Author / zbicyclist

by zbicyclist

Two half-CIDUs

The essence of the joke here is good: that perhaps the pyramids had a second use in providing entertainment for Pharaoh. Not getting the extra graft part.

The joke here is also basically clear, with that nice added pun in the lefthand corner. But why a cat?

(a) To get in the way while he’s working, as cats tend to do?

(b) An allusion to the supposed origin story of Jim Davis developing Garfield? “Davis decided to peruse current comic strips to determine what species of animal characters might be more popular. He felt that dogs were doing well, but noticed no prominent cats. Davis figured he could create a cat star, having grown up on a farm with twenty-five cats.” (Wikipedia)

(c) An inside joke that cartoonists tend to be cat people?

(d) Other ________________

by zbicyclist

Thirty Years Ago …

Here’s some current comics as they were posted on January 16, 1995

Baby Blues is still building that family.

Big Nate is easily recognizable, without much change.

Arlo and Janis look a big younger, but otherwise the same.

FoxTrot was still in dailies.

I wanted to check Gasoline Alley, which is famous both for being long-running and for aging the characters. But they’ve switched syndicates over time, and I got the message “Gasoline Alley started on April 8, 2001”.

by zbicyclist

400 Years Ago This Month

Is Darrin Bell just trolling us? 400 years would be January 1625. I got nothin’.

Not much help from ChatGPT, either:

January 1625 was a month marked by several notable events:

  • January 7: Ruggiero Giovannelli, an Italian composer, passed away.
  • January 13: Pieter Bruegel the Younger, a Flemish painter, died.
  • January 17: The Duke of Soubise led the Huguenots in launching a second rebellion against King Louis XIII with a surprise naval assault on a French fleet being prepared in Blavet.
  • January 19: Erhard Buttner, a German organist and composer, committed suicide.
  • January 27: Adriaen Valerius, a Dutch composer and poet, died.