Why not a day to celebrate strangers?
Where would we be without strangers? Strangers grow our food. Strangers in factories make stuff we need. Strangers make important decisions for us, like whether we get into our first-choice college, or whether we get audited by the IRS.
Let’s face it. In the aggregate, strangers are more important to us than friends.
But speaking of obscure non-holidays:
Did we post this before?
Adding today’s Arlo and Janis as a late entry:
Still there is some unclarity to the customer’s identity, and why they would order this outfit.
Here are two more instances of creative translation in “Macanudo”.
The Spanish dialog means: “I wish the leaves had eyes.” – “Ha ha ha! The things you say!“
In both cases the gag is a simple (auditory) pun: in English twofold on “leave(s)” (noun/verb); in Spanish threefold on “ojalá“=”wish”, “hojas“=”leaves”, and “ojos“=”eyes” (one verb and two nouns; all three words sound very similar).
In this second case the difference between the two language versions is more extreme:
In Spanish: “Do you like it when I call you a lunatic?” – “Yup.“
Perhaps the translator did not trust English-speaking readers to recognize the “lunar” etymology of “lunatic”, or maybe she simply loved the song lyrics more.
P.S. Several months ago I looked up the meaning of the name “macanudo“, discovering that it meant “a person or thing considered admirable or excellent because of its positive qualities“. Besides being an eminently appropriate name for the comic strip, this also explains why it is the name of a cigar brand. I was in Copenhagen (on vacation) just a few days before I created this post, and just happened to run into this shop:
So this is a CIDU-Oy.
And BillR, calling it “Almost a CIDU”, says “This took longer than it should’ve. But it came to me out of nowhere an hour after I saw it while I was driving to the grocery store.”
Well, maybe this?
The Democratic convention starts today, in Chicago. CIDU doesn’t deal with current politics, but 1968 is a long time ago, so let’s revisit some of the cartoons done around the time of that raucous Chicago convention.
A poster, not a cartoon:
This is close to a CIDU, as there doesn’t seem to be a single best / obvious answer to the question.
Tim Harrod sends this in: “Whether you laugh or not, Jim Davis is historically reliable at coming up with a punchline. But here, the joke is apparently that the eggs are really spicy… and a lot of people ordered them. It could have been a scheme to sell a lot of milk, but then Irma should have more of a sly grin in the last panel.”
The gag seems straightforward, but Tim’s right: she should have a sly, knowing grin on her face.
On Monday, will we see Irma’s lasagna?
Probably more of an Awww than strictly an LOL.
Jack Applin submitted this B.C. strip as a CIDU, noting that “Grog hit the ball to … Saturn? Let’s ignore the [80 minute] light speed delay [one way!]. What is that film around the planet and rings? Atmosphere? But Saturn is a GAS GIANT — all that we see is atmosphere inside the rings!“
The obvious astronomical destination would have been a black hole, but that would have been impossible to convey to readers, and the closest known black hole is 1500 light years away.
My guess is that Mason chose Saturn because it is the only planet that could possibly be recognized in comic strip resolution. Most papers that still print daily comics do so in monochrome, which could seriously deteriorate the carefully shaded images in the first three panels.
P.S. Just a week later, a very similar gag appeared in The Wizard of Id:
Both strips have a long history of using golf gags, but a little more temporal separation between these two might have been advisable.
Thanks to Mark H. for sending this along, and noting it as a CIDU and possible Arlo.
“Metaphorical of what, exactly?”
Boise Ed attempted to submit a Tundra comic, using a link from The Seattle Times. Reading between the lines of his comment (see below), the comic he meant was probably all or part of this one:
Here’s what Boise Ed wrote: He says “a while ago,” but I think the walrus joke appeared just a couple of days earlier. There doesn’t seem to be an accessible archive where I can check on that…. Is there any other source to see the Tundra strip?
The answer is (probably) “No, there isn’t.” The problem is that both The Seattle Times and the official Tundra website provide only the strip for the current day. Past Tundra archives are only available on a pay-to-view basis (to Patreon members). This means that any Tundra link sent to CIDU has an expiration limit of (at most) 24 hours, which renders those links useless for all practical purposes. Therefore, if you want to submit a Tundra comic, don’t depend on the link: send a screenshot, or attach a graphic file.
P.S. The same problem exists for all Arcamax comics. The Arcamax links are not quite so ephemeral, but they do expire after just a couple of weeks, so it’s not a good idea to use them for submitting CIDUs, nor for embedding any images in comments.
Comics I Don't Understand 