Same as the previous series of Random Comments threads (which have each been closed to further commenting because they’ve gotten too long), this will be accessible from a link in the left sidebar (under “triple-line” icon 1st tab).
Please remember that this is intended for public comics-related (or comics semi-related) comments only: if you want to send the editors a CIDU, or a comic for some specific folder (LOL, Oy, etc), or you want to inform us of a typo, please e-mail us at 
, or use the Contact Form or the Suggest-A-CIDU Form.
“Comics-semi-related” may in practice include your observations on life and language… But not politics, puh-leese!
However, starting in October 2020, we have been using a second, parallel open comments thread, for a specific area of topics: ideas for how to maintain or develop this site. Look for the link in the left sidebar (under “triple-line” icon 1st tab). The head post for the current Site Comments thread is HERE.
Also: A list of the site’s most recent comments can be found in the left sidebar (under “folder” icon 2nd tab). A database of all the comments, compiled by larK, is here.
And the site’s FAQ is here.
Comics I Don't Understand 
New Site Comments and Random Comments threads have been started. If you’re interested, please review both at your convenience.
There are a number of links associated with these changes requiring updates. (Each one points to its predecessor , they each point to each other, and menu items point to the new editions.) Please check these out too. Remaining to update is the Index listed in the menu .
If you find errors or have suggestions, please either post a comment here, or email to the usual contact address, submissions dot cidu at gmail dot com. Thanks!
Either I misunderstand the intended meaning of the Facebook “caring” reaction-icon, or some other people do. I think it’s for empathy or sympathy or support, when the post or comment you’re reacting to is about something sad (or bad or disappointing or tragic or humorously unfortunate — but always an element of the negative).
So I get at least puzzled and sometimes alarmed when someone marks the “caring” on what I think of as an entirely positive post. E.g. a video of my cat playing with a motorized toy. If you mark it with the “caring”, while I appreciate what must be a generally positive message, I worry about what it is you see in that which would need consolation. “Gemma, I feel sorry for you that Mitch wasn’t playing with that toy directly and instead left it to a motorized device.” “Mitch, and cat, I’m so sorry you have to live with dirty floors, cluttered with cat toys.” What could they be thinking?
And on the back-at-cha side, maybe I’m offending people when I use the wide-eye-open-mouth “Wow!” reaction to admire something wild or impressive; and the person behind the posting is disturbed that apparently I’m reacting with horror!
Mitch4, your post reminds me of a lady that said LOL at a Facebook post about someone’s family member who died. She thought it meant “Lots of Love”. Probably elicited some gasps!
Just a reminder, everyone, we always need YOUR selections to refill the queue.
Just email to CIDU DOT SUBMISSIONS AT GMAIL DOT COM.
Actual puzzling CIDU comics especially needed! Always in shortage!
OY and LOL always welcome, for the weekend collections. As Bill established this practice, anything that strikes you as a groaner (or good word-play), or a good laugh, can be sent in and almost automatically published with almost no editorial scrutiny.
Eewwww need to be something else as well – funny enough to be Eewww-LOL, or puzzling enough to be Ewwww-CIDU. But please, not just “how emetic can they get?”.
Synchronicities can be fuzzy about timing, but the similarity of content or theme should be striking, and not predictable by calendar. OR the comics could be good LOLs or OYs or CIDU on their own, worth seeing as such and with the timing coincidence as an added fillip.
Arlo Award candidates will still be tagged or discussed as such. Full Arlo Page material won’t work, we aren’t managing the separate Arlo Page any longer.
While we never want to encourage simple bashing of unsuccessful comics, we have been trying occasional collections of comics that seem close to working well, but fall down in some particular and are disappointing. A tag you can use when sending these in could be “Oopsies” or “Almosts”.
But again, most needed: actual puzzling CIDUs, as daily bread!
Thanks everyone, for reading and commenting, and also of course for helping supply material for all to enjoy!
I just had to share this. Bliss has dressed up his dog and cat more here than we’ve seen before. And the cat is making itself clear!
Today’s “Moderately Confused” seems very appropriate for CIDU:
You wouldn’t think that “slow” would make for a brand name of watches. Their deal seems to be the 24 hr dial.
https://www.slow-watches.com/
Slow Food, Slow Travel, Slow Art — the obvious ultimate manifestation of this movement would be the Ur-concept of Time itself — Slow Time!
Though I’m not sure that making you more aware of all 24 hours in a day is conducive to slowing you down and not making you even more intense in trying to get as muck productivity into a day as possible… We don’t live 24 hour days, we live about 12 hour days, and sleep the rest. Once again the traditional breakup of the day is the one that’s on a more “human” scale…
The “slow” gimmick is not just the 24-hour dial (with midnight at the bottom, and noon at the top), but also that there is only a single “pointer” (no minute, nor second hand), so that it gives an excellent approximation of the current time, but is useless for reading the exact minute.
With radial Arabic numerals. (In some models.)
I misspelled my name in the previous, currently-awaiting-moderation comment. I usually spell it “jajizi”, which is easier to pronounce.
Jajizi, it took me a minute to see that you did mean for that comment to be placed here, and not in https://cidu.info/2022/03/04/i-didnt-clock-it/
Here Horace encounters slowed time
I think this is from one day after GG’s death was announced
The Arlo & Janis site, at https://arloandjanis.com/ , where Jimmy Johnson used to post older strips and comment on them, has been stuck for quite a while.
But today there is a picture I can’t parse, and this announcement: “Coming soon! A revamped, refurbished, revitalized, renewable arloandjanis.com”
Nice use of Shultz’s style and the Lucy football trope, for a topical point.
It appears that when you are apologizing to a dead man, you don’t have to spell his name correctly.
The placeholder photo on the A&J website might be Gulf coast beach sand that has been contaminated by an oil spill and/or hurricane.
I think the A&J photo is a closeup of a wall — or at least a wooden board — that needs a new coat of paint.
Oh yeah, I was wondering! But copied it anyway, not undertaking the due diligence of looking it up or trusting my uncertain memory.
I think the A&J photo is a closeup of a wall — or at least a wooden board — that needs a new coat of paint.
Jajizi’s idea fits with the page title “Maintenance Message”. Remember when “Under construction” pages were a commonplace, often with a picture of a building construction site or street repair, showing a saw horse blocking the way?
@ Mitch – When I wrote that comment, I was referring only to the artist’s rendition. It wasn’t until the next day that I noticed that you had “corrected” his spelling by adding a “t” to the name, with the amusing result that both spellings are incorrect. The name of the Peanuts author is spelled “Schulz” (with a “c”, and without the “t”). I noticed the deviation mostly because I have relatives who share Charles M.’s spelling (but are not related to him, of course).
In German the name is very common(†), and can be spelled in a number of ways: with or without the “t”, and the “z” may be followed by an “e”, but the “standard” (most frequent) form has neither extra letter. In America the form with the “t” is probably more common than without it.
P.S. (†) – The name is derived from “Schultheiß“, a medieval title for a low-level judge and/or tax collector, approximately similar to a British “bailiff”.
P.P.S. Schultheiss is also a Berliner beer:
We had a few of these mugs in our household that I distinctly remember, because the logo was hand-painted, and varied considerably from mug to mug, while remaining consistent to the archetype. These mugs were “acquired” by my father in his student youth, and to me are a tangible example of the changing of moral standards from the older to the younger generations: “everybody” seems to have engaged in such theft back in the day, and tolerated the excuses that somehow it’s OK if you’re poor and the companies are rich, or other such rationalizations. We also had a collection of pilfered airline spoons much fought over between me and my sister growing up (The Pan Am spoons were coveted, the Loftleidir one was disdained). It seems to me that nowadays such acquisitions would be viewed as theft, pure and simple, and people who engage in it as morally suspect.
(I had to struggle to form my own morality in my youth: because of the bad example of my parents and their whole generation, there was a strong tendency to want to minimize and excuse such theft, but nevertheless, at the end of the day, it just felt wrong. The one time I remember having to actively engage my morality was sophomore year at college, when someone “liberated” a tray of wine glasses from food services, and “everyone” was happily helping themselves (“everyone” was probably just a couple of bolder souls, similarly raised in an environment where casual theft was winked at, and probably the majority was just silent and uncomfortable), and to my shame, I took a glass. Afterwards I was ashamed, and I kept it as a trophy prize, prominently displayed, to remind me of my folly and weakness; I never used it. I think a sophomore today would immediately label the liberated tray as theft, and not even think about taking one.
