Category / Holiday-Thematic

by Kilby

Day of the Dead Comics

Today we honor the memory of comics that are gone, but not quite (yet) forgotten, and especially those that faded away (not with a bang, but with a whimper). Some of these may not be completely dead, but all of them are at best only shadows of their former selves. Happily, none of them has been turned into a zombie.

The image above the headline was taken from “The Comic That Has A Finale Every Day“, about which Maggie the Cartoonist once asked, “I just don’t get the concept here. Who would read this? Why would a strip run a finale every single day?” I agree, but the tiresome image was merely a placeholder, the purpose of it all was an experimental exercise in creative commentary. The author (or perhaps perpetrator) was Ruben Bolling, who reported on his Substack site (on Groundhog Day) that the feature had finally been laid to rest at the end of last year. In stark contrast to all of the other strips listed below, I was not sorry to see that one disappear.

The end of Cul de Sac was particularly tragic. Not only did Richard Thompson lose his battle with Parkinson’s (in 2012), he was physically unable to give his brilliant creation the grand exit that he had hoped for, and ultimately selected an appropriately poignant rerun for the final strip:

The recent demise of Real Life Adventures was submitted by Boise Ed, who commented: “Another one bites the dust. I wish Gary Wise and Lance Aldrich and happy retirement, but it’s sad to see another of the good comics go away. I like the way the did it, though.“

Aaron Johnson’s niche comic “What the Duck” ran for ten years (from 2006 to 2016), and was picked up for syndication in 2008 (using the euphemistic title “W.T. Duck“). The GoComics archive began in 2009, but recently ended (without any explanation) exactly fifteen years later (in January 2024). Note that the dates of the strips in the GC archive have absolutely no relationship to the original publishing run. This was the author’s final strip, which seems to apply to cartooning just as much as to photography:

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P.S. This is only the second time that What the Duck has appeared at CIDU: Bill posted a WtD six years ago.

Ink Pen was retired by its author nearly a dozen years ago, and has been stuck in rerun purgatory at GoComics ever since then:

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Phil Dunlap’s tentative plan to release new Ink Pen comics once a week never materialized.

Bill Hinds gave Cleats a fitting sendoff on Halloween Sunday (2010), including some really creative ironwork on the gate:

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According to The Daily Cartoonist, Hinds “decided to bring his comic strip to a close, citing the need to focus on other projects that are more economically profitable.” Wikipedia reports that the strip was in 75 newspapers, which apparently was not enough to make a viable living on, but Hinds did have Tank McNamara as a fallback, which at one point was appearing in 350 newspapers. Cleats is still in reruns at GoComics, and may (or may not) still be appearing in print somewhere, but this is the first time that it has appeared at CIDU in more than 15 years (that was over a decade before Comicgeddon).

Lennie Peterson’s motivation to terminate The Big Picture was somewhat similar:

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When the strip went into reruns at GoComics, Peterson took the unusual step of creating some Sunday format strips to introduce the relaunch, in which he also announced his intention to (occasionally) insert new material among the reruns. I have not yet figured out how often this actually happened.

Bug Martini went mysteriously AWOL after the appearance of the following strip (on 21-April-2023):

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P.S. Chak reported that Adam Huber has resurrected his strip after an 18 month absence, and Chemgal later mentioned (very presciently) that Chak had “figured it out long before me, which shows how infrequently I’ve been checking on my ‘might-be-dead‘ strips“. This is encouraging news, but there wasn’t any official “announcement” (or anything else new) on Adam’s website, except for a vague promise in the fourth panel of the strip that unexpectedly appeared on Sept. 25th:

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Only time will tell whether Bug Martini will really remain alive. The website “caption” still claims “Random nonsense three days a week“, but that has not been the case for years. I think the best we can hope for is one strip per week (teaser ads for pay-per-view Sunday strips do not count). The current tally is four new strips over five weeks.

