Category / Mistake-CIDU

by zbicyclist

A few bugs in the system?

I’m guessing GoComics accidentally posted a prelim version of this comic, and then because it was Sunday didn’t replace it. But if anyone wants to fill in some dialogue, feel free!

As I write this (2/20, 11:30am) it still hasn’t been fixed, although the author commented yesterday that GoComics had been contacted. Update: fixed as of 2/21, 5pm.

Oddly enough, it seems that they’ve also retroactively messed up the previous two Sundays (because there are no comments on that one indicating anything is missing, and I remember reading these previously).

by EditorM

The final collection of Oopsies, Quickies, We-can-improve-its, Semi-CIDUs, Mysteries, and flops? (14th Series)

Not quite complaining about the friend’s unprompted question — it could happen, though normally you’d expect a context something like “Why won’t you X? What are you afraid of?” The problem, the detail-complaint, is with the form of Pete’s reply-question, which carefully spells out a pronunciation which marks it out as belonging to no actual regional or demographic dialect or slang.

Oops! Got the underlying myth premise precisely backwards!

And here they got the underlying business terms precisely backward. As an excuse for something like a missed payment, someone may plead that their assets are not liquid.

Okay, one joke is that there would be a rap version of a mantra. Or that she has been rapping it, or improvising it, or humming it or something, enough to disturb her friend.

But the bothersome aspect of this is how it seems to buy into some magical thinking. The dark-haired friend is linking her (later) ability to get the good parking space to performing a successful meditation now, undisturbed by intrusive mantra rapping. (Or could it be Nichiren Shōshū chanting?)

This is a perfectly fine little pun! Oh, except that there is no basis shown or hinted for why the new top provides more relief from the heat.

by EditorM

No stopping these collections of Oopsies, Quickies, We-can-improve-its, Semi-CIDUs, Mysteries, and flops? (lucky 13th Series)

But it seems to be offering a moment of inspiration, when he discovers … his own name? (Or his pretend / pun name, no difference.)

It finally turns into a sort of techno-era observational-humor consumer complaint about passwords and online support and automated voice response systems. Stuff we all like to complain about, fine.

But to get there we have to follow a confusing sequence of redefinitions of “cordless” and “wireless” – do these parachutes lack the strings/lines joining the canopy to the harness? Is that what makes them cordless? Oh, you mean automatic deployment of some sort so you don’t use a traditional manual “ripcord”. But the online bit (which is what “wireless” seems to mean here) is an utterly implausible development in the sport.

Y’know, it’s almost there! But there’s nothing at all in the scene to relate to the baseball meaning of bunt, let alone the more specialized sacrifice bunt.

by EditorM

You thought we couldn’t do another collection of Oopsies, Quickies, We-can-improve-its, Semi-CIDUs, Mysteries, and flops? (12th Series)

Thanks to Dana K for this Today’s Szep. The main joke is easy enough: the mere unlikely existence of this rack and these categories of card message. But what is all that ancillary action supposed to be about? Do these two know each other? Or is the woman just a judgemental bystander? Is she saying something, or just standing there with her jaw dropping?

On the first hand, this seems to me an excellent job of working out a technical experiment in the art of cartooning. Color-coding the speech bubbles could represent an improvement on trying to aim the pointers with precision, or stretching them around, or finding a basis for making the comic multi-panel so the dialogue can be rearranged.

But OTOH, the content of the dialogue is miles away from being at all funny. And is not even folk-wise, in that pseudo-deep way Frazz is so fond of trying.

Here’s a FoxTrot sent in by Kilby for the Oopses list. He says there is a real-world chronology error in showing Alpha-bits cereal in a current cartoon scene. “Alphabits was taken off the market in 2006, and made only brief periodic re-appearances, before disappearing again a year ago (May 2021). [Wikipedia link] The reason I checked is that I was not able to find them the last time I visited Washington. It’s possibe that Bill Amend is writing his strips a whole year in advance, but I seriously doubt it.”

Kilby also presents a judgement dilemma. “When a cartoonist recycles an ancient joke (albeit with ‘improvements’), is it better (A) To admit the crime, or (B) Just pretend that nobody will notice how ancient the gag really is?”

(A)

(B)

A classic case of “Oops!” from Le Vieux Lapin. Oops, I forgot to draw a cloud that looks like a comma.

by EditorM

Further adventures of Oopsies, Quickies, Semi-CIDUs, Mysteries, and flops (10th Series)

In the lane of “I guess I get the intended joke point, but the execution is unsuccessful” we have this “powdery math” example from zbicyclist. “I’m lost here. He’s eating one donut, and has another on his plate. That’s two donuts. So how is it 50% less sugar than two donuts?” I guess the *one* donut Leroy is waving around does have 50% less sugar than the two he has altogether, since it’s 50% less donut.

I thought at first it was going to be the funnish kind of percentage mistake coming from inconsistent base. We’re going to increase your supply of widgets by 10%. But now you have too many, so we’ll reduce your supply by 10%. That should put you back where you started …. eh?

Why even begin to use the Jeopardy setup? Then not use their layout? And if we grant that eating triple bacon cheeseburgers presents a risk to a heart, does that require that answering a question about them also does?

