Last week — 4th wall needed for a watching-the-news story. (It’s just the date formatting that makes this look like a panel from the future.)
The joke is somewhat spoiled (or at least delayed) by the way the sightlines are drawn. But it emerges that what sound like rules for a tweenage girl being left home alone are being directed to Baby Bear (the dog); who isn’t agreeing to them. (And yes, still downloads from WaPo as .AVIF and needs pre-converting.)
And this Wondermark is not really much of a LOL, but it does provide a chuckle, and prompts me to remember encountering another sense of “Bridge club” in some novels of British India (probably Paul Scott) — it was a party with several ethnic groups invited, and intended to bridge the cultural gaps.
In the U.S., the deadline for filing income tax is rapidly approaching.
Yes, this was another of those blasted .avif’s!
Even worse than the cartoon-biology here, if you ask me, is the crazy personal dynamic.
Thanks to Mark M for suggesting this Far Side. Can we answer his question about what dialogue or caption or drawn element could go where the bystander’s hand is blocking it out, to make this one of the funniest cartoons ever.
Here are two from dollarbill (and a third one we happened upon) with the 4th-wall or meta- theme of characters knowing they’re living in a cartoon. He mentions he has been “wading through J. C Duffy‘s humongous almost daily blog posting of comic/photos/short musings beside them sometimes,” which go back years. “Fusco Brothers is just one of his outputs. The number of fly-in-the-soup variations is staggering.” CIDU has sometimes featured Duffy’s Lug Nuts, somehow strikingly different in graphics appearance yet very recognizably his work.
Does this make you feel like Dark Side of the Horse is by now influencing successor generations?
Although most cats manage without mechanical mousetraps.
And it does match! But … but … just when did she think that?
This is a semi-cidu: you just have to know the title this is a sequel to.
And nobody had to spell “sommelier”!
We thank Andréa for sending this in. She says “I think it was the surprise ending that got to me.”
Aaron shared this Tom Falco (via the Suggest-a-CIDU form) , noting that it belongs with the coordinated event of over 100 cartoonists making some sort of Peanuts allusion as a tribute for Charles Schulz’s 100th birthday.
The CIDU editorial team noticed one or two of these on the day, and thought of posting a few in a bonus collection-type post; but frankly, didn’t get around to it. Aaron sending this one in reminded us, and it looked like a good idea to post this and one or two others that seemed appealing.
And we invite further of these from readers, in comments to this thread.
[For those who might prefer their Schulz-tributes wholesale, Kevin A in a comment last Thursday reminds us of the tribute event and notes “[…] the Charles M. Schulz Museum page, where all of them appear. ..or DO they? :~) . NOTE: the strips are linked; once you click into one, you can navigate forward and backward through all the strips. (6 x 17 = 102 tribute strips) https://schulzmuseum.org/tribute/ I REPEAT, the strips are linked; once you click into one, you can navigate forward and backward through all the strips. (6 x 17 = 102 tribute strips)”. ]
This excellent Bizarro by Wayno received special mention in several quarters. His comics partner, and founder of Bizarro, Dan Piraro, discussed it and added his own note on Schulz, at his weekly Bizarro blog. Retired linguistics professor and noted comics-explainer Arnold Zwicky made this panel the center of a blog post, where he calls it “A monumental puzzle in cartoon understanding” — but initially makes it a puzzle by omitting the tribute line along the bottom of the panel.
This Bliss appeared on 03 December, a week late for the Schulz anniversary, if that was the intention. So we are looking for a Gorey-related news prompt for this. Not that Gorey isn’t always worth thinking of!
Any others you found particularly interesting or funny or touching? Please drop into the comments thread!
Chemgal sends in this reminder that there might be a few syndromes not in DSM-5.
Thanks to John Reubens, who says “Thought this was clever. Made me LOL. 1880s version of unfriending? 🙂 “
Ran into this Liz Climo on Facebook; it doesn’t seem to be on GoComics, nor on her own site.
This is the funniest comic I’ve ever seen that seems reminiscent of the quadratic formula, although it doesn’t get the coefficients and exponents quite right.
To anyone who might have a birthday this year, Happy Birthday!
This is one that takes up a bunch of hyphenate tags. It’s a LOL-Meta-4thWall with a geezerish allusion to a story (urban legend) you just have to know to make it clear….
Would this hyena might benefit from checking Comics I Don’t Understand?
This almost went into the Oys list, since there is a play on a sort of ambiguity of where. This was a favorite joke-form of a friend of mine who knew Ulysses inside-out after teaching it to undergrads at Millard Fillmore College in Buffalo, and dubbed these “on the canal bank” jokes. It was from this bit, in the final chapter: I hate that confession when I used to go to Father Corrigan he touched me father and what harm if he did where and I said on the canal bank like a fool but whereabouts on your person my child on the leg behind high up was it yes rather high up was it where you sit down yes O Lord couldnt he say bottom right out and have done with it what has that got to do with it and did you whatever way he put it I forget no father
Comics I Don't Understand 