Boise Ed sends:
and wonders, “I know Hagar often thrives on anachronistic stuff, but geez! Eddie having a modern pillow in camp is bad enough, but how would Hagar convince those two deer/elk/moose/reindeer to hold still for that, all night?”
I also have to ask what Rocky is doing down there on the bottom right–is one of those meese Bullwinkle?! In any case, where’s the joke?
Perfectly good comics. But you have the nagging feeling the joke or pun would work just a tiny bit better if this-or-that could be edited a trifle.
(Thus CIDUs by a polite extension — “I don’t understand why this little matter couldn’t be fixed up…”)
Here, for instance, the traditional form uses “get a haircut / hair cut” and always works smoothly; unlike in this strip, where the dialogue in panel 2 is quite unnatural. “Hey Harv, didja get a hair cut?” , “Nah, I got them all cut! Heh heh!”
A good chuckle from Arlo and Janis, sent in by Jack Applin who has a point about “breaking serve”.
As Jack explains, As I understand it, to “break serve” means to score a point in tennis when your opponent serves. However, Janis was serving (“Did you cover the charcoal fire?”), and Arlo neglected to do that, so Janis scored the point on her own serve, right? Even if we consider the entire strip one long volley, Janis still asked the initial question, so she’s serving.
Carl Fink contributes this. “OK, why would the rhino have holes in its cardigan? Its own horn wouldn’t be poking it. Is it a joke about how anthropomorphic animals arms and legs don’t let it move on all fours without its chest scraping the ground, unlike the actual animal? I don’t get it.”
[start of rant] To your editor, this seems roughly like the comic strip analogy to the uncanny valley: “as the appearance of a robot is made more human, some observers’ emotional response to the robot becomes increasingly positive and empathetic, until it becomes almost human, at which point the response quickly becomes strong revulsion. However, as the robot’s appearance continues to become less distinguishable from that of a human being, the emotional response becomes positive once again and approaches human-to-human empathy levels”.
As we move animal characters from being animals acting mostly naturally (the cat Ludwig in Arlo and Janis, for example) to animals not acting much like actual animals at all (Pearls Before Swine) there’s a spot where the jokes just don’t work. There’s so many human characteristics put into the characters that we don’t accept the remaining animal characteristics needed to make the joke work.
Here’s a case where, in my opinion, the use of animals actually gets in the way of the joke. Hippos don’t need sunscreen and don’t sit upright on the sand. But the joke doesn’t have much to do with hippos at all: it’s that there’s a tiny bottle of sunscreen that’s too small for one of them, but the second is complaining there’s none left for them. The joke would be clearer with two normal sized people and a tiny bottle of sunscreen. [end of rant]
Okay, yes, I do understand the plot. Cindy couldn’t catch the ball; or it went nowhere near her, and right for one of the houses in the background. And now Moose is on the hook to repair it.
But are we expected to believe his batting sent it all the way over to those houses? Also, isn’t 9×16 kinda small for a window? Also, if they have modern modular windows, is it even possible to replace just the glass as a DIY project?
All right, done quibbling. Your turn.
Comics I Don't Understand 