Month / December 2024

by Kilby

Artwork Failure

Brian in StL suggested this Baby Blues strip two years ago as a partial CIDU, commenting: “The joke is obvious, but what I and everyone in comments noticed is that the front passenger seat is open, so why does he need to ride on the roof? I guess it might be a better question of how the cartoonist could have done the strip to make more sense. Possibly a pile of packages on the seat, bumped out of the back by the tree?“

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P.S. I agree with Brian, the artwork makes absolutely no sense at all. An alternative option (besides “packages”) would be to put one of the kids in the front seat, so that half of the back seat could be folded down to provide room for the tree (that is exactly what I do every year when my son and I go out to the local “cut your own tree” lot). However, Brian’s solution would probably have been easier to draw convincingly.

by Kilby

Bonus: Tenacious persistence

GiP submitted this B.C. strip, which doesn’t really fit into any category. It’s not funny enough for an LOL, and not puzzling enough for a CIDU: all the gag says is that Thor is hard-headed: he’s willing to endure any adversity to catch his fish, including unnecessarily repetitive waves in the first two panels, and ridiculously improbable starfish slapstick in the third panel. Even the destruction of his boat did not deter him.

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I wonder what Clumsy Carp would have thought about this.

P.S. Despite all its weaknesses, here’s a B.C. re-run from exactly two years ago:

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Why the re-run? Discovering this strip in the submissions archive reminded me of a comment that Bill Bickel wrote in May, 2020, and attached to “Dynamo” (01-Jan-2023): “So greetings from Month Three of the Coronavirus Lockdown. I hope everybody made it through okay to the other side.“

Alas: no.

by Kilby

Hound Dogs

Mark. H. suggested this Mother Goose & Grimm a partial CIDU, commenting: “Grimmy tries to encourage the dog singing the song. But the song is not about the singer – it’s about the one the singer is singing to (‘You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog…‘). The singer might very well have caught a rabbit himself, but that wouldn’t change the song.“

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Is it really just as simple as Grimmy mistaking the subject? Should I have added this to the Sunday Funnies, instead?

by multipleciduers

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, December 01st, 2024

Mark H. submitted this 9CWL strip last year as a “Geezer Alert” (and partial CIDU), asking: “Does anyone younger than 60 know about Jimmy Hoffa?” (The CIDU and/or puzzle component is to figure out what she might have said to him underwater.)

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P.S. It is so refreshing to post a Chickweed Lane strip that is not (automatically) “Arlo” material.

This was going to be a CIDU, but it seems to be a colorist error. That’s not a basketball, but a curled up armadillo. But they don’t change color when they curl up, so far as I know.

From Wikipedia: “When threatened by a predator, Tolypeutes species frequently roll up into a ball. Other armadillo species cannot roll up because they have too many plates. When surprised, the North American nine-banded armadillo tends to jump straight in the air, which can lead to a fatal collision with the undercarriage or fenders of passing vehicles.”

Usual John sends this one in. This gets a bit of s “Eww”

The previous one in this series is pretty good, too.