

Here are two from dollarbill (and a third one we happened upon) with the 4th-wall or meta- theme of characters knowing they’re living in a cartoon. He mentions he has been “wading through J. C Duffy‘s humongous almost daily blog posting of comic/photos/short musings beside them sometimes,” which go back years. “Fusco Brothers is just one of his outputs. The number of fly-in-the-soup variations is staggering.” CIDU has sometimes featured Duffy’s Lug Nuts, somehow strikingly different in graphics appearance yet very recognizably his work.



Does this make you feel like Dark Side of the Horse is by now influencing successor generations?


Although most cats manage without mechanical mousetraps.
The shirt in Herman will make receiving vaccination convenient.
I think Thatababy and DSotH are both following B.C.’s lead, “Dip in Road” was published in 1974:
“Does this make you feel like Dark Side of the Horse is by now influencing successor generations?”
My thought exactly when I saw this the other morning.
The “camel storage” comic reminded me of “Solving the Traffic Problem:
The cat in Cornered is smaller than the mouse. Required by the conventions of the cartoon, maybe, but also makes my brain go, “Nope.”
Again with the Bactrian camels!
Before Thatababy and DSotH, in the 1960’s there was The Strange World of Mr. Mum, by Irving Phillips.
In one cartoon, which I could show if I were willing to pay a license fee, Mr. Mum is walking down a staircase and sees a sign saying “Watch your step!” The next step in front of him is a 12-foot drop from the step he is on.
In another one, Mr. Mum is driving, following another car on a winding road. An arrow sign points left. The car in front follows the road to the left and so does Mr. Mum. The next arrow sign points right. The car in front follows the road to the right and so does Mr. Mum. The next arrow sign points straight up. The car in front rises straight up into the air.
More breaking the fourth wall . . . this is Sunshine State, which I’ve only just begun to peruse; it’s only weekly . . .

@ Andréa – Here’s one of my favorite “4th wall” comments, near the end of Bloom County‘s original run:
Thanks for the chuckle. As diligent as I’d been reading BLOOM COUNTY, I don’t remember this ending.
OVERBOARD does the ‘talking to the artist/cartoonist’ trope quite often.
@ Andréa – The entire closure arc is well worth reading (see the link in my previous comment), especially for the digs at strips to which the various characters are moving. (Note: Steve Dallas’s investigation of a super hero comic book happened before the date to which I linked).
Aaaaand today . . .

. . . also . . .
https://comicskingdom.com/Show-Me-The-Funny-Pets/2023-02-21
The “Bob Mankoff Presents Show Me The Funny (Animal Edition)” feature at CK picks a species to center for several days in a row. I haven’t checked how long a string they use or if it is always the same length. But anyway, the current one is “camel fortnight” or something like that.
But here is an unexpected camel comic! (Andertoons)
Mitch4: Of course, the Army did experiement with camels in the southwest in the mid-nineteenth century, so maybe this cowboy (?) just bought a second-hand one from a military used camel lot?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Camel_Corps
In PBS, Pastis has been a character in the strip. Sometimes as the author, with Rat coming to perform mayhem after one of the Sunday Punday strips. He also was just a regular character, who in various appearances had been dumped by his wife. People thought that was true, but it was made up.
There was a comedic movie about the Camel Corps called “Hawmps!”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawmps!
@ Brian – According to this CNN article, that strip in April 2014 led to the sequence in June for which Watterson did part of the PBS artwork:
Another breaks the fourth wall . . .
https://www.gocomics.com/mythtickle/2023/02/22
(I don’t know if many of you follow MythTickle; it first got my attention due to the imitation of Vaughn Bodé’s Cheech Wizard art work.)
Wouldn’t those camels be stored back-to-backtrian?
If you’re a supplier of camel milk but the camels always make a terrible fuss at being milked, is your operation a drama dairy?
Heh heh, a +1 for drama dairy!
Whoa! Also the back-to-bactrian!