Pab Sugenis “ended” his “New Adventures of Queen Victoria” on 14-Feb-2021 with a special group photo, but has revived the strip on intermittent occasions since then (sometimes crediting ChatGPT for the “writing”):

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The problem is that there’s no way to know when (or if) any new NAQV strips will ever appear at GoComics (the author’s own website has been shut down).

I just happened to include a Boondocks strip in yesterday’s Halloween post, not realizing (back then) that the strip has been in reruns for over 18 years. Here is the final Sunday strip, dated 26-Mar-2006 (immediately preceeding Aaron McGruder’s “planned for six months” sabbatical, which only later turned out to be involuntarily permanent):

Berke Breathed resurrected “Bloom County 2015” to indulge in some political humor. He periodically incremented the year in the title, but it never got past 2019 (the GoComics title card still says “2015”); nothing new has appeared there since 8-June-2020 (back when CIDU Bill was still with us):

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Although his GoComics feed has dried up, Breathed does post some material on his Facebook page, but virtually all of it is re-runs. It’s simply not worth connecting to Zuckerberg’s sewer just on the off chance of finding a new Bloom County strip. The last new one appeared in August 2023:

The Perry Bible Fellowship still posts new comics on an irregular basis. Here again, the problem is knowing whether it is worth checking back for new material. Please note that PBF is very often NSFW.

Liberty Meadows was in print for less than five years (from March 1997 to December 2001). Frank Cho abandoned syndication in favor of self publishing to avoid repeated censorship problems:

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The Liberty Meadows rerun archive at GoComics appears to start (Jan. 2002) in the middle of the original syndicated run. Cho continued to release book collections until 2006, but after a subsequent deal with Sony Pictures fell through, he finally announced (in 2012) that he had quit working on the strip: “As much as I want to do Liberty Meadows (believe me I want to), the other jobs pay better.“

The latest demise hasn’t even been completed (yet). The Daily Cartoonist just recently reported that Fort Knox (by Paul Jon) published its last daily strip on October 19th, although the last new Sunday strip won’t appear until November 10th.

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P.S. Fort Knox is no longer available at GoComics (although it’s not clear whether that was a recent deletion). The strip is still available at Arcamax, at least for now.

P.S. Please feel free to mention (and link to) other dearly departed comics in the comments!

by Kilby

Happy Halloween!

Besides the popular candy collection event, today is “Reformation Day” (in honor of Luther’s 95 theses), and here at CIDU it just happens to be Meryl A.’s birthday. Since she hasn’t been able to reschedule her day of honor, we will just have to wish her a very “Happy Birthday!” today.

Halloween is supposed to be a nice, innocent holiday, but some folks misinterpret it:

Then there are others who go really overboard:

Some kids are more scary than others:

Although very dated, this costume is still scary, too:

by Kilby

It’s that time of year again…

… and the less said about it, the better.

Finally, one bastion of sanity in a lunatic world:

P.S. All of the previous appearances of Pumpkin Spice at CIDU were posted by Bill in the Fall of 2019; three of these presented some fairly hideous pumpkin spice flavored products (some real, some fictitious); click on the link if you are interested in seeing them. (Please note that the whole “pumpkin spice” collection will be presented in reverse chronological order, so you will have to scroll down past this one to get to Bill’s “spicy” material.)

P.P.S. – Edit: both links have been corrected, thanks to deety!

by zbicyclist

Bonus: Caulfield’s Costume Contest

Janice wonders, “Are we keeping up the tradition of guessing Caulfield’s costume?”

Why not? Put your guesses in the comments. I’ll try to remember to update this post with the next clue each day; if not, feel free to add that in the comments.

Tuesday:

Wednesday:

Thursday. And the answer is:

The day after Halloween, the explanation. But we don’t find out what Caulfield’s actual costume was, at least not yet.

by Kilby

Bonus: Hug a Sheep Day

The following pair was submitted by Chipper 42; today happens to be “Hug a Sheep Day” (make of that what you will: both of these comics were originally published on April 5th).

