doesn’t really help this comic. Especially since that movie is, what, about 40 years old?
Donna Noble Pacem?
Can anyone cite an instance (other than 1941′ s “Mechanical Monsters”) in which Clark Kent changes to Superman in a phone booth?
Just about every old-school DC hero had a teenage sidekick EXCEPT for Supes (no, Jimmy doesn’t count). Supergirl COULD HAVE been a sidekick, but… just didn’t get invited on many of the adventures. Batgirl had a similar problem over in Gotham.
Wonder Woman had Wonder Girl, Batman had Robin, Green Arrow had Speedy, Flash had Kid Flash, and Aquaman had Aqualad. Even Martian Manhunter had a teenage sidekick.
It’s called “pandering to the target audience”.
Maybe it would have been better if the kid said the local newspaper had gone out of business and the are no phone booths left anywhere. I don’t know how to fix the last panel, though.
Martian Manhunter also had a little alien sidekick named Zook, or somesuch — though I suppose “alien” is relative in this case.
I just read an Encyclopedia Brown mystery with my son, in which someone tells the following story: “I got a call from the kidnapper. We talked a little, but the call was ending, and he didn’t have a dime to continue it. So I called him back at the number he gave, ZA-57657. We later traced that phone number to a telephone booth.” How did Encyclopedia Brown know [spoiler alert] that the story was fake?
The obvious answers are that the story is fake because there are no phone booths, and no one would use letters to give a phone number. The answer in the book was that “Z” isn’t a letter on the phone – except, if you look at your phone now, you will see a “Z,” under the 9.
I agree with swazoo. It would have been a better comic with those suggestions, and making the kid look smarter. And maybe a little exasperated with the geezer.
Q and Z are both on digital keyboards now for texting purposes. Back in the day, of course, there were three letters corresponding to each number from 2 to 9, so two letters had to be thrown under the bus.
Bill, I just looked at a modern, cordless landline phone, and it has Q and Z… but no texting. capability.
Once you put Q and Z on some phones, it makes sense to put them on all phones, whether or not they can text. Otherwise, when some business advertises their phone number as 1-800-QUE-TZAL, it’s going to confuse us dinosaurs with land lines.
Until my aunt moved a few years ago, she’d had the same phone number since 1951, and still had it listed as beginning with FI3. On those occasions when I had to call her on a phone without letters, I had to calculate what the corresponding numbers would be.
(And yes, I could have just memorized it at some point, but I never did)
Bill: Huh, I had though that it was unrealistic even for a story in 1970 for someone to give a phone number starting with letters, but I guess not.
In 1970 in Battle Creek, our number was 86403. You didn’t have to dial the first 2 digits.
When I explained the Encyclopedia Brown solution to my son, I had to not just explain why someone might give letters at the start of the phone number, but why there were only seven digits in the phone number, rather than the “normal” ten. Basically, absolutely nothing in the mystery made any sense now, 48 years later.
I couldn’t tell you when the letters disappeared, but I do know that when we moved in the summer of 1967, our new phone number had letters.
And THAT’S something that’s certainly disappeared over the past ten years: “We’ve moved! Our new address is xxx, and our new phone number is xxx.”
I just checked a random photo of a typical payphone and, yes, “Z” is not present on the buttons.
Rotary phones also lacked that letter.
IIRC I randomly ran across an old pay phone kiosk (can’t call it a booth) just last year. It was missing the phone, of course, but it was odd to see the disused kiosk still standing there.
Perplexing hordes of young folk, no doubt. :-)
Ugh, Encyclopedia Brown. I thought they were totally cool when I was like eight, but by the time I was ten or so I’d figured out that nearly all of them are contrived and a large fraction are wrong.
re “The answer in the book was that “Z” isn’t a letter on the phone ” — same idea was used in an Ellery Queen short story back in (I think) the early 1950s, reprinted in the collection Q.B.I. — someone told a story involving dialing a bookie whose phone number was “Aqueduct somethingorother,” and it was clear to Ellery that this was a lie, because there would be no such exchange, as the letter “Q” was not present on dial phones.
