Why is this not a CIDU? Because it clears up when you realize that named artist is real, and learn even the first thing about them. Here’s Wikipedia: ” Lucio Fontana was an Argentine-Italian painter, sculptor and theorist. He’s known as the founder of Spatialism and exponent of abstract painting as the first known artist to slash his canvases – which symbolizes an utter rejection of all prerequisites of art.”
Diamond Lil departs from their pun-a-day usual practice, and gives us a nicely planned meta.
A well-executed entry in the own-petard category.
Featured Image (at top) Concetto spaziale, Attese, 1965 Lucio Fontana
Just continuing to document days when the English and Spanish versions of Macanudo aren’t translations. Here the text differs, but the fun conceit is the same.
Let’s revisit a topic we’ve seen in different lights at different times: How the English and Spanish versions of Baldo may differ in how a joke works.
Here the joke comes off okay in English, as based in written language (or anyhow spelling). The specifics won’t work in Spanish, so they settle for a less striking point.
P.S. The previous day’s comic clarifies that “work for me” probably means more like “as a substitute” than like “as an employee”.
You ever think — or find yourself actually writing a comment — that the comic we’re seeing maybe has a point or makes a joke, or maybe doesn’t really, but in any case would be much better off if only some aspect were changed?
We just have to agree with some commenters on the GoComics appearance of this panel in October 2023 that getting a joke from this would seem to require knowing which of the gorillas ordered the virgin daiquiri. Is it the one facing us from the far end of the banquette and looking (maybe) a little abashed? Or could it have worked better with one gorilla and three humans? Or how about …
One original commenter said The joke isn’t about which ordered it – the joke is that the virgin one is simply a banana…. Does that help? Or does it just emphasize that *all* of them would probably want the plain banana?
Okay, sure, the little one is the “sub” woofer because it’s subordinate. I guess. — But, but … When it comes to actual acoustic speakers (where the terminology originated), a sub woofer produces even lower pitches than a woofer, and therefore needs to be larger. — Okay, that might fix the technicality, but it would ruin the joke. – Nah, it would be funnier that way, with the facts working. – Nah, it would be stupid that way. Everybody would say, “But what’s the joke?”
And what do mice know or care, about an MRI scan? Ah, but if it were about CAT scans, then we would understand the issue!
This striking but very puzzling Six Chix cartoon by the Friday chick, Maritsa Patrinos, was suggested by CIDU readers travelgirl, bobanero, and Jack Applin; and understanding remains elusive also for CIDU editors and for Comics Kingdom commenters.
(P.S., thanks for letting us know about https://www.usatoday.com/comics as another outlet for viewing King Features / Comics Kingdom cartoons.)
P.S.
Little did we suspect, when writing a title for this post based on the Six Chix comic, that we would almost immediately run across an actual Midas-themed cartoon!
CIDU QUEUE REMINDER
As always — but it needs saying explicitly again now and then — we like to think of this as a reader-participation site, and not just for your invaluable (or anyhow amusing) comments, but for suggestions of comics to run and discuss.
Please share your specific suggestions of panels or strips, in CIDU, LOL, and OY categories, either by direct email to
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”?
At first sight, this was going to be a CIDU. Then it was agreed to be not that puzzling — still, it’s not perfectly clear if it’s just a funny situation idea.
Say, what actually was the reason for Cmdr. Bond’s preference? Do the components get more evenly mixed, or less? Does some air get incorporated? Does it bring out the flavoring of the vermouth? Or hide it?
A geezer theme for sure.
An interesting kind of Meta, that we are flatfootedly calling “LOL-Meta, alluding to an old joke, by forestalling it”. Possibly a CIDU for a few — if you don’t already know what the patient’s question had to have been, by all means venture an idea of it in comments.
Okay, do you agree this belongs in the LOLs? Or would you put it in OY, because the patient’s mishearing error depended on a near-miss similarity of sound between urine and hearing?
Thanks to Chak for this LOL from the Chuckle Bros:
When the New Yorker website has an outage, you see this message.
Hey, just a minute there! Are you saying there’s something wrong with that? It strikes me as an eminently reasonable basis for a preference.
Here is a sampler from recent episodes of an Australian strip that is new on our radar, Insanity Streak by Tony Lopes.
Comics I Don't Understand 