And another Argyle Sweater, this one from Targuman.
If you enjoyed that one, you may already know about the “Peccavi” incident.
The movie on which this joke is based was released in 1977: 47 years ago. Ordinarily, that would qualify for a Geezer tag.
Comics I Don't Understand 
I’ll go with the vintage “Tiger” at the top as the most profound analysis seen recently in a cartoon!
Last Wednesday the Daily Cartoonist reported seeing three “platypus” comics within a single week, including the “Rubes” shown above, and an extremely similar seven year old rerun by “Half Full”, but the best one was this strip by “First Dog on the Moon”
P.S. Speaking of being agitated:
P.P.S. I took a deep breath, and I counted slowly to ten, but I’m sorry, that Argyle Sweater is neither funny nor punny, it’s just sick. I was not at all surprised to discover that Scott Hilburn lives in Texas, the one state that has executed more people than the next top six states combined.
I agree that the “Tiger” is word-clever!
I don’t see much reason for outrage at the 2004 Scott Hilburn. We can share the value of opposition to capital punishment, without needing to think an execution scene just cannot be the setting for a comic. And this is mostly about the old old trope of “waiting for a phone call from the Governor with the last-minute reprieve” slightly re-imagined .
The triangles in the confessional is pretty good, though I have my doubts about whether the “righteous triangle” add-on does anything useful — yes it has the geometric term “right triangle” embedded in it, but not doing any humor work, it seems to me. (My friend says that the basic trig functions like sine etc are more easily defined or calculated when you have a right triangle, but I don’t see how that helps the cartoon.)
What right triangle? I saw soul ease.
@ooten, right, there is no right triangle pictured. But surely having the phrase “righteous triangle” there in the caption is meant to have us think of “right triangle”?
@ deety (4) – Although I am indeed opposed to the death penalty, I would not necessarily reject every execution comic merely on ethical grounds. The primary detail that made me cringe about this one was the wide-eyed “nerd” smile on the face of the man in the hot seat.
P.S. I assume your “2004” was just a typo; the copyright line says 2024.
@Kilby, thanks! It was a slip of the eyes rather than fingers; but I suppose it does matter a little as I may have been granting the cartoon some extra leeway for being 20 years old. Also, yes that is a peculiar mouth, but since he has a speech balloon he probably also had to have his mouth open one way or another, and his words place him as anticipating good news so he has reason (tho misplaced) to be sort of happy?
I like it when kids in cartoons call out language that doesn’t make sense, like “behave yourself.”
There’s a sign on a street in a nearby town: “Do not park on both sides of street.” My car isn’t even capable of parking on both sides of the street!
Mark in Boston –
I understand parking on only one side of the street being specified - but no parking on both sides of the street could end up with a serpentine trip down the street if cars are parked alternating on each side of the street as in
Car A
Car B
Car C
Car D
With the street running between the 2 sets of cars parked. The sign should stipulate on which side of the street everyone should be parking.
@ Meryl (10) – I think the intended meaning of the sign was “Do not park on either side of the street” (in other words, no parking anywhere); the town was simply too cheap to pay for a second sign for the other side. Asking drivers to avoid parking across from an opposing car (and tacitly inviting your zigzag model) would be impossible to enforce.
@Kilby: Yes, they meant “either”, not “both”. No parking on this street at all.
And Tiger is still thinking that way!
The Tiger joke makes me think of a joke an elderly lady once told me. The joke dates back to the time of America’s entry into World War One.
An elderly lady saw a young farmer milking a cow. The farmer looked to be about 20 and in excellent physical condition, exactly the sort of young man Uncle Sam was looking for, for the war effort.
She went up to him and said, “Young man, why aren’t you at the front?”
The farmer said, “‘Cause there ain’t no milk there.”
Kilby - Thank you! I had this image of a car driving through a maze of alternating cars on each side of the road.
(I know I can be rather thickheaded at times and miss the obvious.)