At the time I first read that story, our home was on a rural party line and our “phone number” was “two long rings,” so I felt this was all quite exotic and urban.
Decades ago you would tell someone that the Polish Anti-Defamation League had concocted the best anti-Polish-joke joke ever, and it was really funny, and they had set up a phone line that would play it. To hear the greatest anti-Polish-joke joke just dial 1-800-POLISHQ.
Pennsylvania 6-5000!
1976 we moved and our new phone number was LA5-4559 (LA I think for Lancaster, though we were actually in the Main Line (that is to say, Bryn Mawr) — I guess if it wasn’t Philly, then it must be Lancaster?); interestingly, our previous number in West Orange and/or Livingston, NJ was all numbers, 736-4811. All that I can remember, but I’m hard pressed to tell you my current number…
Well, makes sense: the LA exchange name had probably been around forever, while the Maplewood was created after people stopped bothering with names.
Artie Shaw’s jazz quintet, the Gramercy Five, was a play on his home telephone exchange. Just thought I’d throw that in.
1 – I still remember that our phone number in Brooklyn – we moved when I was 5 – started HY(acinth)5 – but I don’t remember the rest, I am sure I knew it at the time.
2 – There was no Q as it might be confused with O (letter). No Z as it was not needed and it and Q would make some numbers have more than 3 letters – although 0 (zero) of course had no letters. The letters are needed now, even on corded house phones that cannot text as sometimes one is told to enter one’s name or some information number (insurance plan number, account number, etc.) into the phone and letters are needed to do so.
3 – My Palm Centro had as the letters on the numbers to dial (and otherwise use) 1-E, 2-R, 3-T, 4-D, 5-F, 6-G, 7-X, 8-C/9-V and none for 0 and my Blackberry which followed it in my small collection had 1-W, 2-E, 3-R, 4-S, 5-D, 6-F, 7-Z, 8-X, 9-C and, again, none for 0. This is because they are superimposed over the QWERTY keyboard. This was a problem for phone numbers I have had so long that they still have letters and also due to fact that our bank does not have the letters on the keypads that the employees hand one to use do not have any letters on them, but the ones at the ATMs do and my password is in letters not numbers. I could not look at the phone to see what to push for my password to get into our bank vault so I had to have a notation. I recently was looking up the notation when Robert pointed out to me that on my (relatively new) smartphone – the right letters are on the number keys and one can just look them up there – duh! I just presumed it was wrong on the phone.
Now I have a problem using all push button phones, as well as the smartphones, because the numbers are upside down to a calculator or a 10 number button adding machine and I have been adding machines and calculators much, much longer than a push button phone. (By which I mean 123 is the top line of the phone and 789 is the top line of the calculator/adding machine.) Although phones (and bank keypads) seem to generally have the raised mark on the 5 same as the calculator and adding machines.
I recall AT&T issuing a statement about why they didn’t put the numbers to match the calculators already in use at the time. It was something idiotic about it being too confusing for people, that the top is the start and you start with one. IOW, they just didn’t feel like changing their design. After all, who uses calculators, anyway? I mean, besides just about everybody.
When I was at Megacorp, we had a request from the customer to add a popup numeric entry pad to the GUI. Our youngest engineer did the implementation. She did it in phone order. Some months later, the customer came back with a request to have it in calculator or keyboard order. So I ended up doing the fix.
Mark: why Q though, other than because it doesn’t exist? To be a working joke it seems like there ought to be a surface reason, or some reason at least for Q to be part of the number.
Especially since Z is a lot more Polish.
Chak -Having used an adding machine/calculator for years (decade plus probably) before the push button phone – especially before we got a push button phone – I had learned and still touch enter numbers without looking. I therefore tend to automatically push the wrong buttons on push button phones – I did it again the other day.
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Comics I Don't Understand 
A little weak, but I get it. Technology has marched past the older superhero. That said, I am dot sure “saving someone” has a different meaning today (though saving something might.)
Mike, it’s not a CIDU, it’s a NKANTS (“No, kids are not that stupid”).
