The “1 and done” panel comic is not quite new to CIDU, but pretty rare. Here are two of their entries from a recent week. In the first one you can sort of make out the text in the manuscript, and it incorporates the important discovery that this draft was done in (Modern or Early-Modern) English! And on the meta plane, to boot, the caption launches with the same opening words.
This one is also a LOL, but something of a CIDU into the bargain. We get the idea of a joke, the mismatch between the grandiosity of the way he expresses it and the mundanity of the task. BUT why does he look like Moses? Is he delusional? Does he just like to dress up? Or maybe this is Moses, thrown into modern life?
There are lots of comics about pandemic accommodations and inconveniences, some quite good and some not so much. This one struck our funny bone as charming and gentle. (Despite the swordplay!)
Good turnaround joke contributed by Anon.
Wait, are they confederates? Or is the pin guy just horning in?
The job of drawing Sisyphus-related cartoons, and keeping track of them, never seems to approach an end, as noted by Arvy, who contributed these first three.
Steve Martin wanted to make cartoons, but he can only draw stick figures. He teamed up with the illustrator Harry Bliss, and the result is their new book, “A Wealth of Pigeons.”
New York Times 2020-11-11
Sometime-NewYorker cartoonist Jason Adam Katzenstein can’t seem to let go of the Sisyphus theme! The “work at home” one also qualifies for our “pandemic-related” tag.
In addition to those from Arvy, here’s a long one from Existential Comics.
In case you didn’t know, the “Nick and Zuzu” comic panels run as accompaniment to an advice column by Carolyn Hax. Sometimes they really depend on the writing and are totally CIDU without it. Other times, the comic is quite independent of the column which sparked it; and that is the case here. And the cartoons appear elsewhere, where the column is not available or even mentioned, such as GoComics.
I generally grudge-read PBF, along with a couple other hyper-cynical comics. But this one struck me as funny and appealing.
And really nice is the collection of rock stuff in the middle panel. That’s a Yellow Submarine picture on the wall, the album on the bed with the yellow smear is probably the banana-cover Velvet Underground first album, the open mouth next to it seems Rolling Stones related. And is the blimp picture a reference to Led Zeppelin?
Hah! Gotcha, Mothra! From Andréa. (Who suggests there is word play going on between ‘Mothra’ and treating it as a ‘moth’. But isn’t that just what the name is about?)
Absurdism, put in its place.
Contributed by Andréa, who says “Particularly funny for me, as mysteries are my favorite genre.”
But truth to tell, we just wanted an excuse to try out the poll feature and see if it really works. So here are two cases where various and sundry editors and senders-in were unsure whether and how to agree on how something would be taken, and said: let the vox pop have a say.
First up, Boise Ed sent this one in as a CIDU, asking: “What does the Casper the Friendly Ghost toon have to do with mattresses?”
However, it turns out the puzzle entirely dissolves, and the connection is clear, for people who happen to be aware of a certain fact. But is this a fact most readers will know, or only a few? And then, when you do know, is the cartoon a good joke, or a shrug?
Please record your view in the poll just below. And commenters, please refrain from explaining it all for about 24 hours, if you don’t mind. Thanks!
Next up, Andréa and Chak both sent in this Reality Check of a giant feline on the rampage!
It’s been called a CIDU, a LOL/Oy , and an Ewww. As CIDU: “What is this, just Catzilla? Or is there more to it?” . The Oy factor is the wordplay from the usual sense of “Big box store” for the kind of building, to an idea that it could mean a place to obtain a big box. The Ewww might be if you thought the giant cat wanted to find a suitably large litter box. And the LOL reading is still with the idea of obtaining a very big box, but just for the giant cat’s comfort and amusement — just like your housecat, who will play with and curl up in an empty cardboard box even in preference to the toy or pet bed that may have come in it.
