Bill drafted this comic back in 2019; it seemed appropriate to post it on the first day of Hanukkah.
P.S. On various occasions Robin has used different spellings (such as “Hanukah“), whereas Bill was always careful to spell it “Chanukah” (as seen in the tags). Unfortunately, Bill’s memorable “(C)Han(n)uk(k)a(h)” spelling bracket was destroyed by Comicgeddon, but there was a nice bonus panel on the subject in a Menorah post in 2018.
Last week Robin sent some news, following up with “…feel free to share my post with the group! I am so happy that CIDU continues to be a place where people can actually converse in a civilized manner. Sadly, that seems to be less and less the norm every day.“, and adding that she “…will be sure to share news with the group during the [coming] year.”
I’ve added some relevant links and footnotes to Robin’s message:
Hope this little note finds everyone well at CIDU land! The boys and I are doing well and as it’s already the end of November. (Where does the time go?) I’m gearing up for holiday cards.† If anyone would like a card designed by the ever talented Zak, please drop me a line (even if you’ve gotten a card in years past).† Aaron and Mary Cate hosted a bike-a-thon to raise money for the rare disease Charcot Marie Tooth (which Mary Cate has).‡ It was a huge success, and they’ll be doing it again next September. I’ll send out an e-mail next summer in case people would like to donate or participate. It was a lot of fun. Zachary is still working hard making the business section of the NY Times all pretty. You can check out his Instagram at authenticzakbickel if you’d like to see his work. Eight of us (including Aaron and Zak) went to Vienna for a week. Not only did we eat fabulous food, see amazing architecture and really great museums, we also saw the government apartment building where my father-in-law lived when he was a young child. Happy Holidays everyone!
P.S. (†) – From last year’s holiday card reminder: send the e-mail to “robinbickel (at) gmail.com“, and put CIDU in the subject line. If you’d like, you can send Robin a card to 43 Peace Rd, Randolph, NJ 07869.
P.P.S. (‡) – The link goes to Bill’s most recent (2020) Walkathon post, in which Aaron gave some basic information about CMT and their fundraising. Please note that the link listed there for Mary Cate’s fundraising page is no longer in service.
[Note from 2023 reposting] No comics added as of this reposting. Comments from 2021 and subsequently are preserved. If the note and link at the bottom are a bit confusing, they lead back to a separate posting which was a different version of the Veterans Day Add-ons idea, and is still available in the archive and by that link, but is not herewith being reposted.
[Note from 2021 original posting] Cartoons with Veterans relevance that we recently ran across, or that CIDU Bill had saved to the site’s media library with a note for possible Veterans Day add-on use.
These two we noticed on sequential days in Maria’s Day. Since that strip is on a reruns cycle at GoComics, the actual dates of the recent appearance were 31 August and 01 September, but apparently the original publication was on 10 and 11 November of some year.
There are more good ones that readers added in various years as comments to the original “Arlo’s Veterans Day” post (reposted earlier this morning). But here are others which got posted in various one-off’s at various times.
A very retro Beetle Bailey with a foreshadowing of Vietnam:
Camp Swampy may not ever have been a fighting base, but as this shows, they were not entirely outside a world where military conflict was a reality. And we can count all who served as veterans, whether or not they were in active combat or even in a war zone.
This strip seems to be dated 1964, and early enough in that year that “Viet Nam” did not yet mean all of what it would soon take on. Still, isn’t it a bit shocking that this might strike some of its audience as simply funny?
[Bill’s note from first postings on this site] This is something I made sure to rescue from the old site: after the first time I posted the 1996 sequence with Arlo’s father, somebody asked me to re-post it every year.
Unfortunately most of your comments are gone, but the 47 you posted in 2018 and 2019 are below.
[Note for 2022 — Reposting to continue Bill’s tradition. 2020 and 2021 comments also preserved.]
[Note for 2023 — Reposting, as per tradition. Past and 2022 comments preserved. Add-on comics for Veterans Day / Armistice Day will appear in another post in about an hour.]
It’s Halloween! It’s one of the set of similar days with very different tones: There’s the Day of the Dead, with reverence for the departed. There’s Halloween, where in theory the evil spirits have power, but has evolved into a chance to meet the neighbor kids, if only briefly. There’s All Saints Day on November 1, a day of celebration. Following that, on November 2, is All Souls Day, which I remember in particular for that scary sequence in the old Latin liturgy:
O wrath, O day of mourning,
O hear the fateful prophet’s warning,
Heaven and earth in ashes burning. …
When the Judge his seat attaineth, And each hidden deed arraigneth, Nothing unavenged remaineth.
What shall I, frail man, be pleading? Who for me be interceding, When the just are mercy needing? …
The general tone is aptly captured in Verdi’s or Mozart’s Dies Irae, from their Requiem Masses.
Of course, you might also mistranslate “Dies Irae” as “Day of the Iras”, and listen to Ira Glass’s This American Life, or some of those great songs from George and Ira Gershwin. Or not.
Each year, Caufield dresses up as some character from literature, as padraig reminded us. Guessing the book doesn’t seem too hard, if you are a reader of a certain genre, but which character do you think he’ll be? The correct answer will be in the comic section soon!