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.
Rather than repeat the elaborate memorial post for CIDU Bill’s birthday, this year I thought we could let one comic say it all:
A Sad-LOL for sure!
Or is this maybe a Semi-CIDU for anybody?
McDonald’s decides to open one test site for a new concept, CosMc’s, to overmuch social media hype, and now a tip of the hat from Greg Cravens. In the current iteration, it’s drive-thru only, with no restrooms.
The “5-31” in the panel is easy enough, but I’m having a hard time making out the year in the (c) strip. Scrolling in the Comics Kingdom archive to the previous few strips, I think it could be 1967.
Which is maybe late enough that she might have turned out to be the surgeon rather than the nurse. (Certainly by that year the joke/riddle of “A father and his son were out for a Sunday drive” was already quite popular.) Or no, how could a surgeon go out with an enlisted man?
[Does anybody need the rest of the story??]
This gets extra tags — some kinda Meta for not using the standard joke set up in panel 1, and some kinda Geezer warning for those youngsters who don’t see something familiar behind “Killjoy was here”.
Maybe. My local newspaper (Chicago Tribune) has become an indistinct shadow of its former self, and the comics are shrunken and in black and white.
Despite the “(Not a CIDU)” category applied to this post as a whole, this item may take a bit of concentration and research before you can join in saying “Oh, I’ve got it completely decoded now!”.
There will be no arguing over whether this is truly a “meta” comic!
We think this is a rerun; but if so, then it falls into “an oldie but goodie”.
Here’s the funny-sad one promised in the category tags.
BTW, do they have a walkie-talkie set, or is that a quite old-school cell phone?
A sad-LOL.
This might be a Semi-CIDU, as there is the question of whether this is how the cowboy bathes (and gets the horse to manage the timing and coins), or it’s at the horse’s volition as it wants its gear and rider to be clean.
The “when I look” and “someone will sneak” look like ordinary indicatives, with something like habitual aspect. But surely this doesn’t happen a lot! If we take into account the strip title, that makes this binocular-knocking one of those fears — we just have to understand a “One of my fears is that when ..” at the start and it all comes together.
And here’s our Macabre-LOL for the week:
Background: https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-question-mark-galaxy-photo
I was thinking of this as a CIDU until I saw a comment at GoComics suggesting they are collecting signatures on a petition — for a candidate or for a ballot measure, we can’t say. The car does put them outdoors. Certainly there are still questions, but can we ask all to refrain from objecting to the co-occurrence of the “(Not a CIDU)” category for the LOL listing post and a stray “CIDU” categorization for the lingering doubts of this cartoon?
So it’s still snail week at BOB MANKOFF PRESENTS: SHOW ME THE FUNNY (ANIMAL EDITION).
A Sad-LOL fer shure:
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 Rhymes With Orange LOL is from Alan Smithee.
UPDATE
Let’s see if this image is any cleaner
A mordant bit of meta.
Are all of them possible “jumpers” in their own contexts?
Here’s that Sad-LOL promised in the Tags.
And from DollarBill, a Fusco Brothers LOL with some Meta or 4thWall aspects:
This should fulfill the category tag of “Momentary CIDU”. It presents something genuinely puzzling, but solvable quickly enough that it wouldn’t work as a daily standalone CIDU post.
A delectable one from Mutts’ finicky cat.
I couldn’t resist tossing this in the list … for the sake of quoting these classic lyrics: Ahh you've gone to the finest school, all right Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get JUICED in it
Nobody's ever taught you how to live out on the street
But you find out now you're gonna have to get USED to it
Here is the Dark-LOL advertised in the Category links:
Chemgal sends in this pair from Strange Planet:
Is the phrasing that somebody “is assisting the police in their inquiries” used everywhere? I first learned the phrase back when I worked for the Journals Division and a certain scholarly Association worked with us to draft a press release and statement to go in the journal they sponsored and edited but we published. The readership / membership had to be told that there would be an interim Acting Editor for an issue or more, as the Editor’s stay in the UK was being extended as he was needed there “to assist the authorities in their inquiries into the circumstances of the death of his wife”! [mitch]
We just had “The Grill is On” as an OY yesterday, so we’ll pick another song to wake you up this morning. [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1fImXAeS-s if the embed doesn’t show up correctly; your new editor is still learning a few things ]
Sometimes Bliss cartoons portray its absence.
Here the dog’s tear is the extra-poignant touch.
Color and b/w comparison, just for fun/
Comics I Don't Understand 