Category / Comics history

by zbicyclist

Saluting Margaret Wade

JMcAndrew asks: “Is there any character in comics treated more unfairly than Margaret Wade? She doesn’t do anything to deserve this.” And sends in these exhibits.


JMcAndrew: “This one where he intentionally walks in on her in the shower is all kinds of wrong.”

There is, of course, the running gag in Blondie in which Dagwood is interrupted in the bath. But that was used so often in lost any prurient effect and just the comic effect remained. And Dagwood somehow was always able to get a towel around critical parts.

by Kilby

Feets Don’t Fail Me Now!

There are ten pairs of cartoon feet in this Sunday “Ink Pen” strip from 2010:

…
Unfortunately, the author didn’t bother to make any of the dialog “characteristic”, which might have helped to identify each figure. I have a positive ID for only five and a half of them. Can anyone match all ten (unseen) talking heads to their correct feet?

P.S. Bonus assignment: Provide an unmistakable (but very short) quote for each character.

by EditorM

“Papa Knows” at Obscurity of the Day

The estimable Allan Holtz, comic strip historian and proprietor of The Stripper’s Guide, has invited CIDU readers to join in trying to make sense of these example panels from the vintage series Papa Knows. He provides an historical deep-dive and some interpretive overview in last Friday’s blog column, in the Obscurity of the Day series, but leaves these four as examples where it seems no genuine attempt at a gag can be found. — What we like to call Comics I Don’t Understand!

(As Allan explains, “Obscurity of the Day is just posts about rare and overlooked newspaper comics; generally speaking if they’re hard to understand it’s because of the gulf between our time and theirs. Papa Knows, on the other hand, seems to be downright weird no matter when you might have read it!”)