Kilby writes: When Bill Bickel suddenly passed away three years ago, he left a very large collection of incomplete “draft” posts in progress. Some of these were duplicate copies of comics that did get posted, and others were just empty placeholders, but a number of these drafts still contain comics that are worth posting, if for no other reason than simply for the nostalgia of remembering Bill’s dedication to the CIDU website. I don’t want to release all of these old drafts in a flood, so expect to see them only on an intermittent basis (in addition to Bill’s traditional “evergreens” that get reposted every year).
Although they were invented in the 1940s, household microwave ovens did not become widespread until the mid 1970s, but I know for certain that I’ve been using the verb “nuke” (as a synonym for “cook in a microwave“) for at least four decades, because I vividly remember the puzzlement it caused for a friend’s son in the early 1980s. I find it somewhat surprising that the term could become so commonly accepted in less than a decade, but thinking back, this may be the very first time that I have ever seen the word “nuke” used in this sense in printed (albeit comic) form.
I’ve been following Mutts for decades; I really enjoy the artwork and its gentle and simple nature. Unfortunately, McDonnell frequently uses the strip to promote various “worthy” causes and ideologies. Although perhaps admirable, the campaign propaganda frequently damages the humor beyond repair.†
The Mutts strip shown here is one of (very) many in which McDonnell protests against the abusive habit of keeping dogs chained up, but it is notable for the excellent pun in the final panel. One minor detail that I find puzzling is the expression on Guard Dog’s face: I think that he should be smiling, or perhaps wincing.
P.S. † – One of the worst examples was a sequence in which the Fatty Snax Deli suddenly went “vegan”. I don’t think it has shown up again in the strip even once since that arc appeared.
Thanks to Mark H for sending in this sweet musical 4th-wall comic!
(Technical P.S. – There are emoji(s) in the title, yes. But they do not appear in the “slug” or the URL for this post, so should not wreak havoc with the indexing!)
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?
[Note from 2023 reposting] No comics added as of this reposting. Comments from 2021 and subsequently are preserved. If the note and link at the bottom are a bit confusing, they lead back to a separate posting which was a different version of the Veterans Day Add-ons idea, and is still available in the archive and by that link, but is not herewith being reposted.
[Note from 2021 original posting] Cartoons with Veterans relevance that we recently ran across, or that CIDU Bill had saved to the site’s media library with a note for possible Veterans Day add-on use.
These two we noticed on sequential days in Maria’s Day. Since that strip is on a reruns cycle at GoComics, the actual dates of the recent appearance were 31 August and 01 September, but apparently the original publication was on 10 and 11 November of some year.
There are more good ones that readers added in various years as comments to the original “Arlo’s Veterans Day” post (reposted earlier this morning). But here are others which got posted in various one-off’s at various times.
A very retro Beetle Bailey with a foreshadowing of Vietnam:
Camp Swampy may not ever have been a fighting base, but as this shows, they were not entirely outside a world where military conflict was a reality. And we can count all who served as veterans, whether or not they were in active combat or even in a war zone.
This strip seems to be dated 1964, and early enough in that year that “Viet Nam” did not yet mean all of what it would soon take on. Still, isn’t it a bit shocking that this might strike some of its audience as simply funny?
[Bill’s note from first postings on this site] This is something I made sure to rescue from the old site: after the first time I posted the 1996 sequence with Arlo’s father, somebody asked me to re-post it every year.
Unfortunately most of your comments are gone, but the 47 you posted in 2018 and 2019 are below.
[Note for 2022 — Reposting to continue Bill’s tradition. 2020 and 2021 comments also preserved.]
[Note for 2023 — Reposting, as per tradition. Past and 2022 comments preserved. Add-on comics for Veterans Day / Armistice Day will appear in another post in about an hour.]
