Aw, he’s all by himself back there? Couldn’t they just invite him to their picnic?
I think he’s just waiting for the party to be over, and the ‘birthday boy’s’ life will be, too.
In the last “Sisyphus” thread, Mitch4 posted an “Angle of Death” panel that was so brilliant that I think it is worth repeating here:
I read it as a contradiction. “The good news is that I found something to cut the cake with. The bad news is you are about to die.” There is no indication death is waiting to take Larry, but that is how I see.
I love the last bit of “Das Himmlische Leben” where he says:
Die englischen Stimmen
Ermuntern die Sinnen,
Daß Alles für Freuden erwacht!
.. but always wondered why he was celebrating English voices!
@ Mitch4 – I didn’t know what Mahler might have to do with this comic, but when I looked it up, I discovered an even more puzzling line in the first verse: “Wir führen ein englisches Leben“, which would appear to mean “we lead an English life”. The answer to the riddle bears some similarity to the “angle” pun: the adjective “englisch” is simply a poetic contraction for “engelisch“, meaning “related to angels”.
Ah. Non Angli, sed Angeli.
Yes, it has to be “angelic” . I thought the angel/English collision could follow up the angel/angle one.
Here btw is Blazek today with another joke on the reaper’s scythe being treated like just another blade.
Narrator: “It was not Larry’s luck day…”
This was a LOL for me.
If it’s a CIDU well,…. Well, death is going to reap Larry by lending him his scythe to use as a cake knife. Larry’s wife is too oblivious to see what is going on. It appeals to Death’s sense of humor to interact in mundane life knowing full-well death is the inevitable end.
Here btw is Blazek today with another joke on the reaper’s scythe being treated like just another blade.
That seems like a really small scythe.
@ Brian – “That seems like a really small scythe.”
Death has been around long enough to have learned that size doesn’t matter, all that counts is how it is used.
“That seems like a really small scythe.”
Since it’s a picnic, maybe Death is also temporarily filling in today for his friend, Death of Ants?
This may never be seen by any CWDUers, but I’m puttin’ in here anyway, just so I can say I continued the DEATH theme . . .
(I wonder, tho, will DEATH drink the wine? You KNOW how food and drink go right through him!)
@ Andréa – I think you may be underestimating the drawing power of your name when it shows up in the “Recent Comments” list.
Huh, I didn’t realize that’d show up; I thought only those who ‘follow’ and get alerts in their emails would see additions to ‘old’ posts.
And I think that if the wine is dead, nobody will want to drink it, Death included.
I’m just gonna keep adding Death comics here, for my own amusement if no one else’s . . .
@ Andréa – Thus rendering my attempt (this morning) to submit it for a separate thread moot, or at least superfluous, except that I had an ulterior motive for this one: It’s been exactly one month since CIDU Bill passed away. The comic isn’t exactly germane, but I figured that it was less in remembrance of his death than a celebration of one of his favorite extended comic campaigns.
Sorry ’bout that . . . why NOT start a separate thread, memorializing the day.
@ Andréa – No worries: I’m perfectly happy to wait and see what our resident Editors decide to do. Since I’ve already delivered the one comment I wanted to make, it’s OK for it to remain here in this collective repository.
Andréa: Wow, it’s like that one was made specifically for Bill!
My thought, too . . .
The ‘victim’ seems to be a recurring person . . . could he have died more than once?
We don’t have ‘lost souls’ breakfast cereal but we do have crisps:
Ketchup-flavored crisps??
Well, if you prefer, you may chose BBQ sauce, cream cheese, Swiss cheese, ham&cheese, spicy chicken, peanut, pizza or paprika.
Or go for the bland ‘salted’.
(Fries are doused in ketchup, so why not incorporate the flavor into crisps? Saves time.)
Well, I will often have chips (crisps) with some ketchup (or chili-sauce or fresh-salsa) sort of on-the-side for dipping though it’s fine if it covers some of them. (I’m trying to distinguish this from “doused”.) Just as I would with fries.
And having the flavor incorporated in the chips would not serve the purpose as well. That purpose being only half to add flavor, but also to provide some liquid along with the salty solid. (And don’t try to tell me ketchup is non-newtonian! That’s probably why it is so well suited for this.)
Olivier says: Or go for the bland ‘salted’.
Ah, but they can call it “Sea Salt” and it becomes fancy again!
They’re not really that solid, actually. They’re more like puffed rice: more air than potato. If you get them wet, they turn soggy like the sludge at the bottom of your cereal bowl.