(We used to also “borrow” shopping carts from the local grocery store, but we did at the end of freshman year make an effort to return all such “borrowed” carts, ours and others, and realized the error of our ways…)
lark: I also was known to swipe things as a youth, but decided to leave that behind me, partially as a result of reading and pondering RLStevenson’s “Markheim”
“It is true,” Markheim said huskily, “I have in some degree complied with evil. But it is so with all: the very saints, in the mere exercise of living, grow less dainty, and take on the tone of their surroundings.”
“I will propound to you one simple question,” said the other; “and as you answer, I shall read to you your moral horoscope. You have grown in many things more lax; possibly you do right to be so; and at any account, it is the same with all men. But granting that, are you in any one particular, however trifling, more difficult to please with your own conduct, or do you go in all things with a looser rein?”
“In any one?” repeated Markheim, with an anguish of consideration. “No,” he added, with despair, “in none! I have gone down in all.”
So I reformed (or at least hope that I did so).
Arggh. Filled in the wrong fields for my nom and my real name, and anyway I see comment is in moderation. No big biggie, but if whoever pulls it out of moderation can credit to my usual “Shrug” it will be a bit of a mitzvah.
Not sure that field is editable by me, but we will see.
Later – yes, done
We used to also “borrow” shopping carts from the local grocery store
The supermarket I use most often is part of a strip shopping center whose parking lot borders a small apartment complex. So it was common for many years for carts to collect along the berm that separates the two lots as residents would walk to the store and roll the groceries near.
A while back, they got all new carts with special wheel that locks up if you get too far from the store. And sometimes while you are in the store.
All German grocery carts work on a deposit system: you put a €1 coin into a slot attached to the handle, which lets you detach the chain from the next cart in the rack. After you are finished, you have to return the cart to the rack to get your €1 coin back. This works perfectly, ensuring that carts never get left around the parking lot. The only problem is what to do if you arrive at the store and discover you don’t have a coin. Many Germans keep a plastic “chip” in their wallet: since it cannot be spent, it tends to stay in the wallet, ensuring that they will always have a “deposit coin” to unlock a cart. I recently discovered that I could buy steel washers at the hardware store that are exactly the same size as a €1 coin, so I keep one in my wallet, one on my keychain, and several spares in our car’s ashtray.
P.S. For the past two years (because of Corona), our local supermarket decided to unlock about a third of their carts, so that a coin is often not needed. Most German stores have been recommending that customers pay with credit or debit cards, to reduce the amount of hand & coin contact, so apparently this manager decided to make it completely unnecessary for customers to fiddle with coins at all. However, I have not seen this solution at any of the other nearby supermarkets.
carts with special wheel that locks up if you get too far from the store. And sometimes while you are in the store.
At the Riverfront Plaza on Chicago’s north side, with a large parking lot within 3 sides of a rectangle of shops, I sometimes go to both Micro-Center and PetsMart. But I’ve learned to park within the area closest to the PetSmart, even if I see one close to Micro-Center as I come in. That’s because the carts have that electronic fence feature, and if I try to wheel my cart with the 20lb bag of litter and the multiple 7lb bags of catfood over to my car in the Micro-Center area, the wheels lock up at the boundary, and I am left quietly cursing.
Wow Mitch, that’s a rather extreme form of the hostility stores in the US have of forcing you to drive individually from one to another. I have often noted with frustration the fences and other stupid barriers they erect that prevent you from walking from one store to another, even when they are right next to each other, but on a highway where it is rather challenging and annoying to get out of one parking lot and into another, especially when they are right next to each other (you can’t get to highway speeds..)
I noted with delight in Europe recently (well, pre-covid recently, so not that recently) that the exact opposite is true: they have actual paths with sidewalks and stuff to encourage you to walk from one strip mall to its neighbor (though of course the proliferation of strip malls in the outskirts of town was a thing I noted with dismay…)
re my: “Arggh. Filled in the wrong fields for my nom and my real name, and anyway I see comment is in moderation. No big biggie, but if whoever pulls it out of moderation can credit to my usual “Shrug” it will be a bit of a mitzvah.”
It occurs to me that this sounded much more paranoid than I intended it to do. I just wanted to keep all of “my” comments here under a single name for simplicity sake; I wasn’t being stressed out about having my real-life name revealed, and in fact some of the folks here who are also in Comics Curmudgeon may have noticed that I’ve had occasion now and then over there to link to that real name. (And I’m actually uncomfortable with the feeling of “hiding” behind a mask, though I’ve no objection to wearing the mask for funsies.)
So, if anyone cares (unlikely), my mundane name is Dennis (or Denny) Lien, (And I also sometimes post under that name at CIDU, which discourages use of noms.)
Reason for choice of nom:
https://quotepark.com/quotes/1926080/history/
We now return you to your regularly scheduled Shrug, which has been previously recorded.
@ Shrug – That second comment didn’t sound paranoid in the slightest: I understood right away the advantage of having everything under one label. I’m a little surprised that the mistake went through: usually wordpress objects when the e-mail field does not contain an “@“ sign. Now, as for you first comment: I didn’t understand the Markheim quote at all.
@ larK (re: “Schultheiss”) – That brand is quite prevalent: the name (and logo) can be seen on pub signs all over Berlin. Most bars (and to a lesser extent restaurants) in Germany usually have a “sponsorship” deal with a particular brewery. The establishments may get a subsidized price on beer, tap equipment, and signs (which explains the ubiquitous logos on both of the latter), but they also agree to sell a certain minimum volume per month. This means that many places offer only a few brands (or sometimes only one brand) of beer, so that they can concentrate sales of their “partnership” brand.
P.S. I’ve never cared for its “mass market” character, but it’s been so long since I’ve had a “Schultheiss” beer that I wasn’t sure whether this was just a prejudice, or based on its taste, so yesterday I picked up two bottles from the grocery store. I discovered that it was not prejudice: Schultheiss is a relatively “light” beer (†), but much too “hoppy” (meaning bitter) for my taste. I can drink it, but I would never order it if anything else were available.
P.P.S. (†) – Referring to taste, and in comparison to German beers, of course. It has a “normal” amount of alcohol (5%).
P.P.P.S. This is the second time in as many days that wordpress has vanished a comment after requiring a renewed login.
All German grocery carts work on a deposit system: you put a €1 coin into a slot attached to the handle, which lets you detach the chain from the next cart in the rack.
They have that here at Aldi stores (although it’s a quarter because dollar coins are not really used). Aldi is of course a German chain, although very widely spread throughout the world.
When a comment just vanishes without a notice to you about being held for approval, that often means it was put in spam by Akismet. (Arrgh whenever I see that name I get an ear worm for some songs from the musical Kismet!). I try to look thru the spam and rescue legit comments. But that is not as simple as checking and releasing the ones in Pending (“moderation”). Whenever I log in it alerts me that there are comments in Pending, and how many, and I generally go there first and release them. (Which is why I don’t notice till later if someone has gotten a second try passed and posted) But the system does not tell me “there are 2 comments we have mistakenly put into Spam”.
To a world too prone to be prosaic
I bring my own panacea
An iota of iambic
And a tittle of trochaic
Added to a small amount of onomotpoea
@ Mitch – Thanks for the rescue(s) – in both cases you freed them before I could turn on my “real” computer to send an e-mail. At the moment I am struggling with wordpress’s refusal to acknowledge (or preserve) a login on more than one system at a time. This browser is logged in and remembers that, but if I try to comment from our iPad or my phone, wordpress refuses to honor the “remember me” checkbox, and requires me to re-enter the password for each and every comment. The solution, of course, is not to make so many comments. ;-)
An announcement of a new strip from Sylvia Odhner, creator of Think Before You Think and other comics:
Drew the Centaur is Here!Today I'm launching a new webcomic called Drew the Centaur, about a centaur living in a human world. I've posted the first two comics, and you can follow it on Patreon here, or on my other social media accounts.
@Kilby and @Michael Cook, that’s what I thought too, but didn’t want to be impolite about mentioning other routes for contributing. In a way, “topic drift” has traditionally been able to handle the introduction of a different comic than the post was originally covering. However, that has usually been more of a tangent and less of a non sequitur.
Perhaps we could clarify a route for readers to post for discussion their CIDUs, other than by mailing in suggestions and waiting; and not forcing a sharp turn in an existing thread about some other comic. I wonder if our RANDOM COMMENTS thread is the right place for that? Or perhaps institute a third continuing thread?
