I liked them both, but can’t look at those arthropodcasters for long without wanting an Ewww tag on it. The Horace The Horse is a pretty good take on a well-worn trope, Accidentally Right.
Old joke:
Chemistry professor: What is H2S04?
Student: Hmmm … I should know this … It’s right on the tip of my tongue.
Professor: Well, spit it out! It’s sulfuric acid!
And the classic accidentally right joke:
Philosophy professor: Can you tell me who wrote “Critique of Pure Reason?”
Student: I can’t.
Professor: That’s the only answer you’ve gotten right this year.
English major equivalent:
“Great Scot — I can’t remember who wrote IVANHOE!”
“I can tell you that, if you’ll remind me who the Dickens wrote OLIVER TWIST!”
Ha! I enjoyed those various “accidentally right” examples!
Speaking of chemical formulas and sulfuric acid, there was a short rhyme whose beginning and target I can’t remember but ended
…For what he thought was H2O
Was H2SO4
with those formulas read out so the scansion works.
@Mitch4
Little Willy was a chemist /
Little Willy is no more /
For what he thought was H2O /
Was H2SO4
Thanks!
In European Vacation, they get the winning question right because the name of one of the leaders (Clark) is the same are Chevy Chase’s character.
But Lewis and Clarke and the pioneers,
Driven by hunger, haunted by fears,
The Klondike miners and the forty niners,
Some wanted freedom and some wanted riches,
Some liked to loaf while others dug ditches.
I liked the globe water cooler gag. The DSoTH comic actually has three gags crammed into it.
Yeah, I was trying to see what “Lonely at the bottom” was about, and I think it is the landscaping sense, since he’s walking into a dip. Probably like this sense from MW:
5 geography : BOTTOMLAND —usually used in plural
the Mississippi river bottoms
And then there’s the classic “accidentally wrong” joke that ends with the dog saying “Maybe I should have said DiMaggio”.
“Yeah, I was trying to see what “Lonely at the bottom” was about”
I just assumed it was a response the aphorism “It’s lonely at the top” as something an unsuccessful underachiever would reply with “Well, it’s lonely at the bottom too”.
What it has to do with the two panels before and what any of the leaders have to do with the actual cartoon….
I agree with Woozy’s assessment of the dialog. That particular panel I presume is just a filler. The water cooler gag takes up the other corner plus the actual title panel next to it. Both those two gags are separate from each other and the main gag below. I think Samson has done this with previous strips, just an interesting “different” utilization of the comic panel format.
Comics I Don't Understand 
There is an etymological (not entomologicall!) discussion of the Arthropodcast comic at Arnold Zwicky’s Blog
Citation for classic 1966 paper on tip-of-the-tongue, one of Roger Brown’s early papers that more-or-less founded the field of psycholinguistics.
Brown, R., & McNeill, D. (1966). The “tip of the tongue” phenomenon. Journal of verbal learning and verbal behavior, 5(4), 325-337.
Here is a 2017 blog entry featuring a (different) comic and some info on the current state of thinking about this.
And here is a link to an archived copy of the original paper. Only the first page is visible in front of their paywall; but you may be able to use your own local credentials to see the rest.
Another source for the original paper. which may be available without payment or special credentials.
I liked them both, but can’t look at those arthropodcasters for long without wanting an Ewww tag on it. The Horace The Horse is a pretty good take on a well-worn trope, Accidentally Right.
Old joke:
Chemistry professor: What is H2S04?
Student: Hmmm … I should know this … It’s right on the tip of my tongue.
Professor: Well, spit it out! It’s sulfuric acid!
And the classic accidentally right joke:
Philosophy professor: Can you tell me who wrote “Critique of Pure Reason?”
Student: I can’t.
Professor: That’s the only answer you’ve gotten right this year.
English major equivalent:
“Great Scot — I can’t remember who wrote IVANHOE!”
“I can tell you that, if you’ll remind me who the Dickens wrote OLIVER TWIST!”
Ha! I enjoyed those various “accidentally right” examples!
Speaking of chemical formulas and sulfuric acid, there was a short rhyme whose beginning and target I can’t remember but ended
…For what he thought was H2O
Was H2SO4
with those formulas read out so the scansion works.
@Mitch4
Little Willy was a chemist /
Little Willy is no more /
For what he thought was H2O /
Was H2SO4
Thanks!
In European Vacation, they get the winning question right because the name of one of the leaders (Clark) is the same are Chevy Chase’s character.
But Lewis and Clarke and the pioneers,
Driven by hunger, haunted by fears,
The Klondike miners and the forty niners,
Some wanted freedom and some wanted riches,
Some liked to loaf while others dug ditches.
I liked the globe water cooler gag. The DSoTH comic actually has three gags crammed into it.
Yeah, I was trying to see what “Lonely at the bottom” was about, and I think it is the landscaping sense, since he’s walking into a dip. Probably like this sense from MW:
5 geography : BOTTOMLAND —usually used in plural
the Mississippi river bottoms
And then there’s the classic “accidentally wrong” joke that ends with the dog saying “Maybe I should have said DiMaggio”.
“Yeah, I was trying to see what “Lonely at the bottom” was about”
I just assumed it was a response the aphorism “It’s lonely at the top” as something an unsuccessful underachiever would reply with “Well, it’s lonely at the bottom too”.
What it has to do with the two panels before and what any of the leaders have to do with the actual cartoon….
I agree with Woozy’s assessment of the dialog. That particular panel I presume is just a filler. The water cooler gag takes up the other corner plus the actual title panel next to it. Both those two gags are separate from each other and the main gag below. I think Samson has done this with previous strips, just an interesting “different” utilization of the comic panel format.