I’m surprised not to find a mayonnaise flavor.
I never put ketchup on my French Fries (=crisps), but I do slosh on “Fish and Chips” style vinegar when available. Which makes me wonder why, with all of the other flavors Olivier listed as available, they didn’t do a “salt and vinegar” version, since that’s a fairly common one for potato chips in the U.S.
Well, salt&vinegar is more of a British thing, I believe, and the British have a different brand (company ?) making a similar product, not available on the continent, under the same name and they do offer that flavor.
US French fries = Brit chips = ‘les frites’
US chips = Brit crisps= ‘les chips’
Oh, I see the British Monster Munch crisps are corn-based.
It’s hard to see who owns whom but the potato-based ones are available in France and Belgium, where I’ve seen them in supermarkets, and probably in Germany.
In Germany, purchasing chips (US) or crisps (Brit.) is an exercise in intolerable flavor combinations and amounts. While it is possible to find potato chips in plain (“salted”) form, most of the corn (tortilla) chips (and absolutely all of the “specialty” or “puffed” creations, as shown above) are flavored with some obnoxious combination of (mostly artificial) spices (cheese, hot pepper, onion, paprika, vinegar, even wasabi — icky). It wouldn’t be so bad if the flavors were applied in tolerable amounts, but no, the manufacturers appear to have decided that the German consumer has no sense of taste, so they apply it in boatloads, making it impossible to taste the chip, or any accompanying dip.
@Kilby: I hate that; it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy that no amount of protest, lobbying, boycotts ever seems to be able to fix. Germans like their chips over-spicy — proof? That’s all they buy! (That all they can buy, I protest, to no avail…) Americans only buy overly souped up cars with over-powered engines; no one will buy the economy car, so we won’t sell it. (Every. Single. Time. I have to buy a car I run into this fallacy, well on 30 years going now. I have to insist on the econo model that isn’t even in the show room, have it ordered, wait six weeks, endure the upsell efforts, and the endless circular logic as you have to basically order the salesguy to sell you what you want, and often have to walk out of the dealership and go to another in a different town because they just won’t sell you what you want. The best part, the last car but one that we bought, a Honda Fit in 2007, nobody wanted to sell us, Americans don’t buy this kind of car!, at least not without paying $2000 more for the “sport” trim, ie: extra bits of plastic for $2000 more, and possibly a less efficient more over-powered engine; we had to order it, wait, have the order canceled because the color we wanted was suddenly no longer available, all the usual rigamarole, and then I noticed a couple years after we bought it, that it was the single most common car on the streets! I noticed because I wanted to flag down my wife from the bus stop, and so I waved at the dark haired woman driving the grey Honda Fit, only it wasn’t my wife! Nor was the other grey Fit (none of them the “sports” trim, either), or the other grey Fit… Wow! There sure are a LOT of Honda Fits that no American would buy on the roads of America!
And sure enough, when we bought our last car (another Honda Fit), we had to go to three dealership because they just would not sell us the Honda (a FIt!) we wanted, because nobody buys those… The first gave some story about the factory in Mexico burning down or being flooded (really!) when we were in the preliminary shopping phase, to explain why there were none of the newest model Fits to test drive; the second dealership the salesguy just refused to sell us what we wanted it became clear after about two or three days with us ready to sign, but him just not answering the few last questions we had because he refused to look the information up, so we had to go online, find the car, and match it to the nearest dealership that would sell it to us…
Which is why I buy mostly second hand (and not just cars).
Concerning food, I’ve gone back to basics.
We’ll have a couple more 1-and-Done coming along soon!
^^^ That made me laugh.
A two-fer today . . .
I would have liked four horsemen with different colors of horse. I realize that would have made things crowded.
The ‘DEATH x 4’ made me think before I LOL’d, which is a good thing.
One side of my family came from eastern Ohio. In the early days, there was a small squad of mounted law enforcement — known as
THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE AKRON POLICE
@ Andréa – I didn’t understand the “x4” at all until I saw the additional comments (I was still trying to figure out how that would fit in with Egyptian plagues).
From 1 and Done:
The Wizard of Id:
That one made me laugh a little.
Yep, it took me a minute to factor in the “nine lives” effect!
I wonder . . . does Poncho think DEATH is coming for his owner? Or . . . ?
I think it’s more be grateful for someone to cure you.
Yeah, getting a good scare made him try being nice, for a minute
At first, I thought DEATH might be coming for Poncho, but then realized it’d be in canine form.
Or maybe he thought Chazz called Death in because Poncho has been such a pain.
