Lead Times

Mark H. submitted these three Arlo & Janis strips, commenting: “I don’t know what comic lead times are now (I seem to remember 2-3 weeks), but these comics appeared only eight days [!] after Kris Kristofferson‘s passing. It would be best if the three comics so far this week (Mon – Wed) were posted together.




P.S. I checked “ArloAndJanis.com“, but all of Jimmy Johnson’s recent posts are just about the relaunch, he hasn’t said anything about lead times or accelerating these strips.

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, October 13th, 2024

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?



Haven’t we always suspected this?


Bonus: Theory of mind

When this first scrolled up for me, I had just glanced at it when I was called away to do something else, and my inner ear was repeating the final panel but misremembered with the terms reversed. I thought it was making an excellent if subtle point. Can a dog do a trick without *knowing* it? (Can a human?) Does a dog really know anything, or is that just what we say as a courtesy, while meaning the dog has a habit or pattern? But then, how does lack of knowledge not prevent successful performance? We say a person knows how to ride a bicycle when we see they are able to, but chances are they could not articulate what to do — so is it the same courtesy designation?

And I think we could raise some of the same questions from the way the comic actually presents the line!

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, September 22nd, 2024

Yes, yes! One of these guys sold me a “This is not a shirt” tee shirt.

Unless it was one of these guys! Number five looks very sus!






Boise Ed sent this one in, noting “The robotic lawn mower is just doing what it is supposed to do, right?”

Your editor, drawing from unfortunate personal experiences, sees allusions to the problems caused when one dog is on leash, but another dog is not, or maybe just barking dogs in general. So we’re marking this CIAU (Comic I almost understand)



Sunday Funnies – LOLs, September 15th, 2024



Grawlix has shared as a CIHS (Comic I Haven’t Seen) this instance, called “What’s New?”, from the strip Poorly Drawn Lines by Reza Farazmand. Grawlix sees them from time to time on Facebook, but the strip also has a website; and warns that “It does contain NSFW language from time to time, unfortunately.” Oh, and we have been unable to establish connections with musician Badly Drawn Boy.


But, another county heard from…


Not quite a CIHS, but truth to tell I’ve been looking at it rather inattentively for a while. This one made me stop, and wonder about the apparent mésalliance. Well, a little rewinding, and checking the “About” blurb, informs us that Little Pig #3’s Girlfriend is Wolfette, and is sister to the actual Big Bad Wolf — who in this retelling is still pretty bad.




Useful among the online comments — “Relationship Status: It’s Complicated”


Sunday Funnies – LOLs, September 08th, 2024




Okay, so exposing and satirizing clickbait and spam is not entirely an original idea. But what excellent execution there is in the deflating domain names!


Possibly inspired by the number of people who refer to a pickleball racquet, rather than paddle. Oar maybe not.


Typically when we’ve dealt with a long-form Cat and Girl, the cartoon has seemed to need some explaining, and we shoehorn it into a CIDU option of some kind. So what a pleasure it is to see them straightforwardly taking on some “complaint observational humor” (well, with exaggeration, but that’s to be expected).




Bonus: Synchronous Heat Waves

Not only were these two published just one day apart, the jokes are identical, as is the fundamental physical impossibility. Neither one would appear to be related to a specific incident or place.

Bill Amend currently lives in Missouri, but Foxtrot isn’t tied to a specific location: “I’ve never established where the Fox family lives and I’m not sure the sort of place I depict really exists. It’s sort of that generic cartoon version of suburbia that a lot of strips share where it snows in the winter and is near water when necessary. I grew up in New England and Northern California, and I think bits of that come through, but it’s nowhere specific.


B.C. takes place somewhere in Generic Cave Man Land, but Mason Mastroianni lives in upstate New York.