Does anybody know wnything about Crabgrass? The GoComics webpage has a notice that they’re on hiatus and will be back in March. Two months ago.
Taking a break can re-energize someone and they come back better than ever. Other times, they realize, “I don’t miss that.” I used to follow a web comic called “The Non-Adventures of Wonderella”. It used to update every week. Then the developer stated that he was going to update less frequently because he was going to create multi-comic arcs. After that he posted a few random singles then stopped over two years ago.
A somewhat sour analysis?
That was To φ Or Not To φ
by Tanya Kostochka
at Daily Nous
I think it would be fine to permit (but perhaps not to encourage) CIDU comic submissions here in the Random Comments thread. I do NOT think it would be good to open a new permanent thread for this purpose: first, that would be enouragement, and second, the existing bandwidth in this “Random” thread is low, and third, it’s a perfect location. If a comment come in here with a sufficiently obscure comic, just move the comic to a new post, and copy the comment to be the first comment in that post (preferably deleting both from here).
Technically, there is no easy “moving”. So that’s not going to work out as a protocol.
At best, there’s “directing traffic” – posting an instruction that some thread should be continued elsewhere.
If you generate a new post with the comic, then delete the comic that appears here in Random Comments, then that would count as a “move”.
That’s fine as far as it goes. But (1) The new post would have to be by an editor, and the contributor’s ID and comment would need to be copied/quoted/rephrased . (2) If there are replies already, they would not transfer to make a new thread – or anyway not organically. Even if the transfer included tediously and carefully recreating the comments and editing in the poster names, the rest of the metadata is not transferrable.
So far: I agree with the expressed preference to use Random Comments rather than a new permanent thread. (Some work would be needed to figure out how to communicate this.) I don’t agree with — indeed, don’t really understand the reasons for — seeing a comic appear in RC under this protocol and “moving” it. I basically see all this happening in RC.
Occasionally someone will post something in a comment (under this plan or of course just the way we do now) that is going to be in an editor’s post. I don’t think Bill ever fussed about that, and I wouldn’t much want to either — just let it appear as scheduled and don’t worry about the redundancy.
Maybe there’s a difference of view that hasn’t been explicitly articulated so far. I think Kilby, and maybe Brian in STL, are seeing this as an alternative way of submitting a comic for editorial posting, alternative that is to submitting by email. I prefer to discuss it as an alternative way of a reader posting a comic for discussion, alternative that is to submitting by email and waiting for editorial scheduling. It bypasses parts of the submission mechanism.
If a good place can be found for instructions / guidelines, ideally we would encourage the embedded graphic kind of linking; though this would mean a lot of how-to coaching. (It might be appropriate for misfires to get fixed up post-facto [or post-posting! :-) ] by an admin-enabled hand.) Ordinary click-to-view links would also be okay, and people are often somewhat willing to do that in order to see something good. An identification without link, as with for instance Michael Cook’s suggestion in the EDM thread that kicked off this discussion, would certainly be allowed; it’s just taking a chance on how many will put in the extra effort. I don’t think that sort of suggestion-post should be understood as triggering an official followup to find and publish the comic.
I wasn’t suggesting that it should be an alternate submission path, but that it might end up that way. One disadvantage of the email system is that the editors might decide not to use it.
(Disadvantage to whom, eh?)
Actually all of that is fine by me, Brian — except that I’m still cavilling over submission. To me it’s an alternate posting path or maybe publication path. And precisely because of the matter of being subject to rejection or not…
My comments so far related only to the concept of comic submissions.
I don’t have anything against letting an occasional post get sidetracked by an image or link included in a comment, but I do not think that this should be encouraged as an official posting/publication path. The normal route (via e-mail) serves as a “gateway of rationality”, making sure that only relevant (or “acceptable”) material gets placed in posts.
Very interesting illustrated essay from Tom Falco on his Tomversation blog today: https://tomversation.com/2022/05/12/my-cartooning-styles/
I really don’t share his skepticism at those who directly enjoy New Yorker cartoons. But I will admit to an element of “taking a stand” when defending Frog Applause, or Lugnuts, or even old Klibans, that come in for the “you can’t tell me that is even sincerely meant to be funny” variety of criticism.
At some point during the past months (or year?) I saw a beautifully rendered comic showing a global map of reported UFO sightings, confirming that the vast majority of them are within the continental U.S. I cannot find it at GoComics, and a Google search turns up nothing.
Does anyone remember seeing it? The snarky tone of the surrounding text might have been from Doonesbury, but as I said, a GoComics search is unable to find it.
Their spot on goComics now has a banner giving the date as June 27th.
Fascinating essay on Charles Schulz and the Peanuts.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20181112-good-grief-the-beguiling-philosophy-of-peanuts
@ Grawlix – That was an amazing article. I would have loved to have been able to see the exhibition, but since it ended in 2019, at least I didn’t “just barely” miss it.
I wonder if we can find a place to put this as a banner.
And there is finally some new content (albeit as a test?) at https://arloandjanis.com/ !
It looks like he’s trying to import 2200 pages of old material and make them work in a new (different) template. The most irritating aspect is that it is impossible to navigate to the next page from the “full” view: you have to go “back”, click from there to “next”, and then reopen that to full page to read everything he’s written.
I was amused to discover that the oldest post in the archive were all about the technical problems he had when he switched over to wordpress in 2008. In his newest post (the first since Dec. 2021), he writes that “a lot has changed with WordPress in the short time I’ve been gone”, but it’s obvious that one thing has not changed: it’s still massively difficult to implement anything after wordpress insists on “improving” its “features”.
“Cow Tools” was one of today’s selections at thefarside.com
Besides “Cow Tools”, there’s also the “King Kong ‘incident'” panel, which could have been appropriate for the next “Ooopses” collection, except that harping about a woefully inaccurate façade nearly 30 years after Larson drew it doesn’t seem quite fair (not that it stopped me from doing it here).
Somehow I have the impression of recently having seen a “Cul de Sac” strip or short sequence in which Alice wants to get a big stone fountain for the backyard. But I can’t find it in the recent items in the GoComics feed. Can anyone else locate where this could be seen recently? Or, has anyone sent that in as a CIDU submission? (And if so I apologize for losing track of it.) Thanks!
@ Mitch – I think I remember seeing a reference to the fountain, but I don’t recall seeing the entire arc recently. Here’s the beginning of the “big ugly fountain” (Dec. 2009). It goes for a week, then re-appears at Christmas for another three strips, but there’s at least one additional mention later on:
P.S. As of today GoComics has only three more daily strips, and two Sundays remaining, before the CdS rerun cycle will have to start over from the beginning. I’m not sure whether they will show Thompson’s “farewell” Sunday strip (which was also a re-run, but by special request). RIP.
P.P.S. In addition to Calvin & Hobbes and Peanuts, someone has taken the trouble to create a text index for all the Cul de Sac strips at GoComics. Now if we could just get them to do B.C., ….
Thanks, Kilby! My question came up from an allusion in a reader-submitted CIDU email, coming up soon. But I knew I had recently seen the CdS strips dealing with this, and assumed they had been recently in the reprint cycle — but I couldn’t find them. Now my best guess is that somebody sent this in as part of a different submission and I’ve lost the email; or I saw the strips at a different reprint archive or in some web essay.
There was an earlier arc — I was thinking it was an earlier, disconnected portion of the same storyline — but it appears to be a separate story based on the same idea.
It starts here.
The article popped up in my news feed regarding the creator of Wrong Hands and his work:
https://worldtravelling.com/john-atkinsons-funny-and-witty-webtoons/
Thanks for the link to the John Atkinson article!
I am looking for the circa 1975 Tumbleweeds where Wart Wimple receives a grave digger PhD correspondence course. When asked why he wanted a PhD he said, people call you Doc, you get a front seat at meetings, and you can ?????
What was that third reason? 40 years I’ve been saying “you can wear what you want”, but I know that’s not it. HELP
Back in June, Mitch said “And there is finally some new content (albeit as a test?) at https://arloandjanis.com/ !” But it hasn’t kept up. Nothing new there over the summer.
Sorry I can’t help you with that, FungiForager. But I did enjoy Tumbleweeds when it was around.
At his blog https://tomversation.com/2022/09/09/its-all-about-the-color/, Tom Falco compares two versions of one of his cartoons, showing a small but significant re-thinking, and using that Word Press block gizmo called Image Compare, which we have also used a few times here at CIDU.