Of course, there’s the question of why Death is strolling past the house.
I had the horrible thought that maybe this was leading to the end of the strip. I’ve not checked today’s yet; time will tell . . . or maybe it was just a one-off, leaving behind the very question you asked.
They were off to something different today.
Yes – I went over and checked immediately ‘-)
Another style for sure …
Good one!
A post on Arnold Zwicky’s blog discusses how these two cartoons use the combination of the comics memes Desert Island, Good News / Bad News, and Grim Reaper.
I’m so glad we are maintaining this thread . . . these are amusing.
“Now I think I left the back door unlocked. Would you mind?”
(this has been a long-running arc, but only this one has been amusing . . . )
I thought Andrea would beat me to this one from today’s Lio (hope she has not actually left!):
Looks like the wifi in the after-life is su . . . er “yucky”.
Gustav Klimt. “Death and Life” .
Here’s a new Lio, collected by Brian in STL:
There are also a few CIDU touches, like why is the headless guy in period garb? Is he the Headless Horseman? Why is he holding the basket? Are either skull his? If so, why are there two skulls?
That’s the problem with being the Grim Reaper. People always think you’re on the job. Maybe you advise against the brisket at the deli, not because it’s poisoned, just a little chewy today.
Today’s Lio strip had a bit of topical plus CIDU about it. It’s not entirely clear why he’s dressing up for school that way. Just for fun? Show and Tell? I like the rather unfazed look from the fellow student.
The seasons change. This was a CIDU for a few folks in comments, but most understood it. For some of the readers here that might not be familiar with American sports, it’s the “death” of the local baseball team’s post-season hopes, so the sports fan can concentrate on the start of the (American) football season.
Hmmmm… I don’t have a collection of favorites, but if I did, that’s one that I wouldn’t plan on adding to it. I had hoped to find one by Charles Addams, but haven’t had any luck yet.
Non Sequitur has done Grim Reaper themed strips the past couple days. Presumably it’s someone in costume. Not certain if it will go on all week. I thought yesterday would be a one-off, but that’s not the case.
@ Brian in StL – Wiley did follow up with just one more “reaper bouncer” strip:
Yeah, I was going to mention that, then forgot.
What Reaper does on his days off (per In the Bleachers):
I wondered about the dog’s role — Is the reaper collecting him? Or is he like a pet or companion animal?
The dog is wearing a robe with a cowl, which would be a clear indication that he is a pet, and not a collectee. However, it really does seem a little bit harsh to have the Grim Reaper collect someone, and then have his dog p155 on the grave.
Brevity
Note to future non-understanders: This was published at the height of popularity for a recreation called pickleball.
And another Brevity:
@ mitch (130) – Don’t we all wish it were so. If this were indeed the “height”, then the popularity would be starting to decline.
I don’t care whether people are playing it or not. It doesn’t appeal to me, but if people are getting out and having some fun and activity, more power to them.
@ Brian in StL (133) – I’ve never had any contact with the actual game: Pickleball is entirely unknown in Germany, and I doubt that it will ever become popular here, because there just isn’t enough infrastructure for it. (Outdoor tennis courts are exceeding rare in this country, mostly because of the weather.)† However, I definitely have become tired of the comics about pickleball: the gags were never that good, and have become increasingly stale as time goes on.
P.S. † – Many of the pickleball comics have made fun of the age of the participants, but that would be difficult to confirm empirically. I would be more interested in the geographic distribution of pickleball courts: I suspect that there is probably a much higher percentage of them in the south and west, where drier weather is more favorable for outdoor court construction and use.
That Jonik cartoon isn’t in the Conde Nast store. I did find it at Cartoonstock, but it’s not worth embedding an image with a watermark.
You’ve lost me here, Kilby. What are you saying about it not being worth embedding?
I meant that the quality of that photograph of a yellowed paper copy taped to a wall is esthetically more satisfactory than a precise digital image that has been defaced by the company who wants to sell it:
Comics I Don't Understand 
Aw, he’s all by himself back there? Couldn’t they just invite him to their picnic?
I think he’s just waiting for the party to be over, and the ‘birthday boy’s’ life will be, too.
In the last “Sisyphus” thread, Mitch4 posted an “Angle of Death” panel that was so brilliant that I think it is worth repeating here:
I read it as a contradiction. “The good news is that I found something to cut the cake with. The bad news is you are about to die.” There is no indication death is waiting to take Larry, but that is how I see.
