Thanks to Boise Ed and Dale Eltoft for this puzzling Carpe Diem.
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Is the pilot foaming at the mouth? If so, perhaps the startled-looking passenger is thinking the pilot is a “mad dog,” and certainly not to be trusted to fly a plane.
Everyone here is a dog, so this a dog world, so it’s not unusual that the dog would be flying the plane. But the foaming at the mouth appears to have no real-world analogue, nor does the passenger’s reaction seem to provide any humor.
I think Steve has it, it’s simply the surreality of wondering whether the pilot is stark raving mad. In a corresponding “human” comic the pilot would be wearing a clown suit, complete with red nose and makeup.
P.S. The stereotypical “mad dog” appearance has been used for comic effect in all sorts of cartoons and comics, such as the classic “Feed the Kitty (1952), or this “Calvin & Hobbes (1986)“:
P.P.S. I thought Larson might have done a clown pilot or traffic controller gag, but it turned out to be a launch control officer:
Yeah, I think that may be it. Weird comic.
Might it have been a better gag if it was a lifeguard foaming at the mouth?
I wonder if it has something to do with dogs sticking their heads out of windows in cars, and maybe catching a cloud? I mean, obviously, there are about seventeen dozen problems with that interpretation, like, they are on the ground…
They’re also boarding the aircraft on the wrong side. Or maybe it’s British Airways?
Stann, I don’t really get that idea about a lifeguard.
Mitch, it’s because rabies causes Hydrophobia, which would be an issue for a lifeguard. (though technically, rabies causes a fear of swallowing anything, not really a fear of water, but they call it that.)
Ah, thanks Wendy!
The MD-80 and variants (later-model DC-9s) are sometimes referred to as the “Mad Dog”… but that doesn’t lead anywhere in particular and the plane here isn’t accurately/carefully enough drawn to be any specific model.
This doesn’t make any sense either, but maybe he wants to chase the other airplane, like some dogs chase cars?
As S.M.B. correctly pointed out above, Eriksson’s drawing has them boarding from the “service” side of the plane, not the “passenger” side. The easiest way to correct the composition is simply to reflect the image horizontally, which has the added advantage of placing the mad pilot in the “captain’s” chair, rather than just the copilot’s seat:
P.S. Richard Feynmann told a story about renting a furnished apartment in which there were a bunch of really hideous old paintings. He found them so annoying that he hung them all upside down; apparently the surreality was enough to make him immune to their ugliness. Everything would have been fine, except that the landlady was offended, and made him turn them all around again.
Kilby: my wife has told me about meeting and chatting with Richard Feynman at few times, when she worked for JPL. I’m not surprised that he had such an out-of-the-box solution. I think I would have just put them in a closet.
I never occurred to me commercial aircraft boarded on a particular side.
Grawlix, yes it’s just like mounting on or deplaning from a horse — you have to stick with the standard side they’ve gotten used to, or they get upset and try to throw you off.
@ Grawlix – At the risk of awakening very unpleasant memories, the two “sides” of a passenger aircraft was a significant topic in the immediate aftermath of 9/11; investigators worked very quickly to determine whether the hijackers and/or their weapons had entered from the “passenger” side, or whether they might have been smuggled in from the “service” side.
Been so long since my two round trips on an airplane in 1973 that the door placement did not ring a bell.
One was a round trip to Mexico with a girlfriend (been out of the US also twice to Canada – but that was by car with husband) and one was a round trip to Dallas, Texas to edit my college yearbook as I was EIC.
In that fall I met husband and we started dating – he suffers from motion sickness so when we travel (even to the local Walmart to buy something) he has to drive.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Is the pilot foaming at the mouth? If so, perhaps the startled-looking passenger is thinking the pilot is a “mad dog,” and certainly not to be trusted to fly a plane.
Everyone here is a dog, so this a dog world, so it’s not unusual that the dog would be flying the plane. But the foaming at the mouth appears to have no real-world analogue, nor does the passenger’s reaction seem to provide any humor.
I think Steve has it, it’s simply the surreality of wondering whether the pilot is stark raving mad. In a corresponding “human” comic the pilot would be wearing a clown suit, complete with red nose and makeup.
P.S. The stereotypical “mad dog” appearance has been used for comic effect in all sorts of cartoons and comics, such as the classic “Feed the Kitty (1952), or this “Calvin & Hobbes (1986)“:
P.P.S. I thought Larson might have done a clown pilot or traffic controller gag, but it turned out to be a launch control officer:
Yeah, I think that may be it. Weird comic.
Might it have been a better gag if it was a lifeguard foaming at the mouth?
I wonder if it has something to do with dogs sticking their heads out of windows in cars, and maybe catching a cloud? I mean, obviously, there are about seventeen dozen problems with that interpretation, like, they are on the ground…
They’re also boarding the aircraft on the wrong side. Or maybe it’s British Airways?
Stann, I don’t really get that idea about a lifeguard.
Mitch, it’s because rabies causes Hydrophobia, which would be an issue for a lifeguard. (though technically, rabies causes a fear of swallowing anything, not really a fear of water, but they call it that.)
Ah, thanks Wendy!
The MD-80 and variants (later-model DC-9s) are sometimes referred to as the “Mad Dog”… but that doesn’t lead anywhere in particular and the plane here isn’t accurately/carefully enough drawn to be any specific model.
This doesn’t make any sense either, but maybe he wants to chase the other airplane, like some dogs chase cars?
As S.M.B. correctly pointed out above, Eriksson’s drawing has them boarding from the “service” side of the plane, not the “passenger” side. The easiest way to correct the composition is simply to reflect the image horizontally, which has the added advantage of placing the mad pilot in the “captain’s” chair, rather than just the copilot’s seat:
P.S. Richard Feynmann told a story about renting a furnished apartment in which there were a bunch of really hideous old paintings. He found them so annoying that he hung them all upside down; apparently the surreality was enough to make him immune to their ugliness. Everything would have been fine, except that the landlady was offended, and made him turn them all around again.
Kilby: my wife has told me about meeting and chatting with Richard Feynman at few times, when she worked for JPL. I’m not surprised that he had such an out-of-the-box solution. I think I would have just put them in a closet.
I never occurred to me commercial aircraft boarded on a particular side.
Grawlix, yes it’s just like mounting on or deplaning from a horse — you have to stick with the standard side they’ve gotten used to, or they get upset and try to throw you off.
@ Grawlix – At the risk of awakening very unpleasant memories, the two “sides” of a passenger aircraft was a significant topic in the immediate aftermath of 9/11; investigators worked very quickly to determine whether the hijackers and/or their weapons had entered from the “passenger” side, or whether they might have been smuggled in from the “service” side.
Been so long since my two round trips on an airplane in 1973 that the door placement did not ring a bell.
One was a round trip to Mexico with a girlfriend (been out of the US also twice to Canada – but that was by car with husband) and one was a round trip to Dallas, Texas to edit my college yearbook as I was EIC.
In that fall I met husband and we started dating – he suffers from motion sickness so when we travel (even to the local Walmart to buy something) he has to drive.