Almost a pun failure, as it is arguable the joke of her equivocation is already well-cemented in panel 3 and then the clues in panel 4 are just a waste. But probably it is also arguable that many a reader would miss the gag in panel 3 and there is a definite need for panel 4 …
And this dampens my hope of someday understanding what “fugue state” is or is not related to.
Yes, it’s the same David Mamet better known as a playwright.
Comics I Don't Understand 
In the genes one, I could see the fourth panel with him just saying “Excellent! Wait…”
On the Rudy Park one, I agree with the editors’ remark and Mark’s comment, that the last panel could be less direct.
“fugue state”?
??
See the entry “fugue” at vocabulary.com for both the psychiatric meaning and musical meaning. (But also check out Wikipedia for notes that my phrasing of “fugue state” is now an outdated form.)
On the etymology they say
Fugue traces back to the Latin word <em>fuga</em>, meaning “flight.” If you’re in a fugue state, it's like you're fleeing from your own identity. ... Musicians might know that <em>fugue </em>is also the name of a musical form in which a theme is introduced and then repeated in higher or lower notes, as if the theme is flying around the scale.What’s distinctly unhelpful here is their equivocation between different kinds of flight — one related to flee and one to fly. (And of course, that’s the basis of the pun in the comic.)
Synchronicity! Between when I posted the question and my reading your response, I read the wonderful description of Batrók’s second movement (Fuga (Risouto, non troppo vivo)) of his Sonata for Solo Violin from the final climactic performance scene from Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki.
@ larK – “…Batrók’s second movement…”
That must be the one in which Robin dances the Watusi.
Wow, that great Star Trek-themed Rubes is dated 2016; no wonder I didn’t recognize it.
Where did that delightful CSNJ picture come from? I’d like to look are more of them.
make that “like to look at”
Make that “to look at“.
I’m with Boise Ed (hi, Ed!) I’d like to follow that comic, too.
Batrók’s
Yeah, but I got the diacritic! ;-P
Ah well, unfortunately that was the one from “Facebook user [or Interest Page?] ‘The Hippies were Right'” https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100072173035931
Yeah, but I got the diacritic! ;-P
I knew a guy named Greg Hajek, who gave assurances that his surname was equivalent to the common noun haček, the term for the diacritic which appears in it. (Though Unicode is calling it “Latin Small Letter C with caron.”)
And even there at “The Hippies were Right,” it was “One from our archives,” I see.
I see that “caron” is defined as synonymous with “háček” and half a dozen other words for that mark. Before looking it up, I would have defined it as “Leslie’s surname.”
Oh, and sorry about the duplicate comment. I waited a few minutes, gave up on it and then repeated it, and only later did both appear.
Captain Kirk shoulda just said “Two to beam up”.
@ Boise Ed – It would be very interesting to know just where that copy of the “Rubes” image came from. It’s perfectly normal for the (handwritten) date to be removed for re-publishing, and it’s not that unusual that the original (2016) version has slightly different colors, but it seems very odd that the syndication text lines have been edited and moved to different locations:
P.S. @ Grawlix – Everything’s fine, just as long as he doesn’t say “Beam me up, Scotty!“.
} Almost a pun failure, as it is arguable the joke of her equivocation
} is already well-cemented in panel 3 and then the clues in panel 4
} are just a waste. But probably it is also arguable that many a reader
} would miss the gag in panel 3 and there is a definite need for panel 4 …
Sorry – I would argue that anybody who misses the gag in panel 3 deserves to be mystified, and that all those who are not hard-of-thinking do not deserve to be smacked around the head by the panel 4 piece of 4×2. :-(
Aboard:
For the record, “fug-” in Latin is “flee”; flying around the room is “vol-“.
Thanks, Dave!
But what are we to make of the musical fugue? What is the controlling metaphor there?
In a musical fugue, the voices enter at different times and flee off in different directions.
“A fugue is a musical composition in which the voices enter one by one and the audience leaves one by one.”
MiB, I guess you (or whomever you are quoting) are not fond of fugues. You’ll never see much of Guys and Dolls, then; the first number in it is the delightful “Fugue for Tinhorn.”
@Boise Ed: “I got the horse right here, his name is Paul Revere.” I do like fugues, and not too long ago I performed Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Major BWV 532 on a pipe organ.