(Actually I earlier got his newsletter with approximately the same content about why one version improved on the other – but the images in the email were of course presented separately and he asked readers to look back and forth from one to the other. So I got all excited and was going to write to him to suggest he could look into using the Image Compare block gizmo… And visited the Tomversation site to see if in fact it is under Word Press, and realized he was already on top of it!)
The only suggestion I can offer to thefungiforager is to find someone who has a top-level subscription to the King Features website. Since the vast majority of their comics are hidden behind a paywall, they do not get indexed by the search engine robots, and are therefore unfindable by normal means. There is of course no guarantee of success, so I would not suggest wasting any money on a new subscription for this attempt.
A lot (most? all?) of the TUMBLEWEEDS strip from that and later eras were reprinted in mass-market pbs from Fawcett and/or trade-size pbs from I forget whom. I’ve got many of the Fawcett pbs somewhere but not sure I can find them, but with so many other comics fans on this list probably others do as well and might enjoy the excuse to skim/reread the funny strips of those days?
@ Shrug – Well, heck, I would be perfectly happy to take care of the reading, but of course for me to do that you would have to ship all those books across the Atlantic (not really a workable solution).
P.S. I purchased nearly every Fawcett comic paperback that was offered in all those book sales in elementary school, but none of them survived my move to the west coast for college. Of course, even if I had saved them, they would be falling apart by now. The paper used was cheap and did not age well, and the bindings were only glued, not sewn.
and it’s a good personal cartoon. I felt like that after an Article 13 when I lost my stripe (circa 1965 Air Force)
Is Tumbleweeds online? I don’t see it on the current Comics Kingdom lineup. I realize that it ended years ago.
My apologies, Brian is absolutely right: not only has Tumbleweeds been completely removed from the King Features archive (probably many years ago), Ryan’s own “official” website is now an orphaned URL.
Lee Enterprises newspapers, including the STL Post-Dispatch, will be going to a uniform comics/puzzles/games lineup. For the Post daily, this is a much reduced set as it goes from two full pages to one half page. More information here:
https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2022/09/11/lee-papers-go-uniform-comics-pages-company-wide/
@ Brian – What an incredibly revolting development. The efficiency experts who care about nothing except the bottom line have finally determined that they cannot sell a single newspaper subscription by adding good comics, so they are going to cut their losses and dump most of them. As implied in the article, the most sickening sentence in the entire press release was describing “Peanuts” and “For Better or For Worse” as “new”. We can only hope that readers will protest this cynical profiteering by dumping their subscriptions.
P.S. They may be dumping a lot of comics, but they are keeping the horoscopes. Nitwits.
Nick G wins a Reuben
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02wmHKEprTW3rJLcbkhkS3dNDS6utrj9KtCD5zuePTzhwt32hMFboFGkFoCWDUGBtwl&id=1467580528
It seems strange that Nick Galifianakis would need to make the announcement himself, but a review of the NCS website shows that it might take anywhere from one to three years before they get around to updating the lists of winners there.
I got today’s Sunday Post-Dispatch. Here’s the lineup. (N-new):
Garfield
Baby Blues
Peanuts (N)
For Better or For Worse (N)
Pearls Before Swine
For Better or For Worse (N)
Pickles
Crabgrass (N)
Argyle Sweater (N)
Luann (N)
Frank & Ernest (N)
Jump Start (N)
Rose is Rose (N)
Marmaduke (N)
Lio (N)
Baldo (N)
Doonesbury
Born Loser (N)
FoxTrot
The overall quality of the strips has dropped significantly in my opinion. I mean, lose Breaking Cat News and gain Marmaduke? Two rerun strips. Even with the stipulation that all the strips come from the same syndicate you could put together a better list than that.
There are some others available online to subscribers, but as they are Universal syndicate strips you can get them from GoComics anyway.
Dan Piraro’s Bizarro Blog makes note of the comic going missing from those papers.
“Wayno and I have received numerous emails from readers this week about Bizarro having disappeared from their local newspaper. Sadly, it is true.”
https://www.bizarro.com/blog/2022/9/16/has-bizarro-been-canceled
It was pointed out to me in Breaking Cat News comments that I have FBOFW in the list twice. Rest assured that’s a cut and paste issue.
Now for the strips that were removed from the Sunday Post-Dispatch (U-Universal Syndicate):
Breaking Cat News (U)
Dilbert (U)
Zits
Non Sequitur (U)
Mutts
Blondie
Funky Winkerbean
Sally Forth
Slylock Fox
Hi and Lois
The Family Circus
Beetle Bailey
Rhymes With Orange
Mother Goose & Grimm
Most of the casualties were King Features strips. I’m sure Scot Adams has a conspiracy theory as to why Dilbert was axed.
@ Brian – The average age of the strips in that “new” lineup is 37 years. Four daily strips available only as re-runs, four others that are legacy zombies. So much for the value of original creativity. As Watterson once wrote, the competition for newspaper space is “Darwinian”.
You can see the daily line-up here:
@ Brian – The near synchronicity in the upper right corner just happens to provide a brand new graphic definition of the lowest circle of hell: paying to subscribe to a newspaper that prints only ten strips, and wastes 10% of that space on an artistic atrocity called “Close to Home”.
Considering the huge stable of comics in the Andrews McMeel/Universal syndicate, Lee Enterprises must have requested a bargain-basement package. I’m bit surprised they even included Garfield.
Michael Cavna’s latest article questions whether newspaper comic sections will soon disappear. (Please note that the Post’s website has a fairly strict paywall.)
The online comics section hardly makes sense with all of the strips available through GoComics. It’s true you have to read with the ads unless you have a Premium subscription, but it’s still not much of an attraction for online readers.
Here’s a suggestion for a sort of structured-commenting game, from Bill$Dollar (aka dollarbill):
I know, let's have a pun-fest. Nothing is out of bounds. Or just say, let's ignore the strips comments online and limit our comments to one at a time until we've had a go-round-ish, then time for the second pun from those still in the game. We could accept just plain comments without some wordplay also, by mentioning that as one of the rules for this particular comic.Any thoughts on how this could work? Responses here or also at Site Comments.
@ Mitch & $Bill – Having submitted a reply under Site Comments, I vote that we all focus the discussion over there. Duplicating the proposal in two separate threads does enhance its visibility, and may increase the chances that more CIDU readers will see it, but it also runs the risk of diluting the discussion across two parallel threads.
Would any of you happen to remember the comic that was discussed here a while back that portrayed Calvin and Susie as married adults, with a child of their own? Calvin passes his Hobbes down to their child.
In a search for a comic as Calvin as an adult, I came across this fun one.
https://www.deviantart.com/kevlev/art/Calvin-Hobbes-All-Grown-Up-134922799
It’s possible this is the one I’m thinking of, but now I wonder how many “tribute” strips there have been that use the same theme.
https://ink-and-paint.wonderhowto.com/news/pants-are-overrated-calvin-hobbes-all-grown-up-0127422/
Hobbes and Bacon is probably the one you mean. It’s frequently mention in the C&H comments, to the point the where some think it’s canon. Here’s one source:
Didn’t know that would embed.
Does anyone know why Berke Breathed went to all the trouble to retroactively change the number on the “Banana Junior” from “9000” to “6000”? It really doesn’t seem like it was worth the effort (especially since he missed fixing it in at least two strips).
P.S. Whenever I see the “6000”, it just seems “wrong”.
Returning to the subject of the recent destructive “rationalization” of the comic pages, here’s what happened after Opus did a week-long stint as the comic “stripper ” in Bloom County:
P.S. Breathed also did a Star Trek parody on the same subject:
I’ve mentioned the Lee Enterprises standard comic lineup for its owned papers. The Post-Dispatch used to kind of cram in strips on Sunday, with one running vertically on each page. So some were kind of small to accommodate that.
The new configuration has no top or side optional panels, and the strips run full page width. However, it seems like a few of the ones they use are meant for a side panel, because the strips are actually stretched horizontally to fit.
Arcamax skipped Sunday’s “Mutts”, and when I went searching for it elsewhere, I happened upon this “mashup from 2006 in Poor Richard’s Almanac. I considered appending it to one of the “Flashbacks” posts, but decided that it would be better to leave it here:
@Kilby, as I’m sure you’ll remember when reminded, “Poor Richard’s Almanac” (or perhaps “Almanack”) was the title of the original, issued by Ben Franklin. Richard Thompson’s turnaround play on that title was “Richard’s Poor Almanac”.
@ Mitch – I noticed the word reversal in the name as soon as my text appeared above the image, but decided not to ask you for a correction. Richard Thompson’s comic drawings were truly excellent and never poor at all, but the circumstances of his demise were very poor indeed.
I found this post on The Daily Cartoonist looking for strips relating to Veterans Day.
I’ve been trying to find the year of publishing of the Alley Oop strip roughly halfway down the page. I’m curious about the apparent story arc.
https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2021/11/11/csotd-armistice-day-in-the-midst-of-war/
Thanks for this, Grawlix.
I’ll try to cross-post it crediting you, in the (Arlo’s) Veterans Day thread.
The GoComics.com site seems to still be unresponsive as of this afternoon. Mark H brought it to our attention early this morning.
The message on site is fairly uncommunicative. “The requested service is temporarily unavailable. It is either overloaded or under maintenance. Please try later.”
Still out of service as of Sunday mid-morning.
Also http://www.thefarside.com is unavailable, but that is reported as a DNS error. GoComics still has what looks like a custom message located on the site. “The requested service is temporarily unavailable. It is either overloaded or under maintenance. Please try later.”
Also dilbert.com, as DNS, but I think they are actually just hosted on GoComics.com
@Mitch4, thanks – I came to the random comments to see if it was widespread.
The Daily Cartoonist [which has been mentioned as having an extensive listing of where else to find various categories of GoComics content] also now has a report on Comics Kingdom, similarly giving alternate locations. At first I couldn’t understand what they are on about, as I thought CK looked pretty much okay today. But no, there is something about the updates — some strips (retro or vintage ones mostly) are showing the Monday November 21 content, but the current ones are still showing yesterday’s, designated Sunday November 20.
I received some feedback that indicates that GoComics has been unable (or unwilling) to inform their contributors (a.k.a. cartoonists) about what is going on; they are just as much in the dark as everyone else.
@ Mitch – There’s a new update (dated yesterday) from the Daily Cartoonist, saying that Lee newspapers have been notified that the GC-website is down.
I made the mistake of looking for some “news” about the GC breakdown, and discovered some of the most asinine, out-of-proportion complaints from various readers. One idiot was insulted because GC had “not notified subscribers” (kind of hard to do, when the entire GC system has been compromised, rendering all their subscription data inaccessible). Then there was the champion of all morons, who felt that he should be entitled to a six-month refund on his subscription because of the temporary service interruption. I’m as frustrated as any reader, but let’s be honest: we are talking about comics, not the end of the world:
Mark H comments: “GoComics is back up, but no comics there past November 18, when they went down.”
Thanks for the update. A couple hours later now, it looks like that aspect is also solved or close to it.
I was going to add a comment that sign-in for paid accounts was not working yet, but in the meantime that also seems improved.
… Moving the discussion about the GoComics service interruption from a “good” place back to a better place …
As I was catching up on the past few days of one of the strips I normally follow, for one brief, ecstatic moment, I thought GC had taken the opportunity to ditch that atrocious “featured comment” annoyance. Alas, it is still there, it just has not been fed any data yet.
From what I’ve heard, I don’t believe this was an upgrade or scheduled maintenance, but recovery from some sort of cyberattack. I don’t know how much credence to give to the bits I’ve read about the situation.
The folks at Breaking Cat News are giddy with relief. They put up over 200 comments on the 11/22 strip.
@ Brian – I agree; all the subtle signs point to “hackers”, there’s nothing to connect any of this to the re-launch that GC supposedly is working on.
The following update was sent by GC to “creators” on Tuesday, 22-Nov-2022:
“We have been experiencing network issues which have taken
our servers and communication channels offline.
Apologies for the delay in responding.
Certain systems and data have been rendered temporarily inaccessible.
Our team is working around the clock to restore operations.
At this time, we cannot estimate when full access and services will be restored.
Thank you for your patience!“
On the other hand, Comics Kingdom has done a retool of the Comments. I hesitate to call it an upgrade, as the users don’t seem too thrilled with it. One new feature is guest posting, and I’ll be curious to see how long it lasts. Seems like an invitation to “Troll Here!”
I didn’t much care for Disqus when CK was using them for comments, and the new system seems to run a little more smoothly than Disqus did.
A problem that I saw mentioned, and then experienced for myself, is that the Comments area for a comic can be hard to get to from a Favorites list page if you are signed in with a CK account. And if you then go around Robin Hood’s barn to reach the comments, the commenting system no longer recognizes that you are signed in, and wants you to do so.
A problem for me is that the alternate server that the newspaper sites use still seem to be set to use Disqus, and just show We were unable to load Disqus.
Most CIDU readers probably noticed a massive flood of “tribute” strips on November 26th, in honor of what would have been Charles M. Schulz’s 100th birthday. Before I figured out the scope of the issue, I suggested that our editors might post a collection here at CIDU, but since then I discovered a comprehensive review Schulz Museum, much better than anything that we would ever be able to collect. Not all of the strips are worth reading (some are nothing more than maudlin sentiment), but there are a few definite gems (so far my favorite is Mutts). However, none of the strips I’ve seen so far comes even close to the Tank MacNamara strip that was part of a similar tribute (on 27-May-2000) to Schulz’s death:
Usually on Tuesdays I expect some comments from Meryl. But now I think I didn’t see that this week. Am I overlooking something, or misrenenbering?
Meryl I hope you are doing well.
@ Dana K – Meryl does (occasionally) skip a week, but she’s back as usual today.
“NOVEMBER GLITCH CAUSES DECEMBER RERUNS AT AMS”
Article at The Daily Cartoonist, https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2022/12/05/november-glitch-causes-december-reruns-at-ams/
Of course, nobody has said one word about what actually caused the “glitch”, nor about how the damage was repaired. I don’t want to sound conspirative, but the lack of information seems to be at least an indirect indication that the situation was unsavory, rather than a simple technical breakdown.
Here we see that the lack of color (some sort of side effect) has affected the Spanish but not the English versions of Baldo./
I have seem some strips in color at one viewing then b&w at another. In my email digest, all were color.
“Site Updates Coming Fall 2023. Click to learn more.” (Didn’t click yet.)
Brian,yep, I downloaded one to add to our next OY list posting, in b/w, and by the time I finished that and got back to the comics page, it had been replaced by color. (And downloaded under the same file name, confusing me for some reason)
No, the announcement made no mention of the recent troubles or continuing recovery. But doesn’t it seem a bit early to be announcing changes for next fall?
Thank you to everyone who participated in our user experience survey. We enjoyed hearing from you and learning more about which aspects you love most about GoComics.
In our commitment to make GoComics the premier destination for comics, we are planning updates to the site to enhance the user reading experience.
Here are a few features we will be adding:
Pick up reading where you left off
Ability to easily identify which strips have been read or not
New ways to share comics with others
Vertical scroll of multiple comics without clicking
You can expect to see regular communication from us regarding upcoming updates. We welcome any feedback you have about the site changes here.
We are proud to continue providing daily entertainment from over 500 comic creators and hope the time you spend on GoComics.com adds happiness to your day.
The GoComics Team
I received an email with all that. None of that seemed particularly important, and some I didn’t even understand.
Speaking of changes, I mentioned somewhere that Comics Kingdom replaced Disqus with a new discussion system (which seems worse to me). When it first appeared, it allowed guest posting.I predicted that wouldn’t last long, and I noticed today that it was gone.
The alternate server that the newspaper sites use still isn’t linked to the new system. So I find myself at times, when I’ve reached my limit of free strips, having to view the strip on one site and the comments on another. It’s a good thing I only follow a few strips.
Everyone here should take careful note† of today’s XKCD:
P.S. † Or “footnote”, as the case may be.
Don’t forget the mouseover text at the linked comic (as is usual for XKCD). It’s half the joke.
@ Grawlix – That’s precisely why I felt the need to include a (completed) footnote.
Grawlix, did you mean the “”If you ever see the † dagger symbol with no unmatched footnote, it means the writer is saying the phrase while threatening you with a dagger.” ?
Comment from Irv
CSIDU (Comic Site IDU)
Is GoComics really going to take up screen space for the next nine+ months announcing that site updates are coming? At least set a cookie so it doesn’t reappear once one has seen it or clicked through…
@ Irv – Especially when none of the announced “improvements” address fundamental weaknesses of the site, such as getting rid of the moronic “featured comment” (a.k.a. “troll magnetl), or retiring the space-wasting “classic” features (a.k.a. “rerun parades”).
Once I closed it, I haven’t seen the notice. I don’t know if that’s due to being a premium member or something else.
Technically, the GoComics website is not in accordance with EU-regulations, which require site operators to allow users to reject most cookies. GC only offers a “Got It!” button that merely acknowledges that they are setting cookies. If the site cannot set a cookie (for whatever reason: a blocker, or compatibility, or transmission error), then the banner will never disappear.
SF Fans —
From an e-circular from The Graham School at the University of Chicago. (Formerly the Center for Continuing Education, or Extension.) This is advertising a free, 45-minute, Zoom session. Tomorrow (Tuesday 20 December) at Noon Central. Registration at https://graham.uchicago.edu/events/history-science-fiction-12-20-22
This will be really about previewing, and selling, their 10-week online class, Saturday mornings starting January, and really very expensive. But there’s no obligation; I’ve viewed a couple of these preview “Conversations” for other classes before, and it’s really not a hard sell.
Below here forwarded material from them:
What is the history of science fiction—and how has this unique genre shaped the world around us?
Join us tomorrow, Tuesday, December 20, at 12:00 p.m. CST to hear from two award-winning science fiction authors, historians, and critics of the field, Jo Walton and Ada Palmer. Together, we’ll examine the origins and evolution of sci-fi and investigate the genre’s centuries-long relationship with political movements, science, and technology.
This event will also offer a glimpse into Walton and Palmer’s forthcoming course at Graham, which begins Saturday, January 7.
link to tomorrow’s preview sign-up: https://graham.uchicago.edu/events/history-science-fiction-12-20-22
link to course description and registration: https://graham.uchicago.edu/programs-courses/course/ffac10104-history-science-fiction
Email Discussion on finding Reply All Lite
Andréa asked:
Anyone know what’s happened with Reply All Lite? It stopped being in its usual spot last week, and I can’t find it anywhere . . .
Phil replied:
No idea, but I was trying to find a strip myself and gave up, so I’m glad to hear it’s not just me!
Mitch also replied:
I think I used to see both Reply All Lite (single panel) and Reply All (4-panel strip) at ArcaMax. But now it seems to be only the strip. https://www.arcamax.com/thefunnies/replyall/s-2760855
Washington Post does have the Lite. https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/comics/strips/?name=reply_all_lite
It may not be free.
The panel itself always displays “www.replyallcomic.com”
That redirects to “the daily dee” at dailydee.com, where https://dailydee.com/cartoons/ does show both features, but not current content.
Also, https://twitter.com/ReplyAllComic (account name dailydee) seems to have both the Lite panel and the strip, but running behind by one day. The most recent Lite posted there is 12-21
CIDU readers: Any further info or ideas?
.
Comics Kingdom has an incorrect image for today’s Sunday Bizarro:
Here is the correct image, as sent in newsletter and hosted at Arca Max:
Is it that the black channel is missing?
Tom Falco has a blog entry https://tomversation.com/2023/01/13/finding-my-audience/ that mentions us (Hi, Tom!) and, more generally takes up the questions of geezer references that kids might not get and vice versa.
Not just geezer stuff at work. Some of our participants are not from the USA, so references can elude them. I have to say that I hadn’t heard, “don’t yuck my yum” but I don’t find it confusing or hard to understand.
I view a fair amount of cooking videos, and there are always that contingent in comments that announce that whatever was prepared is the most disgusting thing ever, or is being incorrectly prepared. Bonus points for insulting all Americans while at it.
@ Brian – Even those of us who are from America (but don’t live there) will miss references that depend on being plugged into current American pop culture. I recognized the name of Mariah Carey, but I have absolutely no interest in her music, and certainly did not know about her claim to be “Queen of Christmas”. Similarly, I have no regrets about missing references to whatever odious sitcoms or Internet memes that may be currently fashionable in the US. That’s just another reason why I live “here“, and not “there”.
For anyone that is interested, I discovered today (quite by accident), that Two Party Opera has started up again.
@ guero – I’ve never followed it on a regular basis, but Two Party Opera has shown up unusually often when searching for other items at GoComics. The first “post-sabbatical” strip appeared on 6-Jan-2023, and daily updates resumed on Jan. 13th.
Is there anyone else who finds the repeated references to “The Big Lebowski” in Mutts tiresome?
P.S. I’ve never seen the movie, but I don’t think that would make these strips work.
Well I have seen the movie, and like it pretty well, but have never understood the cult-like appeal it holds for some.
@guero,
Thanks for the tip about Two Party Opera.
I notice that Perry Bible Fellowship has posted a lot of comics lately, and I don’t recognize any of them. Are they new?
@ Chak – Just like other webcomics, The Perry Bible Fellowship has been “sporadic” for years, but you are right, there is a lot of relatively recent material. None of the comics is ever dated (not even in the archive list), but I know that the “Pumpkin Spice” comic is just over two years old, so (at least) 16 comics have appeared since January 2021.
P.S. Nicholas Gurewitch is now attributing specific writing credits to his co-collaborators. Unfortunately, he is also actively monetizing the site through Patreon. At least two of the newer strips are just “teasers” to encourage donations.
@ Chak – Sorry, I miscounted. The Jan. 2021 comic was “Clear Boundaries“, leaving 14 new PBF comics in the last two years, but the website also shows a set of 14 “collabortions”, some of which are definitely new.
P.P.S. My sincerest ‘pologies for the missing “a”.
“Beardo” apparently is also going for monetizing, and on GoComics publishes something like the “teasers” you mention.
I think the focus on color Patreon strips is the primary reason why Bug Martini has become so unbelievably “sporadic” with the regular (monochrome) strips (they used to appear three times a week, before the author had a pair of kids – which of course is an eminently good reason not to be drawing comics for a living).
Email I got today from the MyChart system starts out:
Hello PROXYFNAME@,
An interesting strip is ending:
A dogged attempt to learn a foreign language:
(Actually, that was the caption of a cartoon that I recall seeing posted on the Linguistics Department physical bulletin board in the eighties, where the comic’s drawing was of a dog with a teaching tape, struggling to repeat “meow”.)
@ Mitch – It would be interesting to know how the sound of a dog barking is normally written in Spanish. At one point I collected a long list comparing typical (written) animal noises in English and German. For instance, a German rooster (“der Hahn“) says “kiekeriki“, Germans find “cock-a-doodle-doo” very strange and amusing.
P.S. There’s a series called Karambolage on the dual French/German network “Arte”. Every Sunday evening, the show compares and contrasts interesting details about French and German culture. One recurring topic are the typical sounds used for various animals or events. For instance, a rock falling into a pond might go “splash” or “kerplunk” in English, but Germans say “plumps“, and the French sound is something like “ploofeh“.
P.P.S. For those of us who have never seen the “interesting strip” before, could you give us a link or at least its name?
P.P.P.S. Cancel that request, searching for the names in the copyright line led (in)directly to “Mount Pleasant“:
Multilingual dog dictionary:
https://tinyurl.com/yc7r5777
Thanks, Shrug
@ Shrug – Ditto on Mitch – that was quite interesting!
I regret to report that the links given above for “Mount Pleasant” at GoComics have become invalid, even though the resource links to the image files still work. Although one might have thought that GoComics would have turned the feature into a click-collecting zombie (as they have often done with other strips), in this case they have simply eliminated the feature entirely, less than two days after the appearance of the last farewell strip. This shows GoComics’ typical (non-existent) respect for the artists that produce their content. I’m simply glad I captured that example before the URL vanished.
Looking at the strip, it was distributed by Tribune Content Agency. Generally the decision about strips are with the syndicate, most often Universal/Andrews McMeel, which is also the parent of GoComics.
And these dogs may need that multilingual dog dictionary from above:
There’s a counting book called “Dogs” by Sandra Boynton, in which each number is represented by a corresponding set of canine noises:
@Kilby, back in January and the ‘pumpkin spice’ comic – “. . . but I know that the “Pumpkin Spice” comic is just over two years old, . . . ”
WHEN it’s cold enough for 1) scarf; and 2) Pumpkin [pie] spice coffee, it’s too cold for mosquitos. Comic logic, I know, but still . . .
An episode of “Family Guy” played with the animal noise trope:
I suppose according to a certain Far Side comic, if you had a translator, those ten dogs would just be saying “Hey! Hey! Hey!”
@ Grawlix – Boyton’s dogs are just counting from one to ten, but Larson’s dogs are doing exactly what you said (check the link).
A nicely indirect way to deliver the DST reminder:
Just ran into a Twitter account that posts Peanuts cartoons from 50 years ago by date. Thus today’s is
The account page is
https://twitter.com/peanuts50yrsago?s=11&t=NOnkR4kVBTFlq37wzJ9J-A
Arlo is planting Impatiens
@ Mitch – I deleted my Twitter account when they doubled the bandwidth of the sewer from 140 to 280 characters per twit, but that link shows that somebody has way too much time on his hands. Of course, it is entirely possible that the contents of the feed are being captured with a script. All you would need to do is call up the URL
(for instance: https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1973/03/21)
… and then the script can extract the image URL from the GC website’s HTML. Still, it seems easier to me to just call up the GC URL, and avoid padding Elon Musk’s traffic targets.
There are a number of Facebook and Twitter pages with old comics. Some are posted daily in the Gasoline Alley comments by “Gweedo -it’s legal here- Murray”. I knew it was possible to have links to a specific comment, but it wasn’t obvious how other than through the notification system. I figured out a way, at least one that worked in testing.
https://www.gocomics.com/gasolinealley/2023/3/21?comments=visible&replies=visible&comment_id=52397815
Kilby, I don’t see that you’re taking into account that “easier” is relative to a goal. If someone is going to be looking for a Peanuts for a particular date, your method would indeed be easier. But if the goal is to now and then have a Peanuts from 50-years-ago-today delivered to your screen without even doing anything really directed towards that, then my method is easier, as it doesn’t need me to do anything else — it’s already set up as something like a subscription.
Edit to add: Yes of course that account is a “bot” operating from a script. There are several interesting literary ones — a sequential posting of Ulysses every ten minutes, a posting from Howl that I think (I haven’t checked closely) is random rather than sequential or actively curated, a Facebook feed of Samuel Beckett passages that I think is actively human-curated.
@ Mitch – It may be convenient, but it’s still a duplication of effort. GoComics offers strips delivered to your e-mail address and the option of setting up customized comic pages (at least with a paid subscription). There’s also the “Classic Peanuts” feature, which stated off synchronized, but is slowly becoming unstuck, because the current calendar is still skipping the Sunday strips.
But the GoComics customization (for both email and browser viewing) allows just the selection of “features”, not selection of dates or crafted URLs. They will feed their vintage Peanuts feature, but send whatever date they are publishing that day.
Certainly the process of “following” that 50-years-ago-today Twitter bot would make no sense for someone who is not already dipping into the Twitter stream. For someone who does already use Twitter, it is a one-time step. There is no duplication of effort.
Today’s “Mutts” has an amusing take on canine linguistics:
Talk about a cartoonist keeping in touch with fans!
@ Mitch – When (or where) did the “correction” appear? I found the original map (on April 1st):
… but couldn’t find the panels shown above.
IIRC, Georgia Dunn is going to have surgery on her right hand, and will be on sick leave for a short while, so there will be re-runs in the pipeline (but showing up later).
The correction was on Twitter.
Questions, so many question… How are they expanding an apartment? Expanding, but still only one bathroom, that apparently you have to go through the living room to get to? And now, with the correction, the only way to the living room is through the nursery (or possibly the old bedroom)?
They bought out (in cooperation with other tenants) a portion of the building that was being used for another purpose. And then,I suppose, knocked out a bit of interior wall?
And what, added an external catwalk? How does that hallway work? If it was already existing and there is more building on the other side of it that they don’t own, then how did the nursery ever have windows? (Yes, I am massively over-thinking this, but that’s what we do around here, isn’t it?)
larK, check out the bracket noting “New” on both my comment and Kilby’s of the original map. The hallway is I believe “old” in its left-right portion and the branch that goes down to the nursery. The branch of the hallway that goes up to the new bedroom and temporary storeroom is new (as are those rooms).
The issue of the hallway blocking the nursery window is not because of the addition — it was just a mistake in the drawing or planning. AFAICT.
Yes, Georgia reads and occasionally posts in the GoComics comments.
Probably seen this before, but I just ran across it again and thought to share it here
Gene Weingarten’s latest “Gene Pool” has a lot to say about publishing “Peanuts” reruns, with a side jab at “Hagar”. Please note that some of the article and a lot of the reader’s comments are decidedly NSFW (both for language and for political content).
Does anyone recognize the melody that Horace is playing in the DSotH-logo?
A visitor to the site asked, via the contact form
Our answer:
The site doesn’t support general email subscriptions, as such. If you make a comment in a thread, you can check a box which (when it’s working) will email you any subsequent comments in the same thread. Also, if you use Reader Mode at the Word Press site (https://wordpress.com/read and make a free account), you can Follow any WordPress-hosted sites, such as this one.
How did Keith Knight ever come up with the idea for this airline name?
@ Danny – Well, if you weren’t the one who suggested it, then perhaps Mr. Knight was looking for a name that would fit with the airline’s principles of “CYA”. Still, I would have thought that they would only fly to Ireland, and not to Brooklyn.
Derry-Air isn’t hip, but it is close.
Quite a collection:
Wonderful clip!
@ Grawlix – I agree with Mitch, but now I’m wondering what happened to the rest of all of those old newspaper archives. If it took six “semi” trucks to deliver just the comic pages that he clipped, the mass of paper that he did not save must have been truly enormous.
When I wrote that comment last night, it was longer but got lost in some accident of thumbs and iPad editing. So when I went to re-create it I just did the bare statement. I had tried to say I heard a radio report on the same topic, and of course the video clip was much more vivid. Not just in showing the materials, but in writing / reporting — like, those semis!
In addition to the fumbling mishandling that Arcamax has recently inflicted upon “Zits” and the Sunday “Macanudo” strips, yesterday they committed a one-time coloration assault upon “Mutts“:
There are two reasons that I read “Mutts” at Arcamax: first, McDonnell’s own website has become a marketing and propaganda emporium that makes it increasingly difficult just to browse recent strips. Second, I heartily dislike the retroactive coloration that Comics Kingdom imposes upon McDonnell’s simplistic artwork. Luckily, today’s Mutts strip at Arcamax shows that yesterday’s coloration was merely an isolated peculiarity:
CALL FOR HOLIDAY-THEMED CONTENT
Please help the editors assemble holiday-themed posts for MOTHERS’ DAY (Sunday 14 May) and MEMORIAL DAY (Monday 29 May).
All sorts of cartoon material is welcome!
Submit suggestions by email ( CIDU.Submissions@gmail.com ) or via our webform ( https://cidu.info/suggest-a-cidu/ ) .
Thanks!
Most strips are produced in black and white for the dailies. The syndicate then hires a third-party service for consumers that want color strips. I suspect that it isn’t CK exactly, but King Features. This is common also to GoComics, where the Andrews-McMeel/Universal strips are colored and then run on GC. A few exceptions are Breaking Cat News, where Georgia Dunn wasn’t satisfied and took over the daily coloring, and Lio, which appears only in B&W. I don’t know if that’s the case for newspapers.
@ Brian – Other exceptions include “Calvin & Hobbes” (Watterson would never allow a syndicate clone to fudge up his artwork) and the equally brilliant “Wallace the Brave”, for which Will Henry has been doing his own colored artwork since the very beginning (even before syndication). The oddity in that first “Mutts” strip shown above was simply that Arcamax grabbed the color version by mistake. The colors on “Fontella” were very well-done, but I still generally prefer McDonnell in monochrome, except for Sundays.
The problems at Arcamax are getting worse. Here is what Arcamax would like to believe is the entire Mutts strip for Sunday, March 7th, 2023:
P.S. That is of course just the throwaway “title” panel, the rest of the strip is nowhere to be found. The idiocy for March 6th was even worse: Arcamax archived, in this order: the complete strip in monochrome, then just the final panel in color, and then the complete strip in color. This is getting ridiculous: either Arcamax needs to get their act together, or I need to find a better place to read comics.
FYI
@ Mitch – Sad news, but on a more positive note, that was your 7000th comment since the CIDU website was rebooted in January, 2018.
Thanks for tracking, but if that count was from larK’s site it differs a little from WP’S internal :
But indeed a timely reminder to watch for the All to cross another round multiple!
P.s. From larK’s prolificity option, it seems you yourself are quickly closing in on that 7000, and witn Andrėa close behind.
@ Mitch – I made an oblique reference (near the end of page two of this thread) when I hit 6000, but it was far too obscure for anyone to notice.
The Nib recently posted an absolutely fascinating review of (former) the methods used to publish color comics, including detailed images and a fair amount of information about monochrome processes, too. My only complaint is that the article is too short.
P.P.S. Please ignore my word reversal and go read the article, it’s well worth the time!
That was really interesting!
An aspect they didn’t touch on much was the technicalities of four-color printing at the last steps. Have you ever seen the registration lines and crosses, and color strips, outside the actual production print area, used to check registration (alignment)?
There are odd effects when the registration is wrong. If you’re familiar currently with the Tik-Tok logo, that’s an example of doing a misalignment purposely (or keeping something that happened by mistake).
I wonder how Georgia Dunn does it for Breaking Cat News, both daily and Sunday. She does watercolors for both. Do they use some sort of color copying?
How do I find the Arlo page? I found it once and I can’t remember how I did it.
Maggie, the Arlo Page is at https://arlopage.wordpress.com/ . We aren’t managing it from CIDU (I don’t think anybody is). So it is basically read-only at this point — or commenting may still be live. But there is a good bit to read there.
Oh, I see. I wrote a comment and it was never moderated. Thanks Mitch!
@ Maggie – The CIDU editors received the access rights to the primary CIDU setup at WordPress from Bill’s family, but not to any of the “Arlo Page“, “Crimeweek“, or several earlier incarnations of Bill’s websites. I’m not even sure whether Robin or Aaron would (now) be able to find the login data for any of those setups.
The problem for you (and anyone else who is new) is that since most WordPress setups send the first comment to any new participant to “moderation”,† you will never be able to enter a comment on any of those other “CIDU-related” websites unless someone goes to the trouble of working through the moderation queue. Given that these websites have been untended for nearly three years, it is highly unlikely that this will ever happen.
The moral of the story is that EVERYONE should feel free to read, but don’t bother trying to comment on anything (especially since it is relatively unlikely that those comments would be read by anyone else).
P.S. † – Automatic moderation of every user’s first comment is a crucial protection against all sorts of random spam; Bill praised this feature on several occasions.
It happens that since Maggie’s question (and probably prompted by that),two readers have posted comments at the arlopage site — these are previously approved commenters, so these new comments from them did not get held up, and appeared on site “untouched by human hands” (as some very old ad campaign used to say).
@ Mitch – Good to know that those systems are still functional, but it’s worth warning all CIDU readers that since the server meltdown and URL change, the “Link Back” from the Arlo Page to CIDU still goes to the original CIDU URL, which is currently attached to an Indonesian gambling website. I still have no idea why those idiots thought it was worthwhile to buy the old CIDU URL.
Some more extremely sad news: Matt Bors has announced that “The Nib” will continue to publish (online) until the end of August, and will then cease active operations.
And some happy news: I was a little worried when I noticed that the BCN strips that Brian posted were over five years old, but I had forgotten that Georgia Dunn was taking a break for surgery. She has just announce that she is (slowly, carefully) returning to the drawing board, and that new BCN strips will appear in about a month, with Sunday strips following after another month.
The Sunday BCN strips haven’t gone into reruns yet, due to the longer lead time. So it’s been daily reruns and new Sundays since May 1. I think the plan is for new dailies to start this coming Monday.
Well, we can check back tomorrow and see if it happened this way!
Does this mean that Duffy has acknowleged that “The Fusco Brothers” will never be the leading comic strip in any newspaper?
This would maybe be funnier if I knew what a sheepdog looks like. Or if the cartoon gave more of a clue.
I would have thought “none of them”…
There are other sheep-herding dogs besides the Old English Sheepdog. In particular, there is the Border Collie, a rather active sort.
I’m glad I reloaded the page: I was going to say that the middle dog is a very good rendition of a border collie, but Brian beat me to it (with evidence to boot).
P.S. @ Dave (236) – Although it’s clear that the cartoon was rendered with video technology (and not hand-drawn cels), the scriptwriting (and/or storyboarding) was much better than most of the other “recent” Warner cartoons. Sam’s voice was pretty good, but Ralph’s was atrocious (although that was thankfully only a brief annoyance). The main problem with the cartoon was that it is too short (just under three minutes, rather than the old standard length of about eight).
That was just the first one I found; probably I should have looked harder.
@ Dave (240) – I was actually very pleased that you picked that example, because it was something I had never seen before, and well worth watching. Like I said, the primary defect was that it should have been longer. :-)
Judicious editing on the “Spoom” there, otherwise you’d have had to reopen the Arlo pages… 🍆
@ Mitch (242) – I suspect that the “spoom” was a reaction to Macanudo’s inverted pyramid in the latest Sunday Funnies, but before anyone goes looking for it, I wanted to point out that the original source (Oglaf) and particularly the rest of the strip from which those panels came are extremely NSFW (so much so that I am not providing any links; those who are interested will have to find it unassisted).
P.S. @ larK (244) – I don’t think Oglaf would ever have been a candidate for the way Bill handled “Arlo” material. He usually posted humorous items there that included incidental sexual content. Blantant sex-based humor and/or porn didn’t seem to qualify.
Nobody was thinking about Oglaf until you provided that ID; and there are no links. The content here is not even directly NSFW — only by spelling adjacency, which I didn’t even notice until larK pointed it out. (When I saw it — in a non Oglaf context — I just thought it was a cute typography-based pun!) So I suggest there is nothing Arlo-worthy here, and it should not be a concern.
Well, it’s an excerpt from an Oglaf strip; I thought you knew that.
(and to follow up on how much search sucks these days, even though the strip is nicely archived at oglaf.com and is in fact called “Spoom”, searching Duckduckgo and Google does not return it in the first page, instead returning a bunch of crappy rebloggers and reddit…)
@ Mitch – I was not criticising posting those panels in the slightest, they are in fact the funniest part of the whole strip. I was only pointing out that a simple search for “spoom / woods” leads pretty quickly (via a step across Reddit) to the original source, and readers might prefer to know what they are getting into before they start.
(via a step across Reddit)
Which a) I can’t make because reddit is broken on my old browser
a1) I don’t know that I want to make, because it’s a warning from NSFW content (in reddit)
and mostly b) why the %$^&&* is reddit the first link on Google, instead of the actual source, which never seems to come up at all?? Google has been broken for some time now… >:-(
@ larK (250) – Oglaf is probably on Google’s blacklist, not just because of its hilarious, albeit extremely adult content, but mostly because the website makes absolutely no attempt to block minors, and in fact pokes fun at the stupidity of any system that depends on a button click to “verify” the age of any participant.
Here’s one of those quasi-CIDUs that are totally opaque when you don’t know the references, but quite transparent (and amusing!) when you do …
@Kilby: nope, makes no difference if you turn safe-search off: the first pages are all rebloggers and derivative sites, basically sponging off Oglaf’s work (OK, some of the reblogging is Oglaf themselves), and then it devolves to link after link of russian spam. Google is just broken, we’re back to the days of AltaVista and Lycos, with no upstart with a better search waiting in the wings…
Of course, in 1987, when this panel is copyright, a higher percentage of readers might be expected to get the joke. In fact Gillespie was still active at that time.
@ larK (253) – I’m not talking about a protective “ranking” classification, but rather a complete blacklist that prevents Google (and DuckDuckGo) from indexing the site at all. Even when searching for “Oglaf“, both systems refuse to provide any direct links to the website. It’s also possible that the authors themselves have implemented a “no-index” policy (using robots.txt).
When I search with Google I do get as the top result a link to the Oglaf archive. Not the main site, but closer I guess.
From “The free press”, comic by “Dave Mamet” – seems to be the actual playwright/director.
I get the joke, but not the framing:
(The Other Coast)
Oddly enough, just the other day after seeing the sheepdog thread above including the linked video, I noticed soon afterwards, among my YouTube recommendations were a couple of the classic WB cartoon shorts starring Sam and Ralph. Someone commented about the voices being “off” of the linked video. It is interesting to note that even over the course of the classic run, characters often had a multitude of voice actors.
@Kilby (255) – you hit the nail on the head, Oglaf has a robots.txt excluding everyone, or at least it did the last time I checked.
On a completely different note – it appears the Kieran Meehan has stopped drawing Pros and Cons. TheDailyCartoonist didn’t offer a reason. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is just burnout. I can’t begin to imagine producing a joke a day for years on end.
Closing this edition of Random Comments. A new head post for Random Comments and thread of comments will be published soon. The new one will have the direct URL of https://cidu.info/2023/08/20/random-comments-august-2023-edition/ and also will have a link (called just Random Comments) in the left sidebar menu under the first (triple lines symbol) tab.