I love the last bit of “Das Himmlische Leben” where he says:
Die englischen Stimmen
Ermuntern die Sinnen,
Daß Alles für Freuden erwacht!
.. but always wondered why he was celebrating English voices!
@ Mitch4 – I didn’t know what Mahler might have to do with this comic, but when I looked it up, I discovered an even more puzzling line in the first verse: “Wir führen ein englisches Leben“, which would appear to mean “we lead an English life”. The answer to the riddle bears some similarity to the “angle” pun: the adjective “englisch” is simply a poetic contraction for “engelisch“, meaning “related to angels”.
Ah. Non Angli, sed Angeli.
Yes, it has to be “angelic” . I thought the angel/English collision could follow up the angel/angle one.
Here btw is Blazek today with another joke on the reaper’s scythe being treated like just another blade.
Narrator: “It was not Larry’s luck day…”
This was a LOL for me.
If it’s a CIDU well,…. Well, death is going to reap Larry by lending him his scythe to use as a cake knife. Larry’s wife is too oblivious to see what is going on. It appeals to Death’s sense of humor to interact in mundane life knowing full-well death is the inevitable end.
Here btw is Blazek today with another joke on the reaper’s scythe being treated like just another blade.
That seems like a really small scythe.
@ Brian – “That seems like a really small scythe.”
Death has been around long enough to have learned that size doesn’t matter, all that counts is how it is used.
“That seems like a really small scythe.”
Since it’s a picnic, maybe Death is also temporarily filling in today for his friend, Death of Ants?
This may never be seen by any CWDUers, but I’m puttin’ in here anyway, just so I can say I continued the DEATH theme . . .
(I wonder, tho, will DEATH drink the wine? You KNOW how food and drink go right through him!)
@ Andréa – I think you may be underestimating the drawing power of your name when it shows up in the “Recent Comments” list.
Huh, I didn’t realize that’d show up; I thought only those who ‘follow’ and get alerts in their emails would see additions to ‘old’ posts.
And I think that if the wine is dead, nobody will want to drink it, Death included.
I’m just gonna keep adding Death comics here, for my own amusement if no one else’s . . .
@ Andréa – Thus rendering my attempt (this morning) to submit it for a separate thread moot, or at least superfluous, except that I had an ulterior motive for this one: It’s been exactly one month since CIDU Bill passed away. The comic isn’t exactly germane, but I figured that it was less in remembrance of his death than a celebration of one of his favorite extended comic campaigns.
Sorry ’bout that . . . why NOT start a separate thread, memorializing the day.
@ Andréa – No worries: I’m perfectly happy to wait and see what our resident Editors decide to do. Since I’ve already delivered the one comment I wanted to make, it’s OK for it to remain here in this collective repository.
Andréa: Wow, it’s like that one was made specifically for Bill!
My thought, too . . .
The ‘victim’ seems to be a recurring person . . . could he have died more than once?
We don’t have ‘lost souls’ breakfast cereal but we do have crisps:
Ketchup-flavored crisps??
Well, if you prefer, you may chose BBQ sauce, cream cheese, Swiss cheese, ham&cheese, spicy chicken, peanut, pizza or paprika.
Or go for the bland ‘salted’.
(Fries are doused in ketchup, so why not incorporate the flavor into crisps? Saves time.)
Well, I will often have chips (crisps) with some ketchup (or chili-sauce or fresh-salsa) sort of on-the-side for dipping though it’s fine if it covers some of them. (I’m trying to distinguish this from “doused”.) Just as I would with fries.
And having the flavor incorporated in the chips would not serve the purpose as well. That purpose being only half to add flavor, but also to provide some liquid along with the salty solid. (And don’t try to tell me ketchup is non-newtonian! That’s probably why it is so well suited for this.)
Olivier says: Or go for the bland ‘salted’.
Ah, but they can call it “Sea Salt” and it becomes fancy again!
They’re not really that solid, actually. They’re more like puffed rice: more air than potato. If you get them wet, they turn soggy like the sludge at the bottom of your cereal bowl.
I’m surprised not to find a mayonnaise flavor.
I never put ketchup on my French Fries (=crisps), but I do slosh on “Fish and Chips” style vinegar when available. Which makes me wonder why, with all of the other flavors Olivier listed as available, they didn’t do a “salt and vinegar” version, since that’s a fairly common one for potato chips in the U.S.
Well, salt&vinegar is more of a British thing, I believe, and the British have a different brand (company ?) making a similar product, not available on the continent, under the same name and they do offer that flavor.
