Thanks to Dirk the Daring for sending this from Take it from the Tinkersons, a strip relatively new to CIDU.
Looking over the recent instances of the strip, we find some relevance in the day before:
This maybe clarifies his attitude in the top strip, which Dirk characterizes as “Yeah, maybe just don’t hurt the one I love”. But still leaves the wife’s reaction shot in the last panel as unclear in intent.
Comics I Don't Understand 
He says he’s just joking, but in panel 4 he’s still watching her to make sure she doesn’t “hurt” his baby.
Not wanting to judge it just by the conundrum shown here, I’ve looked at a few “Tinkersons” strips (that’s all that King Features allows), but so far I haven’t seen anything that would entice me to add this strip to my daily list (even if it were available from a less difficult source). It seems to be a cross between “Retail” (R.I.P.) and “Dilbert”, with a little bit of “FBoFW” thrown in. Anyone else have a more favorable opinion?
So speaking of recliners, I am sort of in the market for one, but there is simply no slam dunk perfect recliner to be had for money; maybe for love, I haven’t gone down that avenue.
I’m looking into one of those that assists getting up, so that throws you into the realm of electric motors. OK, so since I have electric motors, I want two separate ones so you can control the recline and the foot rest separately. And then let’s have it recline all the way to 180˚ (flat), if not beyond. And they all seem to throw in heating in massage, so why not? Great, all that seems to exist. Or not… When you start looking closer, you can’t change the fabric, because then suddenly it doesn’t lie flat, or it doesn’t have two independent motors, or it doesn’t have heating. And if you want the slightly longer one for taller people, suddenly they don’t exist, or they don’t have all the features. And then you read reviews, and even short people complain that their feet hang off the footrests. And the ones that have all the features only come in some kind of vinyl fake leather, and I’ve had enough experience that fake leather never lasts more than two years before flaking and becoming really ugly and messy. But if you go for cloth, suddenly you can’t get any of the features… And the various manufactures, each one with varying complaints… And it’s not even that I’m trying to be cheap; the more expensive ones don’t seem to have obvious features, and aren’t immune in any way from complaints about bad service and poor quality — sometimes quite the reverse!
So maybe I need to go the love route, rescue the prefect recliner from a shelter…
:-\
@ larK – My mom used to have a recliner that we all called the “coma chair”, because of the effect it had on anyone who sat down on it.
Did anyone else have trouble parsing the fourth panel because it looked like she moved from standing beside the recliner to sitting in it?
Just me? Oh well.
Philip, it’s not just you — I also had trouble understanding the fourth panel, and that was a large part of why I thought it made sense to think of this as a CIDU. However, I didn’t see her as having moved to sitting in it; just standing at a different angle, that would maybe be more intrusive or ungentle in probing the cushions.
I didn’t think she was sitting in the recliner, but since Phillip has suggested it, I have a whole different perspective on what she’s doing with that vacuum.
Mark M, well I didn’t want to say that exactly, but since you mention it…
With King Features, don’t use the main site. There is an alternate that is used by newspaper comic pages like Seattle PI. Even though the archive is 30 days, there seems to be no limit to how many or how far back you can go using the arrows or editing the URL. Here’s one from a couple months back.
https://v7.comicskingdom.net/comics/take-it-from-the-tinkersons/2022-07-13/?widgetId=570
With Panel 4, to me it’s just the change in viewpoint to the other side.
I’m surprised she didn’t use the common response to criticism of housework, “Fine, you do it.”
larK, I don’t know if this helps at all, but a place called Irene House (irenehouse.com) has one that I think hits all your needs, in real leather. Model 9196.
Subscribe to a printed newspaper or magazine and you’ll see plenty of ads for all manner of recliners. And hearing aids. And simple cell phones. And walk-in bathtubs.
Wendy: thanks, that one is actually closest I’ve come, the company gets pretty good reviews. But what they call leather, when you look more closely, is actually faux leather. There are negative reviews on Amazon because people thought it was real leather. 😦
Mark in Boston: yeah, I figured I could always go with one of those in the ads in the magazine, since they cost 3 or 4 times as much; then I started reading the reviews of those companies, and no one had anything good to say about the service or the quality of those chairs… 😦
Like Philip & Mark, I thought the composition in the fourth panel lookd a little unnatural, but I also noticed that she seems to lose about six inches in height between the first and second panels. Just compare her waist with the level of the armrest.
P.S. I think it’s the odd lettering in this strip that bothers me more than the quirky artwork.
I’m fond of it.
The writing is far superior to the artwork, and it has a sly , deadpan sense of humour combined with a willingness to follow plots to insane places.
It’s not my favourite strip, but it’s far from the worst I read.
(It’s me, I’m the Tinkersons defender).
Kilby: In the last panel, is she sitting in the chair? And if so, what exactly is she doing?
@ MiB – As previously noted, the composition in the fourth panel is decidedly awkward. At first glance she appears to be sitting in the chair, but we can rule that out for two obvious reasons. First, her knees and calves do not appear on the left side of the chair. Second, if she were sitting in the chair, then the position of the vacuum nozzle would be “beyond Arlo”. Therefore, since this is a syndicated comic†, she is definitely not sitting in the chair. The artist has left it to the reader’s imagination to explain how she seems to lose six inches in height in each sequential frame.
P.S. † – With King Features, a syndicate notorious for avoiding anything that might be considered even remotely “tittilating”.
@ larK – When we moved (about 8 years ago) we bought two new couches in “fake leather” (what I sometimes call “genuine nauga“). It held up pretty well for about three years, then the skin started to flake off. When we finally got a microfiber couch as a replacement, the delivery men took one look at the old sofas, and gave an incedibly accurate estimate of its age (4+ years). According to them, the flaking problem is widespread, if not universal.
Are you aware of the Save The Naugas movement?
(I think the Car Talk brothers were part of that, along with Save The Skeets.)
@ Mitch – I never knew that “Naugas” were anything more than a private family joke until I had to look up the correct spelling of “naugahyde”, and discovered that they had been used as a part of an advertising campaign back when I was a kid.
When we lived in our apartment with its modern decor I had a big fake leather recliner. It had a handle on the side to recline it.
When we moved to the house Robert wanted the living and dining rooms decorated in “colonial revival” style – big in the 1930s. Basically “it looks like colonial so we say it is”. My recliner had to go. Since getting it originally I had some incidents where my left shoulder was in pain (forget what called) and the only way I could sleep was reclining the chair, so we set out to get a recliner which would go with the living room.
I did not understand how important the handle which made it recline was – my feet do not reach the floor when seated in the chair (or most chairs) and I have to push the chair open with my hands/arms and then gingerly climb into/onto it without it going back to being a chair.
But they are wonderful chairs to sit/sleep in when one is not feeling well.