Category / CIDU

by Kilby

Hunting Vermin

Usual John submitted this Working Cats strip as a CIDU, commenting: “This is a strip about Brooklyn bodega cats, and these are the two central characters. Sula, the older and wiser cat, acts as a mentor to Taki, the kitten. But I don’t get what Sula is doing in the last panel.”

Even though I can explain exactly what is happening in this strip, I wanted to post this as a Comic I Haven’t Seen. Maritsa Patrinos has appeared at CIDU before, but only for her work on “Six Chix” (Fridays, since 2019).

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I think my very first impression may have been the same thing that John thought: that Sula has assumed the same position that she was in when Taki mistakenly attacked Sula as “vermin”. However, what is actually happening is that Sula is calling attention to the real vermin: Taki’s tail. The weakness is that all the symbols surrounding Taki’s head distract from the marks meant to highlight her tail.

P.S. This strip is the first time that I have ever seen the term “vermin” used as a singular noun; I’ve always thought of it as inherently plural.

by Kilby

Columbus Day Redux

This “Mr. Boffo” strip was submitted by David Curwin as a CIDU. I didn’t think the gag was that difficult to decipher, but Zbicyclist pointed out that the real question is how many historical inaccuracies did Joe Martin manage to incorporate into just this one comic?

P.S. The strip’s publication date does not count as a mistake. Columbus Day originally fell on October 12th, but that was according to the Julian calendar. It was moved to the second Monday in October for convenience, but would actually have fell on October 21st, if the modern (Gregorian) calendar had been in use back then.

by Kilby

The “U” Word

Extending the “counting on cartoon fingers” topic from Tuesday, Mark H. also submitted this Baby Blues strip, commenting: “Isn’t Uranus the seventh planet, not the eighth?“

Mark is exactly right. The author must be missing a finger or two. Besides that, “Earth” and “Mars” are the only two planets in the whole Solar System that do not have at least one “U” in their names.

Kilby adds: I witnessed (and participated in) the most uproarious pandemonium I have ever experienced in a school classroom during a presentation about the seventh (and not the eighth) planet in junior high school. The student at the board was trying (but failing) to maintain his composure, and everyone in the room (except the teacher) was giggling at least a little bit at the sophomoric joke inherent in the repeated pronunciations of the name.

The fatal mistake occurred when the kid attempted a quick sketch of the planet’s (severely tilted) axis. His intent was to draw a circle with a horizontal line through it, much like a Greek “Theta” (ϴ), but his subconscious played a trick on him, and the resulting diagram had a vertical line, just like a Greek “Phi” (Φ), or (as we all immediately recognized) “two cheeks of the moon“. Everyone in the room blew up: all the students were laughing, and even the teacher’s unbridled fury could not restore order.

Even now, nearly five decades later, and although I have attempted to keep these paragraphs as dry and objective as possible, I cannot help but giggle at the memory of the scene, so I understand exactly the way Hammie feels in the strip above.

by Kilby

Passing Exactly the Same Gasses

I think that these comics are closer to EWWWs, but DollarBill submitted them as synchronous OYs, commenting “same day, same theme, juxtaposition next to each other in my GoComics daily feed“. The latter is not surprising, given that the titles are alphabetically adjacent to each other:

Blazek’s comic was a brief CIDU for me, but it wasn’t that hard to figure out. If there ever was a feature that GoComics should have renamed for just one day, this was it:

Dan Collins wasn’t taking any chances with misunderstandings: the label on the bubble seems gratuitous and unnecessarily crude, but without it, the color might not have been enough to identify the contents, since he did not indicate the precise location of the source.

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P.S. No matter how it was generated, a bubble that large would have a good chance of capsizing that boat. Aerated water has a much lower density, and cannot support the same weight as normal water, so the vessel sinks. This is a factor with depth charges used against submarines. Even if the explosion itself does not cause a leak, the reduced buoyancy may cause the submarine to fall to a depth where the water pressure is too high, fatally damaging the hull (as happened in the Ocean Gate disaster last year).

by phsiii

Point of order

BillR offers:

Came across this guy, Cameron Spires, who calls his strip Goat to Self. Most of his are borderline NSFW, or over the line, somewhat surrealistic, or just vague. Can’t figure this one out at all.

This editor posits that the key is that the dolphin (porpoise? beluga?) in the last panel is the defense lawyer, and the objection is to forcing self-incrimination. Mind you, I’m not sure that’s up to the defense lawyer — I think the witness has to invoke that themselves.

by phsiii

Trying to find the colonel of humor

OK, I get the overall joke, but what’s with the “Colonel” bit? Is this something cruise companies do–try to flatter people with bogus titles? If so, I need to sign up for a better class of junk mail.

Just seems odd and not relevant to the overall joke. What say ye?

(I’ve lived a version of this joke: 35 years ago, my wife and I were living in a townhouse. We went for a walk on a Sunday and the end unit in our building was having an open house. “Hey, let’s go look”, she said, “I’ve always wanted to see one of those end units”. A couple of months later, I’m carrying boxes down the sidewalk between townhouses as we start our move…)