P.S. While I understand the editorial position that CIDU should not actively solicit “Synchronicity” comics (primarily because the result tends to be far too many mild, random coincidences), I’m not about to ignore a superb example when I see one, especially when there is an ideal date on which to present it.

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 multipleciduers

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, October 20th, 2024

Boise Ed submitted this Cornered panel, commenting: “What a great put-down!“

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P.S. A German flasher would hope she says: “That’s gross!“
P.P.S. To which he would then reply: “Dankeschön!“

F.Y.I.: Is everyone is already prepared for the upcoming holiday(s)?

How to tell a fruit from a vegetable:

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Your attitude towards caramelizing may depend on whether you’re the one who does the dishes. Similarly with dishes such as tahdig, “a beautiful, pan-fried Persian rice that is fluffy and buttery on the inside with a perfectly golden crust, which is the layer at the bottom of the pot.” — if you make it right. The first few times might not produce “a perfectly golden crust”.

And we couldn’t leave without a couple of nods to autumn.

The character in the leaf pile is Wallace’s mom:

This one’s from 1962, when leaf burning was still a tradition:

by Kilby

Germification

CIDU frequently presents holiday-based material, but virtually all of the holidays we have ever celebrated so far have been American, even if a few of them (such as New Year’s Eve and Halloween) are also celebrated outside of North America. The following collection is presented in recognition of German Unification Day, which just happened to land on October 3rd (in 1990), and has been celebrated on that day ever since.

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Coverly put a “T” in front of the first “CH”, but neglected to do the same for the second, which would have made the pronunciation clearer, but it might have annoyed the syndicate’s censors.

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During my first stay in Germany (over 35 years ago), once I had begun to understand and speak a little of the language, I was frequently astonished (and/or embarrassed) by the linguistic abilities of German toddlers, which were often better than my own.

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Here’s a classic riddle for students beginning to learn the language:
Q – “What does a German parakeet say?“
A – (in a deep voice): “Billig! Billig!” (meaning “cheap”, of course)

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As unlikely as it may seem, Hogan’s Heroes wasn’t just translated into German, they actually did it twice, because the first version didn’t get good enough ratings. The scriptwriters for the newer version invented details and even (unseen) characters not found in the original shows, and the dialog (of the “Germans”) was changed from standard (“Hochdeutsch“) pronunciation to more comical (Bavarian and Saxon) dialects.

The American characters speak normal German in the translation, except for “Newkirk” (Richard Dawson’s character), who was changed from British to being a stutterer, which was both unnecessary and is absolutely unwatchable (at least for anyone who is familiar with the original show). I don’t remember whether LeBeau was synchronized into German with a French accent.

P.S. Keith Knight has drawn at least a dozen strips based on interactions with his (German) wife; there are simply too many of them to include them all here. Perhaps later, in a separate “linguistic” post.

by multipleciduers

Labor Day 2024

A bit of nostalgia here, since we seem to have been in a continual U.S. political campaign since 2018, with little or no letup.

The day after Labor Day used to be the traditional day for school to start, but the start has crept backwards: the local schools start a full two weeks earlier. Are there schools that have the patience to wait until after Labor Day? (colleges don’t count).

Since this is CIDU, we’re including this one, that’s not so much a CIDU as a search engine lookup for Hokas.

Labor Day is typically the end of the period when vacations are taken for adults as well, at least those who have children in school.

And to close out with a return to a pet view :

by zbicyclist

Heads Up! Tomorrow is Stranger’s Day

Why not a day to celebrate strangers?

Where would we be without strangers? Strangers grow our food. Strangers in factories make stuff we need. Strangers make important decisions for us, like whether we get into our first-choice college, or whether we get audited by the IRS.

Let’s face it. In the aggregate, strangers are more important to us than friends.

But speaking of obscure non-holidays:

Did we post this before?

Adding today’s Arlo and Janis as a late entry: