Each year, Caufield dresses up as some character from literature, as padraig reminded us. Guessing the book doesn’t seem too hard, if you are a reader of a certain genre, but which character do you think he’ll be? The correct answer will be in the comic section soon!
Comics I Don't Understand 
My guess would be Zaphod: balancing out those dressed as the Headless Horseman.
Zaphod does seem most likely. But perhaps Alfred E. Neuman, with his slogan “What, me worry?”
Though then MAD magazine would have to be counted as “great literature”?
This may be a minority opinion, but I would definitely count MAD Magazine as “great literature” long before I would be willing to include the Hitchhiker’s Guide in that category.
Kilby, you speak BLASPHEMY!! May you be wrapped up in a Fold-in and subjected to the Total Perspective Vortex!
The Guide says “Don’t Panic” for a reason.
Certainly has Zaphod’s attitude. All you really need for the costume is a second head and a third arm.
I thought Kilby was just going to elevate Mad, not denigrate Saint Adams, so I will just do the polite thing and ignore his blasphemy…
Back when the pandemic was raging, but after things calmed down enough that my gym/pool reopened, but before I felt safe enough to use the locker rooms with the brainless masses sitting in there spouting off opinions while not wearing masks (it isn’t the opinions I cared one way or the other about, it was the spewing spittle by talking endlessly in a damp, enclosed space that I wouldn’t abide), I thought I wouldn’t be able to use the pool, much as I wanted to. When I mentioned my dilemma to a friend, he suggested I should just do my best Arthur Dent, and show up at the gym in bath robe and with a towel, and short-circuit the need for the locker room. Brilliant! I got much needed pandemic-time exercise and change of scenery and I got to cos-play one of my favorite books. (This same friend a couple of years later invited me to an event at the Salmagundi club where Simon Jones was singing bawdy 19th century ditties, so I got to hang out and have dinner with the real Arthur Dent!)
Zaphod seems like the obvious choice since most of the major characters don’t really have distinguishing features. That said, I predict he’ll show up as a sperm whale with a potted plant.
I think he’s more likely Ford. He doesn’t wear a bathrobe in the Halloween strip, and with Zaphod there’s the problem of the extra head and arm.
I’m rather more in agreement with Kilby than everyone else seems to be. Part of the problem is that Adams has a very small body of work, and since all that ever seems to be repeated is the first H2G2 book, the jokes have grown extremely stale. Mostly Harmless, Adams’ last book, is also not very good.
Of the great British comic fantasists of the late 20th century, DNA is a weak third. Pratchett, of course, is miles ahead of the competition (GNU Terry Pratchett). Tom Holt is a distant second. Distant, in part, due to the massive drop off in quality of his work in the early 00s. He’s picked up again, though not quite to the level of Who’s Afraid of Beowulf of Going Dutch.
Over a decade ago, I noticed H2G2 alongside Dickens and Shakespeare and stuff in the pile of books at the library of classics for assigned reading over summer break for incoming high school students. So… at least in one school system, it literally is a classic.
For reference — and it’s not a full spoiler! — here is the 31 October Tuesday strip:
So I haven’t read any Holt (guess I should!), but I have read Pratchett — over the years I keep trying Pratchett. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, but he never “takes” — I am always amazed at the amount of creative, brilliant ideas, but somehow, it seems all spark and dazzle, but without any there there. They do not connect with me on any deep level. I admire his clever ideas, and feel like maybe a good author could run with some of these pitches.
I have a similar feeling to certain virtuoso movie makers like Alejandro G. Iñárritu (Birdman), where it feels more like he’s saying “see! Look how clever I am!” rather that just making a good movie. The need to be shown to be addressing Deep and Profound subjects, and showing how clever they are regarding them, rather than just real subjects, distracts and ultimately alienates.
Adams was at his best taking trivial problems and really running with them, building grand and vast edifices on people who always forget their towels on holiday or the proliferation of the same kind of shoe store over all else in certain shopping districts; for the American edition of Life, the Universe, and Everything he came up with an additional page and a half of text, filled with new ideas, just because the American editors were too prudish to accept the throwaway joke, The Academy Award for the Most Gratuitous Use of the Word ‘Fuck’.
And as for Adams, my actual favorite of all his books was Last Chance to See, where his clever writing style was wedded to his passion for real world issues. I don’t know if the book has managed to age well, being a piece from a very specific time period; I’ll have to reread it one of these days and see.
@DemetriosX: Adams had the disadvantage of dying young (49). But having happily read all the Discworld novels (I think; there are a lot), I have to agree with you that Pratchett is the best. I’d also put Neil Gaiman on that list.
Oddly, I’ve not read Tom Holt, which gives me a good idea of what I’ll get out of the library today.
So back to Frazz, Caulfield is carrying a towel but no bathrobe. Hmm. Meanwhile is Frazz supposed to be Wallace the Brave? And what is the meaning of “KIPTUM”?
Padraig, Thanks for clearly that up, I was trying to figure out what Frazz was! (I read Wallace, but didn’t make the connection.) Kelvin Kiptum is a long-distance runner from Kenya.
Maybe he’s dressed as Roosta. Roosta is a cool frood who always knows where his towel is.
Today’s Frazz reveals that the answer is indeed Arthur Dent:
… but the part I like best is the subtle praise of Will Henry in the final panel.
Ford Prefect followed the “Don’t Panic” rule. Arthur Dent not so much.
Ford: Imagine you have a sort of large ebony bath …
Arthur: Where are you going to get it? Harrod’s was destroyed by the Vogons!
Ford: It doesn’t matter.
Arthur: You keep saying that!
I have to agree that Pratchett (as well as Adams) are leagues ahead of the others, but no love for Christopher Moore? And LarK, well, what can I say? Sir Terry’s entire work is a penetrating commentary of just about every aspect of humanity. The fact that it is wrapped in satire and bad puns is just a bonus.
but no love for Christopher Moore?
I was completely unfamiliar with the author and his work.
@ larK (13) – I did enjoy “Last Chance to See” very much, even though the edition that I read was in German (“Die Letzten ihrer Art”). It’s actually the only book by Adams that I ever finished. I started H2G2 two or three times, but never even got to the second chapter, I just didn’t have the patience (nor appreciation) for the random (and artificial) off-the-wall humor. I much preferred the way he was able to decant and describe hilarious scenes from real-world situations in “Last Chance to See”.
@guero: I have found that often an author I don’t get or even think I don’t like, once I sit down and read a whole bunch of his oeuvre, I discover something like an emergent quality, I suddenly see what this author’s been working on, something that wasn’t apparent in just short dips into his work. This happened when I read one of those 40 year collections of Doonesbury, I came away with a completely different appreciation of the strip, one I didn’t get from reading occasional dailies and not liking the snarky characters. John Allison can be like that, when he really gets going, there’s much, much more happening in the big story arc than there is in any individual strip. Had I stopped reading John Scalzi at Old Man’s war, I would never have experienced the great delight in the sequel, where he took every criticism I had about the first book, and turned it on its head and danced with it — right out of the gate!
So maybe I just need to overcome some kind of Pratchett activation energy, and read past a certain point that I have not yet been able to achieve, and maybe I’ll see the bigger picture…
(I read Christopher Moore, too, and it didn’t have me wanting to come back for (ahem) Moore… Kind of like Pratchett to my mind, clever enough, but no there there…)
If he were Arthur Dent, he’d be wearing only a bathrobe. Arthur ran out of the house in his bathrobe when the contractors started knocking it down, and didn’t get a chance to go back until he left the planet with Ford, and he never had a chance to get any other clothes.