The giant from jack and the beanstalk mistaken for Goliath?
David and Blunderbore?
I’m with Bill. Jack killed the Jolly Green Giant but the colorist didn’t understand.
I think Folly has it. The giant-killer isn’t dressed like Jack. I think he’s supposed to be David with his sling.
Folly got it. Jolly Green isn’t known to be associated with beanstalks, although he does sell a lot of beans, corn and peas.
At first I agreed with Bill. But if you zoom in, it’s possible
to convince yourself that the guy is holding a sling with a
place for a stone. So, I’ll go with Folly.
Folly nailed it.
Do people think of Goliath as literally a giant? I think of him as a big man, maybe 7 feet tall, or maybe even 8 feet, but not an actual “giant.”
Winter, did you ever see André The Giant? A real human, but not at the scale of the fairy tale giants (maybe 10X or more?) that could hold you in the palm of their hand. Or Gulliver’s Brobdingnagians. But would you tell André you’re unsure if he’s a literal giant?
I think it was supposed to be the Jolly Green Giant. But it could be the giant form Jack in the Beanstalk. But that would make it a very unfunny joke (so David got confused and killed a giant for another story, ha ha?) Then again one could say the same “David got confused and killed the Jolly Green Giant, ha ha?”
Except then I’d answer “yes, ha-ha… The Jolly Green Giant is inherently funny because it’s a benign pop culture icon. Jack is just a different story.”
“Do people think of Goliath as literally a giant?”
Yes. It’s a very common folklore/joke/icon concept. And David is a little boy. Neither of which apply to the actual biblical story.
Folly wins the pennant! Folly wins the pennant!
Has anyone considered that this may be “Bird’s Eye, Lord of the Vee-Ates”?
Yes, David slew the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk instead of Goliath. Whoops. My question is why the giant has only four toes on each foot.
For the same reason that a very large number of animated cartoon characters have only three fingers and a thumb: it’s hard to get the proportions to look good otherwise.
Four toes could just be a cartoonist shortcut, but since no one has met a person ten times the normal size, we will have to designate it as ‘unproven’.
My interpretation matched Folly’s as well.
The dictionary definition of a giant is any person well above normal size. So yes, a 7-foot-tall man and a 70-foot-tall man are both giants.
I don’t know what the cutoff is, but W.C. Fields in one of his movies exhibited the world’s smallest giant and the world’s tallest midget side-by-side.
I apologize for the word “midget”, currently considered offensive. As far as I know, “giant” is not offensive yet.
Yes, a 7 foot man could be called a giant. But in the context of this cartoon, which shows a much larger giant, clearly my question “Do people think of Goliath as a giant? I think of him as 7 feet tall. . . ” was not “Would it be semantically reasonable to call a 7 foot tall man a giant?” but “Do people think of Goliath as a really impossibly big giant, of the sort depicted here?”
Winter Wallaby – I would say no, most people probably don’t think of Goliath as impossibly large. But they do think of the giant in the beanstalk story as such. Apparently David doesn’t know what to expect in this comic.
I agree it was supposed to be the beanstalk giant, but now Rubin can wait a year, color the giant green, change the beanstalk to a cornfield, and repeat the joke. Unfortunately, it still won’t be all that funny.
Could it be Li’l Sprout, all grown up?
@ padraig – Leigh Rubin doesn’t do color. He submits his monochrome artwork to the syndicate’s server, and someone there applies the color to the image files. The reason I know this is that I sent him a bug report during a period when the server permitted anyone to view not just the past archive, but also future strips. Whoever did the work was not working in order, the completed panels were mixed in with some that had not yet been done.
Leigh Rubin decided to take another shot in today’s “Rubes”:
Comics I Don't Understand 
The giant from jack and the beanstalk mistaken for Goliath?
David and Blunderbore?
I’m with Bill. Jack killed the Jolly Green Giant but the colorist didn’t understand.
I think Folly has it. The giant-killer isn’t dressed like Jack. I think he’s supposed to be David with his sling.
Folly got it. Jolly Green isn’t known to be associated with beanstalks, although he does sell a lot of beans, corn and peas.
At first I agreed with Bill. But if you zoom in, it’s possible
to convince yourself that the guy is holding a sling with a
place for a stone. So, I’ll go with Folly.
Folly nailed it.
Do people think of Goliath as literally a giant? I think of him as a big man, maybe 7 feet tall, or maybe even 8 feet, but not an actual “giant.”
Winter, did you ever see André The Giant? A real human, but not at the scale of the fairy tale giants (maybe 10X or more?) that could hold you in the palm of their hand. Or Gulliver’s Brobdingnagians. But would you tell André you’re unsure if he’s a literal giant?
I think it was supposed to be the Jolly Green Giant. But it could be the giant form Jack in the Beanstalk. But that would make it a very unfunny joke (so David got confused and killed a giant for another story, ha ha?) Then again one could say the same “David got confused and killed the Jolly Green Giant, ha ha?”
Except then I’d answer “yes, ha-ha… The Jolly Green Giant is inherently funny because it’s a benign pop culture icon. Jack is just a different story.”
“Do people think of Goliath as literally a giant?”
Yes. It’s a very common folklore/joke/icon concept. And David is a little boy. Neither of which apply to the actual biblical story.
Folly wins the pennant! Folly wins the pennant!
Has anyone considered that this may be “Bird’s Eye, Lord of the Vee-Ates”?
Yes, David slew the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk instead of Goliath. Whoops. My question is why the giant has only four toes on each foot.
For the same reason that a very large number of animated cartoon characters have only three fingers and a thumb: it’s hard to get the proportions to look good otherwise.
Four toes could just be a cartoonist shortcut, but since no one has met a person ten times the normal size, we will have to designate it as ‘unproven’.
My interpretation matched Folly’s as well.
The dictionary definition of a giant is any person well above normal size. So yes, a 7-foot-tall man and a 70-foot-tall man are both giants.
I don’t know what the cutoff is, but W.C. Fields in one of his movies exhibited the world’s smallest giant and the world’s tallest midget side-by-side.
I apologize for the word “midget”, currently considered offensive. As far as I know, “giant” is not offensive yet.
Yes, a 7 foot man could be called a giant. But in the context of this cartoon, which shows a much larger giant, clearly my question “Do people think of Goliath as a giant? I think of him as 7 feet tall. . . ” was not “Would it be semantically reasonable to call a 7 foot tall man a giant?” but “Do people think of Goliath as a really impossibly big giant, of the sort depicted here?”
@ MiB – The difference between the all-time tallest and shortest NBA players is just short of three basketball diameters.
Winter Wallaby – I would say no, most people probably don’t think of Goliath as impossibly large. But they do think of the giant in the beanstalk story as such. Apparently David doesn’t know what to expect in this comic.
I agree it was supposed to be the beanstalk giant, but now Rubin can wait a year, color the giant green, change the beanstalk to a cornfield, and repeat the joke. Unfortunately, it still won’t be all that funny.
Could it be Li’l Sprout, all grown up?
@ padraig – Leigh Rubin doesn’t do color. He submits his monochrome artwork to the syndicate’s server, and someone there applies the color to the image files. The reason I know this is that I sent him a bug report during a period when the server permitted anyone to view not just the past archive, but also future strips. Whoever did the work was not working in order, the completed panels were mixed in with some that had not yet been done.
Leigh Rubin decided to take another shot in today’s “Rubes”:
