Cure for the Common Alien
Author / zbicyclist
Will this go Swimmingly?
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.
Many Questions, but not a CIDU
Panel 1 says “Dik Browne”, but both he and son Chris are deceased. Who’s doing the strip now? And with Nancy running with guest artists, is that person one of the guest artists, or someone who wishes they were one of the guest artists? (Note Nancy and Fritzi in panel 4)
I did find this on Comics Beat, in Chris’s obituary: “Following the retirement and death of its creator, Dik’s sons Chris and Chance Browne – plus illustrator and cartoonist Gary Hallgren who has drawn the series since 2015 – took over the reins. Chris’ thirty-plus year tenure on the character (his brother Chance works mainly on the continuation of their father’s other series Hi and Lois but assisted with edits) – from 1989 to 2023 – makes him the strip’s longest serving cartoonist (his father retired in 1988, accumulating 16 years of material).”
On Facebook, a commenter dug deep into his comic archive to find this similar gag from Ernie Bushmiller:
Did the Glass Head to the Hamptons?
I’ll Have a Napoleon Pastry With That
Yes, Waterloo is a brand of sparkling water. Yes, Waterloo is a well-known ABBA song (Eurovision winner, 1974). But how is Tabby’s statement in panel 4 a punchline?
Edit: for those of you who wondered if Waterloo was a real brand:
Heads Up! Tomorrow is Stranger’s Day
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:
Conventional Wisdom
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:
Spendthrift
What’s the joke here?
Is there a pun in the name Arlo Hoyt?
This is common financial advice (e.g. in the book The Psychology of Money, by Morgan Housel, which I just finished), or, famously, in Dickens novel, David Copperfield.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.
Or, could the joke be that Arlo Hoyt has claimed that he coined this common maxim himself, and has erected a status of himself in his honor?
For less helpful advice, certainly not what Dickens’ Mr. Micawber would have advised, we have this from Randy Glasbergen:
Shark week!
Shark week 2023 began July 23, so when I started this accumulation some months ago I assumed it would be the same week in 2024, and scheduled it for then. But I guess the chaos around the Discovery / HBO / Warner merger confused even the sharks, and shark week was last week.
On a Roll
Should that be Le Croissant de Death?
Comics I Don't Understand 