This “Barney & Clyde” strip was submitted by Usual John:
I think the gag is that the strip itself does not have (and does not need) a gag, but I’m sure there are other possible explanations.
I went hunting to see if there were any other worthwhile April Fools’ strips, but was sorely disappointed. Almost all of the “standard” setups simply showed one character playing a typically lame practical joke on someone else. The best strips were those few that elevated the humor with some sort of “meta” component. Here are a few examples:
(I especially liked this “Thatababy” strip because this year, my daughter decided to rearrange the silverware drawer as an April Fools’ joke. Unfortunately, it didn’t work, because we all just assumed that she had forgotten the usual arrangement.)
The last two examples are from the great Comic Strip Switcheroo (1-Apr-1997):
P.S. Feel free to embed your own favorite April Fools’ comics in the comments!
Comics I Don't Understand 
Not a single comment on these? I’m going to adhere to my view that the Barney & Clyde is a CIDU and ask if someone can explain it to me. (I find the explanation by Kilby unconvincing, at least without more.)
I also don’t accept (or don’t fully understand) Kilby’s remarks, which seem to elevate the meta aspects over the story and characters.
I rather still like my earlier view, in pre-publication emails, which was shot down because I called the second character “he” — apparently a girl, named Katy. In any event:
Hmm, interesting! I wouldn't say it's hard to come up with an explanation, but hard to decide which of two likely ones applies. --- Which is probably intentional .His reproof in panel 2 may have been genuinely meant, then when he saw how crestfallen it made her, he in-effect retracted it byretroactively casting it as an Ap F joke. Or it was his intention all along to make it an Ap F prank he was performing to her.
Is it clear what I mean by the reproof in panel 2? This leaves the main girl, Cynthia, crestfallen. So friend Katy removes the hook by pretending it was all along a joke, an April Fool trick. Or not “pretending” so much as “revealing”.
Then yes, I would go more with Mitch’s Copenhagen Interpretation, not depending on some outside observer.
And it is not really challenging or disproving the “rule” there has to be a gag before “April Fool” can be invoked. It illustrates, supports, very much goes along with the principle.
If the point is that this strip is an anti-joke, that does not really seem like the Weingartens. Strips where the joke is impossibly obscure, yes; strips where the joke is that there is no joke, no.
Right, and that’s also what I was saying. The overly “meta” approach is in line with what you are objecting to. But in my reading, there is a joke, and it has nothing to do with the relation of the cartoonist and the audience. It’s about the relation of the two girls within the strip narrative.
Mitch4, something along those lines seems much more likely, but why did Cynthia say “April Fool!!!” in the first place?
Usual John, good question. But I took it that she (atypically for her) just wasn’t thinking ahead, and sprung an “April Fool” just because it seemed like a smart thing to do on the day, not concerned she didn’t have underpinning ready.
My apologies for the partial explanation in the post. Here’s how I would interpret the dialog:
Cynthia calls Katy an “April Fool” (simply as a jovial insult).
Katy objects that the term cannot be used unless it has been preceeded by a prank that justifies it; the long stare in the third panel is equivalent to an unstated “Oh, really?” from Cynthia.
In the last panel, Katy’s “April Fool!” is an admission that she was only joking in the second panel, and that a prank is not needed (just to call someone a fool). But now Cynthia sees that the tables have now been turned, and she has been “fooled”, hence her “Touche!”, which Katy then gratefully acknowledges.
Kilby, really? I have never before heard the opinion that the announcement of “April Fool’s!” amounts to, or even includes, the idea of calling the hearer / victim / target a fool! . More along the line of fooled you!.
Mitch, though I agree with the main point (that the exclamation “April Fool’s!” is not a matter of someone “calling the other an April Fool”), your discussion seems to me to rest on a rather too-fine distinction.
Saying (or performing) “I fooled you!” is mostly just what it is on the surface, “I deceived you!”, and not necessarily either “I revealed you to be a fool [already]” or “I caused you to become a fool, I made you a fool”.
Agree that the paradigm kind of April Fools’ Day prank or joke is to create a scene or some news which is untrue but is convincing to a good portion of the audience or witnesses. When these targets then can be manipulated into indicating that they do accept that falsehood as true, the “April Fool!” announcement is supposed to encapsulate that whole history, to the point of “You were fooled!” That is, “You were misled” more than “You were made a fool” or “You were revealed as a fool”.
@Mitch: never?
*Sigh*… So how does one go about inlining an image now?
Why did they have to change it? This new input box is so annoying, you can’t highlight and copy across multiple paragraphs, and it refuses to work at all in my older Mac…
larK, I did a little editing in place on your comment, to make the image embed. But I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to how you are supposed to do it within the now standard comment submission form. :-(
As deety put it @10, the “rather too fine distinction” that I would make is that saying “April Fool‘s!” is more a reference to the holiday (meaning the trick that was just played), but Cynthia’s reference (like the Peanuts title) is to an “April Fool“, hence the person who has been thus addressed.
P.S. @ larK (12) – The way embedding now “works” is to paste the URL into the comment box. The stupid WordPress mechanism will automatically link that address to the destination, which is not what you want, because it defeats the embedding. So what you have to do is mark the entire URL again (not just a piece of it), click on the “(-)” icon to remove the link, and then submit the comment with the naked (unlinked) URL.
P.P.S. The simpler process wasn’t “broken” before, I do not know why the idiots at WP insisted on “fixing” it.
I haven’t had any problem embedding images. I start a new line, click the + for New Block, then IMAGE, finally Insert from URL. I am on Window PC, so I can’t answer questions about Mac.
@ Brian (15) – OK, that works too (even on my iMac), and it is a lot easier, once you have discovered the method:
P.S. But it does remind me of the way that CIDU Bill used to gripe and curse about the “new” block editor in wordpress, which he felt was making things more complicated for no good reason.
P.P.S. Another reason that I hate the WP block editor is that on mobile devices (iPad & iPhone), it is impossible to mark a complete comment for copy/paste operations. The option “select all” will only mark the current block, not multiple text blocks. Fortunately, desktop Macs are not affected by this bug.
I also have very little trouble embedding an image by link, the “old way” , when I am reading via Word Press Reader mode. Just make a new line and flush-left paste the (well-formed) URL.
In terms of editors/contributors crafting a whole post for the site (that is, not the commenting form!), the Block Editor is hugely more convenient and helpful than what came before!