Those darn kids today, so obsessed with their smart phones. Not like adults, who are . . . oh, right, also obsessed with their smart phones. nvm
Silence in the Library: “Donna Noble has left the library. Donna Noble has been saved” (Hey, who turned out the lights?)
The fact that the telephone booth joke was done quite wittily in the first Christopher Reeve “Superman” film doesn’t really help this comic. Especially since that movie is, what, about 40 years old?
Donna Noble Pacem?
Can anyone cite an instance (other than 1941′ s “Mechanical Monsters”) in which Clark Kent changes to Superman in a phone booth?
Just about every old-school DC hero had a teenage sidekick EXCEPT for Supes (no, Jimmy doesn’t count). Supergirl COULD HAVE been a sidekick, but… just didn’t get invited on many of the adventures. Batgirl had a similar problem over in Gotham.
Wonder Woman had Wonder Girl, Batman had Robin, Green Arrow had Speedy, Flash had Kid Flash, and Aquaman had Aqualad. Even Martian Manhunter had a teenage sidekick.
It’s called “pandering to the target audience”.
Maybe it would have been better if the kid said the local newspaper had gone out of business and the are no phone booths left anywhere. I don’t know how to fix the last panel, though.
Martian Manhunter also had a little alien sidekick named Zook, or somesuch — though I suppose “alien” is relative in this case.
I just read an Encyclopedia Brown mystery with my son, in which someone tells the following story: “I got a call from the kidnapper. We talked a little, but the call was ending, and he didn’t have a dime to continue it. So I called him back at the number he gave, ZA-57657. We later traced that phone number to a telephone booth.” How did Encyclopedia Brown know [spoiler alert] that the story was fake?
The obvious answers are that the story is fake because there are no phone booths, and no one would use letters to give a phone number. The answer in the book was that “Z” isn’t a letter on the phone – except, if you look at your phone now, you will see a “Z,” under the 9.
I agree with swazoo. It would have been a better comic with those suggestions, and making the kid look smarter. And maybe a little exasperated with the geezer.
Q and Z are both on digital keyboards now for texting purposes. Back in the day, of course, there were three letters corresponding to each number from 2 to 9, so two letters had to be thrown under the bus.
Bill, I just looked at a modern, cordless landline phone, and it has Q and Z… but no texting. capability.
Once you put Q and Z on some phones, it makes sense to put them on all phones, whether or not they can text. Otherwise, when some business advertises their phone number as 1-800-QUE-TZAL, it’s going to confuse us dinosaurs with land lines.
Until my aunt moved a few years ago, she’d had the same phone number since 1951, and still had it listed as beginning with FI3. On those occasions when I had to call her on a phone without letters, I had to calculate what the corresponding numbers would be.
(And yes, I could have just memorized it at some point, but I never did)
Bill: Huh, I had though that it was unrealistic even for a story in 1970 for someone to give a phone number starting with letters, but I guess not.
In 1970 in Battle Creek, our number was 86403. You didn’t have to dial the first 2 digits.
When I explained the Encyclopedia Brown solution to my son, I had to not just explain why someone might give letters at the start of the phone number, but why there were only seven digits in the phone number, rather than the “normal” ten. Basically, absolutely nothing in the mystery made any sense now, 48 years later.
I couldn’t tell you when the letters disappeared, but I do know that when we moved in the summer of 1967, our new phone number had letters.
And THAT’S something that’s certainly disappeared over the past ten years: “We’ve moved! Our new address is xxx, and our new phone number is xxx.”
I just checked a random photo of a typical payphone and, yes, “Z” is not present on the buttons.
Rotary phones also lacked that letter.
IIRC I randomly ran across an old pay phone kiosk (can’t call it a booth) just last year. It was missing the phone, of course, but it was odd to see the disused kiosk still standing there.
Perplexing hordes of young folk, no doubt. :-)
Ugh, Encyclopedia Brown. I thought they were totally cool when I was like eight, but by the time I was ten or so I’d figured out that nearly all of them are contrived and a large fraction are wrong.
re “The answer in the book was that “Z” isn’t a letter on the phone ” — same idea was used in an Ellery Queen short story back in (I think) the early 1950s, reprinted in the collection Q.B.I. — someone told a story involving dialing a bookie whose phone number was “Aqueduct somethingorother,” and it was clear to Ellery that this was a lie, because there would be no such exchange, as the letter “Q” was not present on dial phones.