The main-punch of this charming joke is clear enough — curiosity may be fatal to cats (as in the common saying) but not to these patients. But what is it that the vet has diagnosed as a case of curiosity? And is it supposed to be clear why he speaks in the singular, and which one of the dogs is the patient?

I dunno, maybe the problem is that the top section looks like a “throwaway panel” but actually it’s essential that it appear right above the scene with the cars. Because it’s the upper-storey window and sign for the gym? But we still have to pin down the connection between weight-lifting and how that extra car got where it is.

If your thing is to visually or linguistically play off some familiar phrase or saying that almost everybody surely knows …. there’s going to be trouble when you use some that nobody knows. (All right, I know about “disruptor”. But that’s about it.)

Okay, let the anatomists explain from the configuration of fingers (and additional hand in panel 2) that the hand doing the artwork in panels 2 and 3 has to be Nancy’s. Even so, what does it get her? And if it could possibly be Fritzi’s own, does that mean her panel 1 nag about “the expression on my face” was just a fancy prank setup?

by EditorM

Bonus: Mooning humanity

I was baffled by an incorrect narrative I was constructing: The aliens are laser-burning a mutation into the human genome in the first panel [and specifically the Y chromosome]; then battling in an abandoned city with a colonnade; then withdrawing and leaving a different neighborhood intact, because of something they learn in the human/alien dictionary. And for some reason that leads them to misspell their victory message.

…. And then I looked at panel 1 on a different scale.

by EditorM

Pardon my implausibility

Thanks to “👓 caren” for sending it in, and saying “my friends and i have only the slightest idea what vic might have ingested to publish this…  perhaps we need a little to understand it…  :)”

This started out for me as simply a complete CIDU:

But a comment on the Comics Kingdom site clarified the basic “what’s going on, what’s the main intended joke?” issues: he’s lost his shot glass inside the patient.

But that just raises soooo many more new questions! Does the Assisting Surgeon (the person speaking) seriously think loss of the shot glass is the only reason the Surgeon is trying to recover it? Wouldn’t he be hugely in hot water when the glass shows up on some X-Ray someday? And what was a shot glass doing in the OR anyway? And did he seriously have just one good one, important enough to make a good birthday present?

by EditorM

Even More Oopsies, Semi-CIDUs, Mysteries, and flops (6th Series)

Is it just that the guy is so shook up he books three appointments a day? Is that all there is? Is it weird that the receptionist builds on the standard “Your three o’clock is here” instead of, maybe, using his name (which she must be familiar with by now)?

This was going to be a standalone CIDU, with the question-blurb of The slug has eaten some salted snack and is having a toxic reaction?? There was another fly, and the frog scooped him up with his tongue?? Do you have another?

But then I realized the item hanging out of the frog’s mouth is not his tongue (which would be thin and ready to flick) but a wing tip, matching the wings we see on the speaking fly at the left. Well, that answers which of the explanations it was.

But I didn’t know whether to feel cheated of a mystery, or ready to applaud the skilfully delayed punch. Anyway, that landed it here!

“Love” – “Confess” – “Surf”

Those are the titles I can make out among the items displayed at this newsstand.

Okay, the joke is that this soldier (is he “Killer”?) is really just interested in eyeing the pin-ups and girlie publications, while prolonging his visit by asking for various small-town papers the newsstand does not carry.

But why do I feel like that raises gaps in the story that ought to have been dealt with? Like: is he making the towns and papers up, or are they supposed to be real within the fictive world? Is the “Nope” answer the basis for him to keep going, with possible second or third choices? Or might he have gotten them all, if commissioned by several guys back at the platoon to bring them back their respective home-town papers? And does this newsstand in fact carry regular newspapers and general-interest magazines, and the pin-up material is just what gets most prominently displayed? Or is that all they sell?

Hmm, something missing? Oh yes – the generator that would be hooked up so that the exercise bike powers the fan! Or go old style, and show some belts and pulleys making a mechanical connection. Otherwise, what’s the joke?

Here we have just one of those unanswered little mysteries, not any critique. Just what did he mean to say instead, eh?

P.S. It doesn’t answer that question, but the next day’s strip is from the same therapy session, and picks up the theme of slips.

by EditorM

FURTHER Semi-CIDUs, Minor Mysteries, Oopsies, and Not-Quite-Rights

(I.e., the fourth batch of these.)

This Argyle Sweater is from BillR, who joined with your editors in debating what is going on in the absence of a typical Hilburn Oy.

Their name could suggest they are of Polish extraction.  And the weather suggests a northerly climate.  But that wouldn’t be enough for a map to show the home as “North Pole”. Is there anything beyond red herring to noting they are at a mailbox and there is a tradition about letters to Santa getting delivered to some place the USPS designates as North Pole? Or … what?

This was a quite good three-panel joke cartoon. And then …

Hard to put a finger on it, but something about the “deflation punch” in this Brevity seems off. Like offers advertised as “BOGO” and you wonder is that a hip way of calling something Bogus? If CONVO means conversation, and RECCO means reccomendation…