Category / CIDU

by EditorM

Dressed to Protect

From Chak, who asks “Is this missing a caption?  Is he her father or her witsec protector?”

For anyone who hasn’t seen this info before, the “Nick and Zuzu” comics by Nick Galifianakis are published first as illustrations for a Washington Post advice column by Carolyn Hax. And they don’t have captions there, nor when appearing in GoComics or other comics outlets; though the Hax column headline is sometimes close enough to work as a title for the comic. However, his drawings don’t always adhere closely to the content of the column.

So viewing the column with this illustration in place will spoil enough to answer one of Chak’s questions, but will not explain everything about the scene and the characters’ appearance. CIDUers who don’t mind a half-spoiler could check out the original column with illustration, or if that presents paywall problems then try this alternate link.

by EditorM

No shift, Sherlock

Sent by Michelle, as a LOL/OY maybe (she says “Love this one!”). But it is sort of unclear to me! Yes, of course I recognize the underlying pun on the modern expression for dismissing something as obvious. But I don’t quite get the “No shift” as applied in context to this scene.

Sadly, I’m missing something. I don’t see what the mystery or investigation is here – when Holmes says “We must get to the bottom of this”, what is the *this*? And if “no shift” is meant to be part of the answer, is it that the car was built leaving out the transmission; or that the transmission has been stolen; or just that the driver failed to shift when they should have? Also, why are the wheels splayed? Is that just his stylization of “very old model car”? Or is it meant to show there was an accident?

Maybe I’m just expanding on “Comic I don’t understand” to carp on aspects of the cartoon. Sorry, but that happens sometimes, I guess.

BTW, there are no spoilers for my questions at the Tomversations blog entry, but there is an amusing background note about his previous attempt to use this idea, and reliance on a different meaning of “shift”.

by EditorM

Romantic backdrop

Here’s a CIDU from Michelle. We here at CIDU HQ could hardly make sense of it, not being familiar with Wawawiwa at all. Browsing in the archive on GoComics did help considerably, both seeing plenty of recent examples and reading this “About” statement:

Wawawiwa is a series of funny and wholesome comic strips featuring anthropomorphic food, objects and animals inspired by life and family.

Here’s Michelle’s CIDU, which remained puzzling even after getting a little into the Wawawiwa world view:

As an example of WawaWiwa outlook (more about Awww than LOL) here is one from this August, where it doesn’t take much reflection to get the gentle joke.

by EditorM

Tunnel of synchronicity?

Carl Fink sent in the Loose Parts, which we supplemented with the Lockhorns on a similar motif.

Is it kind of charming that Loretta still has romantic expectations?

Carl says “So, let me ask this question: has anyone seen an actual ‘Tunnel of Love’ at a fair in the past, say, 40 years? Would anyone under that age have any idea what’s going on here? Is that old carnival attraction even remembered now only because of cartoons like this one?”

Also, what is going on? People keep climbing into those boats even though they can see the solid wall and the mounting crashes? Is it almost as much their incompetence as that of the designers of the attraction?

by EditorM

Cupcake

From Le Vieux Lapin, who says: I’m not a sports guy, so I looked “Cupcake Week” up on the web, and I still don’t get it.

I didn’t know what “cupcake week” means either, but did have a plausible guess.  The comments (yeah, I had to look) gave a more complete explanation, however, that I would not have arrived at by guesswork and reasoning from the guesses… So I’d call that a legit CIDU!