Mitch4 sends this in as an LOL: “Good job of fooling us with the “drumsticks” in the middle panel.”
It’s a CIDU to me, though. I’m sure this is a reference to some musical instruments, but I’m short on specifics.
Dem Bones
Author / zbicyclist
Twosday Twofer
A twofer today (unrelated, not a synchronicity)
Boise Ed sends this in:
Linda sends this in: “It’s late. I’ve had two beers. I’m pushing 73 years old. Somebody explain this to me?”
Mouseover text: “People out here catching strays out here catching strays.”
The Joy of Tech
Consul, the Almost Human sends this in: “I enjoy this long running Apple fan strip and usually get the gags. This one, not though.
Battering down the hatches?
billr sends this in: “Not a clue”.
Houston
Todd also has a problem with this: “I just don’t get it.”
That phrase is most closely associated with Apollo 13, but there’s no brides on that mission.
The other phrase closely associated with that movie is ““Failure is not an option”. This is a line written for the 1995 film Apollo 13, spoken by actor Ed Harris as Gene Kranz, though the real NASA Flight Director never actually said it during the mission.
Gene Kranz did motivational speaking after he retired from NASA, and adopted that phrase in order to create a bond with his audience. I heard him speak at one of our corporate sales conferences. Good speaker, but in the business we were in, failure certainly was an option. In fact, we were in the process of having our stock decline from $44/share to $1.30 a share and constantly shedding employees.
Something To Chew On
Boise Ed sends this in: “Tantor is “a nervous, lovable elephant character from the Tarzan stories.” Why he would want to chew a tusk is a good question, but why the shrink is suddenly nervous is a bigger one.”
Similarly, Ian C asks: “Is this just a reference to biting his fingernails or is there an actual joke involved?”
Fourth Wall
Mitch4 sends this in: “Some kind of META, or 4th Wall … The META aspect is that it acknowledges being a comic. The allusion to the Silly Putty tradition of pulling off a layer of ink from the funny papers (and maybe applying it elsewhere, like a rubber stamp), here goes farther and shows us the removal of a layer of his physical body, leaving a skeleton. The artist’s hand reaching in to do this is reminiscent of Escher’s meta practices.”.
Boise Ed sends this in, and wonders: “Is it my imagination, or are cartoonists in general doing a lot more fourth-wall gags recently? This example is more blatant than most, though.”
Not a strong vote of confidence from the cartoonist.
I don’t know the revenue model at Comics Kingdom, but I see Wannabe has 309 followers (those who have make it one of their favorites). A lot of the comics with larger numbers are strips that have been around forever, either with new authors (Blondie, 13.8k; Family Circus 10.6k; Hagar the Horrible 13k) or simply classic reruns (Buz Sawyer 1.6k; Beetle Bailey classics 12.7k)
Newer strips tend to have much lower numbers. (Macanudo, 3k; Todd the Dinosaur 2k; TBD 900).
That’s not a comprehensive list,
Saving you the trouble of looking it up: “Estradiol is a form of estrogen, a female sex hormone that regulates many processes in the body. Estradiol is used to treat menopause symptoms such as hot flashes and vaginal changes, and to prevent osteoporosis (bone loss) in menopausal women. Estradiol is also used to treat low estrogen levels in women with ovarian failure. It is also indicated to treat certain types of breast cancer and prostate cancer.”
That last panel is intended to be intentionally confusing, so doesn’t count as a CIDU.
Boise Ed sends this in: “Here’s a different approach to the fourth-wall mania.”
Steal This Book
Why steal, rather than leave them out there with a sign that says “free to good home”? How would someone stealing give him hope for the country?
A used copy of Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book can be purchased for $7 on Abe Books.
Expectations
billr sends this in: “Second day in a row it’s not his usual dogs chasing squirrels, or marital ambiguities. No idea who these guys are or what this is about. Best I can come up with is the suit guy is an undertaker?”
Your editor thinks this would be more straightforward without that second line in the caption.
Nana!
Mitch4 sends this in as a momentary CIDU: “Does his exclamation of “Nana! Nana! Nana! …” convey anything besides greeting his grandmother? Maybe. Somehow the musical theme from the 1960s TV series of Batman has developed a conventionalized way of humming/singing it, and of writing that, using the syllables “Nanananana..””
This is definitely not what’s being alluded to by Whamond, but this reminds me of a baseball chant. Here’s longtime White Sox organist Nancy Faust with “Na Na Na Na Hey Hey Good-bye”, sung by the stadium crowd to taunt an opposing pitcher as they are being yanked from the game.
And the original:
