Sent in by Mark H.
(Warning: Arlo Award material)
Well, it’s a double-entendre, so it qualifies, but not at all subtle. The next strip shows LuAnn has chosen a different title, which helps a little.
Earlier, LuAnn did tell Tara that Brad is married, but we didn’t see her disavowing any idea of flirting. Where is this leading? Do we trust Brad?
Comics I Don't Understand 
I don’t like soap opera strips, and I really don’t like it when a comic strip turns into a soap opera strip.
I’d hardly consider Luann a soap opera. It still ends every day with a punchline.
What I don’t understand is the commentary here. First, of course Luann chose a different title, because Tara’s story idea was her own, and Luann isn’t writing a romance novel.
Second, trust Brad to do what? Tara’s barely spoken to Brad; she’s just looked at him from afar. There’s nothing to trust Brad about.
I’m still half expecting Tara to let Brad know of her interest in his equipment. Then we’ll have to judge him on his decent resistance.
Yes, it still ends every day with a punch line. But it shares some features of soaps, with a kind of continuity for characters with history, and some emphasis on potentially serious/complex human interactions. The characters do age, though certainly not in real time. (Also, they get drawn better, later on 🙂 … )
Brad is the figment of some cartoonist’s imagination. There is no judging him. There is trying to guess if the cartoonist thinks Brad being faithful is a better story than him being tempted.
To my eyes, there’s no comparison between Toni and Tara, at least in looks. Of course, there may be other factors…
Tara’s not bad – she’s just drawn that way.
Evans has a long history of throwing squick into Luann in a very “Tales of Ribaldry” kind of way. I’ve never really cared for it, but I can’t deny it is part of what makes Luann Luann.
I quit reading Luann when I stopped reading (all of) the comics in whatever newspaper I was subscribing to (which ended permanently when I moved to Germany: with extremely rare exceptions, German papers print virtually zero comics). Back then it was not a bad strip: never an absolute favorite, but normally dependable for a decent gag.
Right now I would not be able to assign a name to either of the two “not Luann” females shown above, but I have seen enough strips here at CIDU to have formed the opinion that the blonde is shallow and manipulative. I’ve never seen the pink-haired one before, but both the grin and the vocabulary in the second panel of the first strip make her seem rapaciously evil. I think Brad would be better off avoiding both of them, but I wouldn’t spend even a minute to find out what Evans inflicts upon him.
The reddish-haired one is Tara, a relative newcomer to the strip. I don’t think she is meant to be a bad influence, but definitely more adventurous and edgy than Luann. The blonde is Tiffany, who goes way way back to Luann’s school days. She was the shallow glamorous one for a long time, but has in recent years been learning some life lessons and maybe becoming a better person.
P.S. The Toni who Mark H mentions in his comment is not pictured in these two strips. She is Brad’s colleague as a firefighter (!) and they are an established couple – I don’t recall whether engaged or fully married. Toni’s niece Shannon is badly parented, so spends quite a lot of time with Toni and Brad as sort of their practice child.
Just wondering if the K2 on the (bread bag? sack of potatoes?) is some kind of a nod to Bizarro.
@Mitch4: Toni and Brad have been married for a while — their wedding was shown in 2016.
@Swimming Man: “K2” is the logo of the cafe where they are sitting, Kafe Kablooie.
By the way, this comic strip and its main character are spelled “Luann” with a lower-case “a,” not “LuAnn.”
Thanks, Joshua.
GoComics is back up, but no comics there past November 18, when they went down.
Thanks Joshua. I haven’t been reading Luann regularly since she and Brad were awkward adolescents. I think I liked it better back then, it seemed to resonate more.
SMB, they have started reprinting the very early ones (from well before I was reading them) under the name “Luann Againn”.
https://www.gocomics.com/luann-againn
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.
I was not expecting GoComcs to say even one word about why the site went down or how they were able to restore service, and was therefore not disappointed.
When I checked it out, all strips were up and I was getting in the first comment on almost every subscribed strip. I was out of control! Then I went to Aldi and got some stuff. Disappointingly, they are still out of the Garden Vegetable crackers I like.
“Then I went to Aldi and got some stuff. Disappointingly, they are still out of the Garden Vegetable crackers I like.” There should be some sort of makable joke here about that being solved on the Aldi site if you first clear your cookies. Or clear your crackers. Or something. (No, I guess I was wrong, no workable joke here.)
Or I am crackers. Which is not the same as being a cracker.
“It’s crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide.”
And I am amused at all three not-Luann females being Ts – I’d never noticed that. It’s not universal, there are plenty of other names in the strip, but still.