At the time I first read that story, our home was on a rural party line and our “phone number” was “two long rings,” so I felt this was all quite exotic and urban.
Decades ago you would tell someone that the Polish Anti-Defamation League had concocted the best anti-Polish-joke joke ever, and it was really funny, and they had set up a phone line that would play it. To hear the greatest anti-Polish-joke joke just dial 1-800-POLISHQ.
Pennsylvania 6-5000!
1976 we moved and our new phone number was LA5-4559 (LA I think for Lancaster, though we were actually in the Main Line (that is to say, Bryn Mawr) — I guess if it wasn’t Philly, then it must be Lancaster?); interestingly, our previous number in West Orange and/or Livingston, NJ was all numbers, 736-4811. All that I can remember, but I’m hard pressed to tell you my current number…
Well, makes sense: the LA exchange name had probably been around forever, while the Maplewood was created after people stopped bothering with names.
Artie Shaw’s jazz quintet, the Gramercy Five, was a play on his home telephone exchange. Just thought I’d throw that in.
1 – I still remember that our phone number in Brooklyn – we moved when I was 5 – started HY(acinth)5 – but I don’t remember the rest, I am sure I knew it at the time.
2 – There was no Q as it might be confused with O (letter). No Z as it was not needed and it and Q would make some numbers have more than 3 letters – although 0 (zero) of course had no letters. The letters are needed now, even on corded house phones that cannot text as sometimes one is told to enter one’s name or some information number (insurance plan number, account number, etc.) into the phone and letters are needed to do so.
3 – My Palm Centro had as the letters on the numbers to dial (and otherwise use) 1-E, 2-R, 3-T, 4-D, 5-F, 6-G, 7-X, 8-C/9-V and none for 0 and my Blackberry which followed it in my small collection had 1-W, 2-E, 3-R, 4-S, 5-D, 6-F, 7-Z, 8-X, 9-C and, again, none for 0. This is because they are superimposed over the QWERTY keyboard. This was a problem for phone numbers I have had so long that they still have letters and also due to fact that our bank does not have the letters on the keypads that the employees hand one to use do not have any letters on them, but the ones at the ATMs do and my password is in letters not numbers. I could not look at the phone to see what to push for my password to get into our bank vault so I had to have a notation. I recently was looking up the notation when Robert pointed out to me that on my (relatively new) smartphone – the right letters are on the number keys and one can just look them up there – duh! I just presumed it was wrong on the phone.
Now I have a problem using all push button phones, as well as the smartphones, because the numbers are upside down to a calculator or a 10 number button adding machine and I have been adding machines and calculators much, much longer than a push button phone. (By which I mean 123 is the top line of the phone and 789 is the top line of the calculator/adding machine.) Although phones (and bank keypads) seem to generally have the raised mark on the 5 same as the calculator and adding machines.
I recall AT&T issuing a statement about why they didn’t put the numbers to match the calculators already in use at the time. It was something idiotic about it being too confusing for people, that the top is the start and you start with one. IOW, they just didn’t feel like changing their design. After all, who uses calculators, anyway? I mean, besides just about everybody.
When I was at Megacorp, we had a request from the customer to add a popup numeric entry pad to the GUI. Our youngest engineer did the implementation. She did it in phone order. Some months later, the customer came back with a request to have it in calculator or keyboard order. So I ended up doing the fix.
Mark: why Q though, other than because it doesn’t exist? To be a working joke it seems like there ought to be a surface reason, or some reason at least for Q to be part of the number.
Especially since Z is a lot more Polish.
Chak -Having used an adding machine/calculator for years (decade plus probably) before the push button phone – especially before we got a push button phone – I had learned and still touch enter numbers without looking. I therefore tend to automatically push the wrong buttons on push button phones – I did it again the other day.