Thanks to Dan Sachs for this CIDU-Geezer.
Because the CIDU will be quickly solved by anyone who can fill in the geezer reference, we thought to provide a little more entertainment …. The editors weren’t really familiar with Diamond Lil, so we looked around in some recent strips, and found an interesting mix of OYs, Ewwws, “dad jokes” (a.k.a. bad jokes), and of course a baseline of geezer alerts!
(I like that the Siri or Alexa is named “Surli”.)
This Mother Goose and Grimm is analyzed at Arnold Zwicky’s blog.
I also posted this F-Minus, with remarks, in a comment on that same Zwicky blog entry.
Several selections contributed by Andréa coming up:
“I KNEW IMMEDIATELY WHO THIS WAS, EVEN BEFORE READING THE CAPTION . . . DOES THAT MAKE ME A GEEZER??”
Synchronicity–
This Bizarro from Andréa is also taken up under the Arnold Zwicky analytical microscope. I like his term “a Desert Crawl cartoon” for the main trope here.
“SYNCHRONICITY – ABOUT *NOT* LEARNING A LESSON . . .”
And one final OY contribution:
B&C have been going in for geezer / boomer / retro references a bit lately.
The sender of the Spy v Spy one remarks Prohias stopped drawing “Spy vs. Spy” in 1987, and died in 1998. § Wikipedia claims that the series is still “ongoing”, but I still wonder whether the character in the fourth panel would be recognized by anyone under the age of 50.
Meanwhile, back at the Zippy, more geezer callout action:
William Bendix was among the actors I came to know of from 1950s or early 60s television sitcoms or sometimes drama series ; and found out later had been minor or major movie stars in the 1940s or early 50s. Fred MacMurray, Donna Reed, Raymond Burr…
And from Brian in STL we have a synchronicity of Bill the Cat references:
Sad, sad end!
P.S. Who would be customers here, you ask?
They almost directly tell us whereabouts this geezer reference comes from. And yet … and yet … I DON’T GET IT!
When this was new, in 1965 or 1966 (I can’t quite make the date out — though the 6/16 at lower left is quite clear, as the pigeons have not yet picked it up), probably it was already a challenge to the reader to recognize some already-retro references, to famous real-world couples or other cartoon-world characters. And probably some randomly tossed-in names; and probably some not-famous real-world friends of Mort Walker’s; and certainly some pairing-up jokes (Emmy and Oscar?).
And after the passage of another 55 or 56 years, how many of them can we get? I’m not really much of a comics historian, so maybe … none? But others may do better.
From guero, who says “Okay, today’s Dark Side of the Horse is a great homage to Don Martin, but what exactly is the joke? (I mean in the punch line – the cartoon perfectly captures his style and humor.)”
… but I couldn’t say what the joke is in a narrow sense, nor if there are correspondences to a specific target. The credits for The Oldersons do a cute quick job of telling the story of how legacy strips get managed.
Hopefully a step above demonstrative-gestural lip syncing, the illustrated song comic can combine the best features of geezer nostalgia, punning, and comic drawing. A nice touch here is that Rubin combines the song’s key line that everyone remembers with its somewhat less-familiar title.
Bonus! On Twitter they provide a bit of animation with another line from the song. Actually, one in the tweet text, and another as an animated header – it may be lost to the crop here. But try clicking *once* on the “play” icon and it may show properly.
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?
Comics I Don't Understand 