US French fries = Brit chips = ‘les frites’
US chips = Brit crisps= ‘les chips’
Oh, I see the British Monster Munch crisps are corn-based.
It’s hard to see who owns whom but the potato-based ones are available in France and Belgium, where I’ve seen them in supermarkets, and probably in Germany.
In Germany, purchasing chips (US) or crisps (Brit.) is an exercise in intolerable flavor combinations and amounts. While it is possible to find potato chips in plain (“salted”) form, most of the corn (tortilla) chips (and absolutely all of the “specialty” or “puffed” creations, as shown above) are flavored with some obnoxious combination of (mostly artificial) spices (cheese, hot pepper, onion, paprika, vinegar, even wasabi — icky). It wouldn’t be so bad if the flavors were applied in tolerable amounts, but no, the manufacturers appear to have decided that the German consumer has no sense of taste, so they apply it in boatloads, making it impossible to taste the chip, or any accompanying dip.
@Kilby: I hate that; it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy that no amount of protest, lobbying, boycotts ever seems to be able to fix. Germans like their chips over-spicy — proof? That’s all they buy! (That all they can buy, I protest, to no avail…) Americans only buy overly souped up cars with over-powered engines; no one will buy the economy car, so we won’t sell it. (Every. Single. Time. I have to buy a car I run into this fallacy, well on 30 years going now. I have to insist on the econo model that isn’t even in the show room, have it ordered, wait six weeks, endure the upsell efforts, and the endless circular logic as you have to basically order the salesguy to sell you what you want, and often have to walk out of the dealership and go to another in a different town because they just won’t sell you what you want. The best part, the last car but one that we bought, a Honda Fit in 2007, nobody wanted to sell us, Americans don’t buy this kind of car!, at least not without paying $2000 more for the “sport” trim, ie: extra bits of plastic for $2000 more, and possibly a less efficient more over-powered engine; we had to order it, wait, have the order canceled because the color we wanted was suddenly no longer available, all the usual rigamarole, and then I noticed a couple years after we bought it, that it was the single most common car on the streets! I noticed because I wanted to flag down my wife from the bus stop, and so I waved at the dark haired woman driving the grey Honda Fit, only it wasn’t my wife! Nor was the other grey Fit (none of them the “sports” trim, either), or the other grey Fit… Wow! There sure are a LOT of Honda Fits that no American would buy on the roads of America!
And sure enough, when we bought our last car (another Honda Fit), we had to go to three dealership because they just would not sell us the Honda (a FIt!) we wanted, because nobody buys those… The first gave some story about the factory in Mexico burning down or being flooded (really!) when we were in the preliminary shopping phase, to explain why there were none of the newest model Fits to test drive; the second dealership the salesguy just refused to sell us what we wanted it became clear after about two or three days with us ready to sign, but him just not answering the few last questions we had because he refused to look the information up, so we had to go online, find the car, and match it to the nearest dealership that would sell it to us…
Which is why I buy mostly second hand (and not just cars).
Concerning food, I’ve gone back to basics.
We’ll have a couple more 1-and-Done coming along soon!
^^^ That made me laugh.
A two-fer today . . .
I would have liked four horsemen with different colors of horse. I realize that would have made things crowded.
The ‘DEATH x 4’ made me think before I LOL’d, which is a good thing.
One side of my family came from eastern Ohio. In the early days, there was a small squad of mounted law enforcement — known as
THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE AKRON POLICE
@ Andréa – I didn’t understand the “x4” at all until I saw the additional comments (I was still trying to figure out how that would fit in with Egyptian plagues).
From 1 and Done:
The Wizard of Id:
That one made me laugh a little.
Yep, it took me a minute to factor in the “nine lives” effect!
https://safr.kingfeatures.com/api/img.php?e=png&s=c&file=Qml6YXJyby8yMDIxLzAyL0JpemFycm9faHQuMjAyMTAyMDdfMTUzNi5wbmc=
Very much a recurring character in LIO . . .
And now some something somewhat different, yet still relevant . . .
For recurring Death, it’s hard to beat The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy.
https://safr.kingfeatures.com/api/img.php?e=png&s=c&file=Qml6YXJyby8yMDIxLzAzL0JpemFycm9fcC4yMDIxMDMzMV82NTcucG5n
Yes, that one is even mentioned here . . .
I wonder . . . does Poncho think DEATH is coming for his owner? Or . . . ?
I think it’s more be grateful for someone to cure you.
Yeah, getting a good scare made him try being nice, for a minute
At first, I thought DEATH might be coming for Poncho, but then realized it’d be in canine form.
