Usual John, Unca $crooge, and Dirk the Daring all sent this in, Dirk noting: “Normally this strip is just about sex, repetitive, but easy to understand. But this one I don’t get, what are they laughing at? Am I missing something obvious?”
It’s 9 Chickweed Lane, so it’s almost certainly about sex, but I don’t get it, either. Here’s the previous two days in this story line:
The following day (August 31, 2024) switched characters entirely, and does not help.
Comics I Don't Understand 
They were surprised to learn he doesn’t swim, and also seem unaware of the shallow shelf at that location. So, when they got him to jump in, it was without establishing that he would be safe.
Tho honestly that’s making too much of it, in a attempt to bring some plotting to it. It seems pretty normal to expect someone to volunteer “I can’t swim” when you start urging them to jump in the lake.
Also I should admit to not really being able to recognize most of the characters, or distinguish generations. In the main strip here, are those “the twins” or a mother and daughter?
I don’t understand any of it any more. I do know that those are the twins and that he is the son of another, musical couple who are friends of the parents of the twins. Names escape me…
Alistair is the son of Hugo & Xuilan (aka Chedda)
They’re all rich musical genyusses.
Also, total jerks.
@ Downpuppy (3) – You forgot to mention “permanently horny”.
And he’s engaged to marry the one in the green bikini (I can never remember which name goes with which).
I assume the rest of the sentence interrupted in the third strip here was “…but I don’t know how to swim”. But no, I don’t understand why the whole thing is so funny.
For anyone interested in the origin of the term “milquetoast”, here is a link to a 27-page collection of H.T. Webster’s “The Timid Soul”, featuring Caspar Milquetoast.
I haven’t read Chickweed for a long time, and going back and looking at some of the recent stuff, it really jumps around in time, doesn’t it?
The strip used to be very traditional in story structure and fond of long narratives, but after a fit of pairing off everybody (even Edda’s gay ballet partner married a woman) the artist seemed to lose interest in that. A recent strip had the twins — who reached adolescence with impossible speed — marveling that their mother Edda “used to be” hot … even though Edda and Amos haven’t shown any real signs of age or diminishment in hormonal behavior.
Comics Kingdom also carries “Pibgorn”, which started out as a sexy fairie competing with a sexy succubus for a church organist. Now it offers a new installment once every several weeks, if that, and appears to be a rambling origin story for Pibgorn or a horny creature much like her.
The strip changed when McEldowney had a stroke. Suddenly the 9CW stories stopped and it all went super-sexy. Also at that point, he stopped signing Pibgorn, and new comics became much less frequent, although they never were regular at all.
Pib appeared in a Sunday 9CWL a few weeks back, for whatever reason.
https://www.gocomics.com/9chickweedlane/2024/09/08
McEldowney is still at his best when whimsically riffing on musical or feline themes, as he often does on Sundays.
But aging up the twins just so he can draw them in sexy poses is …
Totally agree, Powers.