Macanudo has been extremely dependable since I started following it several years ago: whimsical, sometimes poignant, but often surreal (and occasionally CIDU). Like Rubes, this makes it all the more noticeable when a strip just doesn’t work, like this one:
… The slapstick “flattening” might have worked if the strip had ended at the third panel (shifting “Are you OK?” into the second dialog balloon), but including the partner’s desperation and anguish in the fourth panel transforms the remnant of humor into a simple tragedy, leaving nothing to laugh at or feel good about. Thankfully, the hiatus was just for one day.
This “Dog Eat Doug” was submitted by Usual John as an LOL, but this feature hasn’t been seen at CIDU since August 2020 (a pair submitted by Andréa and posted by Bill), so I’m adding a CIHS tag.
… John added, “While this is mainly a LOL, I am unclear on why the messenger thought the blue jay general, or whoever he thought he was reporting to, would be in a baby carriage.“
Boise Ed submitted this Rhymes with Orange as a CIDU, asking “It’s the old Adam-and-Eve scene, but why is his leaf attracting flies or other bugs and what’s with the days of the week?” – I think the answer is obvious enough to reclassify this as an LOL-Ewww:
… P.S. The “days of the week” are of course a reference to a type of underwear that I have often heard about, but never actually seen. I thought they were usually intended for girls, but when I hunted for a screenshot, I discovered that they were also available for boys, and even came in men’s sizes:
… In order, the names of the ghosts would be Blolga (red), Polga (pink), Olga (cyan), and Clyde (orange). Since Olga is always that color, maybe he has more reason to fear than the other three.
Bob Ball send in this as a LOL / synchronicity. We don’t publish synchronicities much anymore, but this is worthy of LOL. This is part of a thread on Pearls, where Pastis makes fun of oversensitivity towards certain terms by labelling junk drawer as an insult. But while I understand the term junk drawer, mine is a miscellany drawer; there are things in there that occasionally get used (e.g. double-sided tape). What do you call yours?
Yes, when you say “things can’t get any worse”, it only shows your failure of imagination.
Part of the reason for posting this is that if you subscribe to GoComics, the Sunday lagniappe panel is not included. I don’t understand the reason for this. It’s there in what the syndicate gets. I’m a paying customer. Jef posts it on Facebook, so he clearly wants it out there. Why not show it to me?
Usual John sent this one. The older man is the manager two levels up.
Puzzled? Think “Exit 1, Exit 2, and Exit 3.”
A devoted cat person is going to be reluctant to blame sneezes on sensitivity to the cat. And cats are in return sensitive over human sneezing, as shown in panels 3 and 4. My cats are even more sensitive than Ludwig, and likely would run away at the point of Achoo!
A nice Thurber shout-out here. And do you agree the Bliss dogs bear a resemblance to Thurber dogs?
And for fun let’s compare the color version:
I’d say the color is nicer as a mild-humor comic, but the Thurber book identity is obscured.
But no, I can’t figure out what the pairings and lines are doing. It’s certainly not the standard March Madness sort of bracketting. Maybe if I had reread the book at some point in the last 50 years I would do better. … OK, here’s a help page. Wait, how can it fail to mention Dorothea’s nickname, “Dodo”?
Thanks to Rob S. for this next Batch Rejection and the Tom Falco:
Comics Kingdom released its new site on Wednesday, and at first nothing was working there. But when we finally did get to see some comics, the first one was this very good Macanudo!
Usual John provides this one, which definitely earns an extra “Eww”
The holidays are done, but the cartoons are not all done with Xmas and NYear LOLs!
LOL-Ewww did you say?
Does Eric Scott’s drawing style sometimes seem to have a Thurber feel?
This Santino is an almost-CIDU: commenters on his page talk about getting it only after pausing and looking at it another way, or filling in their literary knowledge.
Once upon a time (it was December, actually) Sandra sent this in, and noted it could be a LOL-semi-CIDU as it’s not first-glance obvious what’s going on.
Actually, the editors’ feeling of confidence in one explanation faded upon discussion. Is this cat-behavior being actively performed by an animated cat-statue? Or is it a static statue of characteristic cat-behavior?
Either way, it’s the sort of thing cat people regard with loving exasperation. The great filmmaker Agnès Varda felt like putting her cat on a monument, and did so in her short Le Lion Volatil (actuality on left, modification on right):
And as Aaron notes when sending this next one in, Falco really wants to say something about this gap-week.
Kilby writes: When Bill Bickel suddenly passed away three years ago, he left a very large collection of incomplete “draft” posts in progress. Some of these were duplicate copies of comics that did get posted, and others were just empty placeholders, but a number of these drafts still contain comics that are worth posting, if for no other reason than simply for the nostalgia of remembering Bill’s dedication to the CIDU website. I don’t want to release all of these old drafts in a flood, so expect to see them only on an intermittent basis (in addition to Bill’s traditional “evergreens” that get reposted every year).
He meant to order an inflatable doll, but received an inflatable bed of nails.
P.S. A couple days later, this character and that prop re-appear; but decidedly not funny :-( .
BTW, Gocomics gives this feature filenames that look like loesp230927.jpg, clueing us that at some point they were considering it to be Life On Earth in Spanish. (The same artist does the Life on Earth comic.)
Comics I Don't Understand 