Back in May, Mark H. wrote that “This [Shoe] caught me completely off guard“.
Perhaps it will do so again in August?
Wait a minute! Doesn’t the “you had me at” trope use something the other party said *early* in their dialogue turn?
Here’s the same comic in single-panel format. These get published under the name “Reply All Lite” and have become re-arrangements (sometimes radical) of the same day’s horizontal-format and usually multi-panel strip. The single-panel “Lite” series used to be somewhat more separate, with a less verbatim relationship to the strip version. The new approach strikes me as sensible. Note that it pretty much coincides with her move to distribution via Counterpoint.
Nope, I’m not sure I would have recognized the title characters if they weren’t named.
And it’s remarkable that they were able to hire domestic services from Amazon even way back then!
Comics I Don't Understand 
Don’t forget to add Captain Phillips to the list for the Tom Hanks film festival.
And actually I think The Terminal qualifies.
Yeah, I liked that comic when it was released and thought of The Terminal but not of Captain Phillips! Good catch.
Joe vs the volcano is another Tom Hanks travel disaster.
I had never heard of “Captain Phillips” before, but it seems unlikely that the author(s) could have completely overlooked “Terminal”. They might have left the latter film out because Hanks played a solo passenger in it, but it’s more likely that they just picked their three top favorites for space reasons.
While sometimes great minds think alike, “Never Travel with Tom Hanks” is the name of a Binge Box film collection with exactly those movies plus Captain Phillips. I’m a little suspicious.
@ Andrew (6) – That Binge Box has been around for at least four years, but I was not able to find it offered for sale anywhere, it appears to be exclusively a library distribution model:
P.S. Re: the title of the “Hi & Lois” strip: there is a way to get CK strips without the annoying black background. Simply click on the line “Buy a print of this comic” directly underneath the strip. On the page that opens, you can right-click on the image to save it or open it into a new tab.
Okay, I don’t get the beach one.
I can see what’s happening. There’s red chairs on one side, and blue on the other. In between is a woman with a red and blue bikini.
What’s the joke? Why is it funny? Why are there two colours?
I gather you’re not American, Pete? Red for Republicans, blue for Democrats, and never the twain shall meet (except for the woman in the bikini). Or any other division, but those two colors are pretty tied to the political divide in the US these days.
@ Pete (9) – Before I read JJ’s comment @10, all I saw was the “compromise” theme. The colors may indeed have been intended to represent American party affiliations (there’s something about the style of the artwork that says “New Yorker” to me), but I liked it better without that aspect.
@jjmcgaffey (10) :
a) You are correct, I’m British.
b) Red and Blue is used for political parties in many countries, including mine.
c) The artist is based in Tel Aviv, so it probably isn’t a reference to American politics. I doubt it’s political at all. He doesn’t seem to do politics.
and
d) I still don’t see the funny.
in Canada, red.is the Liberals and blue is the Conservatives, which is confusing to Americans!
That rent-a-beach-chair thing is so European — no way is that a beach in the US. As such, I don’t see the colors carrying a deeper political message — it’s just a whimsical take on that strict European beach culture thing, not radical, just slightly mixing the strict order.
(I don’t like renting a beach chair, but a few years ago the friend (American) I was with wanted to, so we did, but he couldn’t get the hang of it: even though the beach was empty, we had to use the chairs they rented us in the row where they were, they didn’t tolerate us moving up, even though, as I said, the beach was empty. I would’ve been fine boot-legging it on a towel off to the side…)
Red and Blue were originally arbitrary choices. TV reporting on an election just happened to pick Red for the states that went Republican and blue for the states that went Democrat. That particular election took several days to be decided so we were seeing Red States and Blue States for several days.
About 40 years before that, “Red State” would have meant one that had somehow gone Communist.
Pete, I think you are correct in that the appeal of the Yuval is more “charming” than “funny”.
Though it’s funny in the sense of odd, that the people would sort themselves out so thoroughly, and all have swimware in the two exact colors. And that the one nonconformist would still be that close to fitting in.
@ Phil (13) – That blue/red color scheme is also used in the UK (for Tory/Labor), and it used to be that way in the U.S., too (when I was a kid, the Democrats were definitely red, not blue). The American color system was somewhat random (based on the whims of various networks and newspapers), and didn’t become fixed until the 2000 election. The Smithsonian Magazine has a good article describing the issues involved.
P.S. In Germany, there is a whole rainbow of party colors. Red has always been the traditional color for the liberal (SPD) party, but the standard color for the conservative (CDU) party is black. The Greens are green, of course, and the Libertarians (FDP) commissioned some focus groups before selecting yellow. The wingnuts in the new radical rightist (AfD) party have been given blue (matching their official logo), but brown would have been more appropriate.
I agree about how “You had me at …”normally works. — Not like this!
Actually, I was happy to see the “Hi And Lois” title, plus original date, presented in that very forward way!