Or maybe he thought Chazz called Death in because Poncho has been such a pain.
Of course, there’s the question of why Death is strolling past the house.
I had the horrible thought that maybe this was leading to the end of the strip. I’ve not checked today’s yet; time will tell . . . or maybe it was just a one-off, leaving behind the very question you asked.
They were off to something different today.
Yes – I went over and checked immediately ‘-)
Another style for sure …
Good one!
A post on Arnold Zwicky’s blog discusses how these two cartoons use the combination of the comics memes Desert Island, Good News / Bad News, and Grim Reaper.
I’m so glad we are maintaining this thread . . . these are amusing.
“Now I think I left the back door unlocked. Would you mind?”
(this has been a long-running arc, but only this one has been amusing . . . )
I thought Andrea would beat me to this one from today’s Lio (hope she has not actually left!):
Looks like the wifi in the after-life is su . . . er “yucky”.
Gustav Klimt. “Death and Life” .
Here’s a new Lio, collected by Brian in STL:
There are also a few CIDU touches, like why is the headless guy in period garb? Is he the Headless Horseman? Why is he holding the basket? Are either skull his? If so, why are there two skulls?
Nice twist from Harry Bliss:
There is a discussion of the “Grim Reaper” image and idea, historically and in recent cartoons, in Arnold Zwicky’s blog entry called “Death on the Couch”.
https://arnoldzwicky.org/2021/09/26/death-on-the-couch/
It’s acting very friendly.
That’s the problem with being the Grim Reaper. People always think you’re on the job. Maybe you advise against the brisket at the deli, not because it’s poisoned, just a little chewy today.
Today’s Lio strip had a bit of topical plus CIDU about it. It’s not entirely clear why he’s dressing up for school that way. Just for fun? Show and Tell? I like the rather unfazed look from the fellow student.
https://www.gocomics.com/lio/2022/05
Back to Loose Parts:
The seasons change. This was a CIDU for a few folks in comments, but most understood it. For some of the readers here that might not be familiar with American sports, it’s the “death” of the local baseball team’s post-season hopes, so the sports fan can concentrate on the start of the (American) football season.
https://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2022/08/13
Here’s a twist:
Hmmmm… I don’t have a collection of favorites, but if I did, that’s one that I wouldn’t plan on adding to it. I had hoped to find one by Charles Addams, but haven’t had any luck yet.
Non Sequitur has done Grim Reaper themed strips the past couple days. Presumably it’s someone in costume. Not certain if it will go on all week. I thought yesterday would be a one-off, but that’s not the case.
@ Brian in StL – Wiley did follow up with just one more “reaper bouncer” strip:
Yeah, I was going to mention that, then forgot.
What Reaper does on his days off (per In the Bleachers):
I wondered about the dog’s role — Is the reaper collecting him? Or is he like a pet or companion animal?
The dog is wearing a robe with a cowl, which would be a clear indication that he is a pet, and not a collectee. However, it really does seem a little bit harsh to have the Grim Reaper collect someone, and then have his dog p155 on the grave.
Brevity
Note to future non-understanders: This was published at the height of popularity for a recreation called pickleball.
And another Brevity:
@ mitch (130) – Don’t we all wish it were so. If this were indeed the “height”, then the popularity would be starting to decline.
I don’t care whether people are playing it or not. It doesn’t appeal to me, but if people are getting out and having some fun and activity, more power to them.
@ Brian in StL (133) – I’ve never had any contact with the actual game: Pickleball is entirely unknown in Germany, and I doubt that it will ever become popular here, because there just isn’t enough infrastructure for it. (Outdoor tennis courts are exceeding rare in this country, mostly because of the weather.)† However, I definitely have become tired of the comics about pickleball: the gags were never that good, and have become increasingly stale as time goes on.
P.S. † – Many of the pickleball comics have made fun of the age of the participants, but that would be difficult to confirm empirically. I would be more interested in the geographic distribution of pickleball courts: I suspect that there is probably a much higher percentage of them in the south and west, where drier weather is more favorable for outdoor court construction and use.
That Jonik cartoon isn’t in the Conde Nast store. I did find it at Cartoonstock, but it’s not worth embedding an image with a watermark.
You’ve lost me here, Kilby. What are you saying about it not being worth embedding?
I meant that the quality of that photograph of a yellowed paper copy taped to a wall is esthetically more satisfactory than a precise digital image that has been defaced by the company who wants to sell it:
Tuesday’s Rubes:
Today’s Rhymes with Orange: