Thanks to dollarbill for this Oy-Ewww from Argyle Sweater:
dollarbill’s comment: “I wonder if he brags about his gross income?”
See also the posts in Random Comments and Site Comments on his idea for a structured-commenting game. (Please respond there, not so much here.)
And now, a mini-fest of Bizarro!!
The bottom one, with the Motley Crüet, has been given Prof. Zwicky’s detail treatment!.
Comics I Don't Understand 
I can’t think of a better solution, but drawing a gag that depends on deciphering inverted fine print is a tall order. It might have been better if the only visible customer’s leg had also been colored in skin-tone, rather than pants gray. On a more positive note, at least “Tom” is not wearing an athletic supporter.
P.S. In that weight room: there but for the grace of Lyman goes Odie:
P.P.S. Berlin has just about the highest ration of dog owners to meter of sidewalk of any city in Germany. Assigning derelict owners to Cerberus as punishment is perhaps justified (three times the intake implies three times the output), but there have been times when I would just as well seen such jerks get assigned to walk a Hydra for all eternity.
“I was going to leave you a tip, but I see you’ve already got one.”
Wow I don’t think I’ve ever seen a darker Garfield than the one that Kilby posted. Grabbing Odie by the neck? And It makes Garfield smile. Yeesh.
I know it’s supposed to be his eyes & nose, but I am SO DISTRACTED by the capital J on the customer’s face in the Argyle Sweater strip. Also, I’m 99.9% pure – um, sure – that I’ve seen that joke before. On the other hand, I love the Bizarro panels – you can’t go wrong with a good play on words!
@Susan, now that you point it out, I can’t not see that J on his face!
But among those Bizarros, I do think the middle one (Cerberus) is funny, but I don’t know what the OY aspect is supposed to be.
@ Mark M – Well, the strip never has been a sanctuary for non-violence. Garfield smiled pretty fiendishly every time he booted Odie off the table, and he also has a long record of being physically nasty to spiders, mailmen, and Nermal.
You DO NOT hit a dog with a newspaper, altho that seems to be a comic trope, as is a hydrant . . . which female dogs wouldn’t usually use (nor male dogs, unless you bring ’em to one).
@ Susan – The “bottomless cup” gag has been used so many times in the past few decades that it would seem to be hard to come up with a new variation, but both the example above and Hilburn’s previous iteration (2015) were pretty good in comparison with the tired old “pour coffee onto table” gags:
@ Andréa – I have no idea how you trained your dogs to ignore hydrants, but the two we had as kids never failed to baptise every one they passed by.
Kilby “The “bottomless cup” gag has been used so many times in the past few decades that it would seem to be hard to come up with a new variation, ”
A fairy is being served by a waiter with the head of an ass.
Caption : I ordered the Bottomless cup.
@Kilby: For a variety of reasons, we don’t walk our dogs. Ever. Both in WI and here in FL, they have a potty pen. (Ever try to walk seven dogs? That’s just ONE of the reasons.) Also, here in FL, no hydrants; water connections are level with the ground.
Frankly, if I had to walk dog[s], I’ve have a cat. I don’t even LIKE cats. Maybe a boa constrictor. Had a tarantula once; didn’t have to walk it, either, altho it did escape once and go walkabout once.
I think physical violence in comedy is termed “slapstick”.
I can picture a mug that’s just an open cylinder with handle, with coffee all over the table and dripping to the floor. There’s yer bottomless cup.
Not quite synchronicity, but I was just recently musing on the term “spotting”, referring to gymnastics or weight training. I could picture someone saying “There you are! I can see you,” or similar.
@ Grawlix – For some reason I tend to associate the word “slapstick” more with Chaplin and Vaudeville, and less with modern physical comedy, but that’s just a personal impression. Coincidentally, today’s “Mutts” seems to be a half-hearted apology for decades of nut tossing:
P.S. @ Grawlix – “…a mug that’s just an open cylinder with handle, with coffee all over the table…”
Yes, of course, but after seeing the idea executed (in alphabetical order) by “Adam@Home“, the “Born Loser“, “Frank & Ernest“, “Pearls Before Swine“, and “Ziggy“, I came to the conclusion that after all that repetition, the joke needs some sort of extra twist to make it really work. (For what it’s worth, Ziggy was first, predating the rest by seven to 15 years.)
P.P.S. It turns out that “Argyle Sweater” has gone back to the same well three times, but that doesn’t bother me so much, since each execution has been thematically distinct:
P.P.P.S. For those who may prefer direct visual gratification over link hopping, here are the five examples in reverse alphabetical order, which also happens to be nearly chronological:
P.P.P.P.S. Well, nuts: if I had used “The Born Loser” for the order, then it would have been exactly chronological.
“P.P.P.P.S. Well, nuts: if I had used “The Born Loser” for the order, then it would have been exactly chronological.”
Only if you actually *alphabetized” by an initial “the” (or “a” or “an”) and thus caused this anal-retentive retired librarian to have a coronary attack. So thank you for missing out on that possibilty.
And I just re-read your post and belatedly noticed you said “chronological” instead of “alphabetical.” My apologies, and my bad, and now you probably can guess why I’m retired. And wear thick glasses.
The dog in this Betty Boop cartoon (at 1:00) has access to a hydrant but ignores it, attempting to use a sign instead. And if you think picking up Odie by the neck was cruel …
@ Shrug – I agree with you about not including articles in the sort, but your comment reminded me of a resource that I use all the time, despite its annoying habit of sorting all the “The…” features under “T”:
http://www.comicsrss.com/
As sexist as BB’s cartoons are, I still enjoy the imagination and creativity therein. And BB was, originally, a dog herself.
The link jumped right to the 1-minute mark, so I wasn’t expecting the hydrant/sign scene to come up that fast, and had to scroll back to the beginning. The dog never got near the hydrant; the yank on the leash was so quick that it didn’t seem brutal at all, it was more like “just get this character out of the way”.
P.S. @ Andréa (Re: “sexism”) – I was rather amused by the line “Passed by the National Board of Review” in the opening credits, juxtaposed with Betty lifting her skirt to wipe her eyes at the 6-minute mark. No matter whether it’s a monochrome cartoon from 1932, or a Star Trek reboot movie 81 years later, the strategy is the same: showing cute girls in underwear sells tickets.
“. . . showing cute girls in underwear sells tickets.”
Which is why she was changed from a dog to a girl/woman.
@ Andréa – Well, that was simply the obvious solution, since dogs only very rarely wear lingerie.
Au contraire . . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68rz2p6MwUM
1932 was pre-Code, and arguably Betty Boop was a specific target of the Hays Code.
@ Andréa – Thanks for the link. That recording was an order of magnitude better than the two or three other Betty Boop cartoons that I watched yesterday. I gad considered looking up her “first” appearance, but by that time I had gotten frustrated by the miserable quality. However, there really isn’t anything “canine” about her character, except for the small floppy ears and the occasional face deformation, she’s virtually identical to her later incarnations.
P.S. The one (and only) B.B. short that I really enjoyed watching was “Minnie the Moocher”, in which Cab Calloway provided the music, and he even appears in the introduction. This cast a whole new light on his appearance in “The Blues Brothers”, in which he gives a fabulous rendition of the same song.
The first Betty Boop cartoon is apparently “Dizzy Dishes”.
What a coincidence . . . that’s the one I posted.
BB in Minnie the Moocher (bw) –
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=betty+boop+minnie+the+moocher+full+episode
(colorized) –
You may (or may not) be wond’rin’ why I know about BB . . . BobMyFormerBoss is a BB fan, as well as comics and cartoons, so since 1975 when we began working together (until 2005), we got to know a lot about each other’s interests. I used to buy BB ornaments, when they were available, for Howliday gifts. Haven’t seen any in years, but then, I haven’t actually shopped in years.
@ Andréa – Your Dizzy Dishes may be the same cartoon, but the two links are different. Yours did not “embed” because the URL wasn’t alone on a separate line. My praise for your link was not because I thought the cartoon itself was that good, but for the restoration and digitalization quality, which were both superb. Brian’s doesn’t have an advertising frame at the beginning, but it seems to have more compression artefacts.
I realized as soon as I’d hit SEND that the link wasn’t all on one line. Blame it on Ian (which folks will do; it was MONTHS before anything that went wrong or wasn’t paid was blamed on H. Irma).
The “one line” matter seems here a red herring to me – the reason the b/w isn’t displaying here is that the URL is a search, with a question mark and equals sign. And it isn’t a link to ONE video, but to a search results page on YT. (Also, looking at the source text, it does seem to be on one line, but displays as broken because the WP display is breaking it that way.)
The best handy trick for YouTube is to eschew copying your browser location bar and instead use their Share button (and choose Copy). Then you will get one of their abbreviated/encoded URLS, which WP will be quite satisfied with.
Here it is for the first result
@ Mitch – My comment about “not embedding” referred to Andréa’s link to Dizzy Dishes (yesterday @ 3:34 pm), and not the monochrome “Moocher” (today @ 7:38 am).
Good to know – thanks!
Sorry for my confusion.
I hope my hint about using YouTube’s Share button to copy an abbreviated URL will still prove helpful.
Around here “BB” is a little confusing. It could refer to Betty Boop, or it could refer to the founder of this site.
Betty Boop made several cartoons featuring jazz bands including Don Redman, Louis Armstrong, and three with Cab Calloway. “The Old Man Of The Mountain” is about a very elderly hermit with wild hair and a long long beard who is apparently responsible for quite a few babies with long long beards born to the local females. When he traps Betty in his cave, she cries out “What are you going to DO?” He responds, “I’m gonna do the best I can.” There was a tribute to that little exchange (and Cab Calloway’s singing style) in the movie “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
Again, “Passed by the National Board of Review” which was apparently the anti-Gandalf to all the movies, “YOU SHALL PASS!”
10/22/22:
