Mitch4 sends in this “classic pun form”.




Mitch4 sends in this “classic pun form”.





In 1956 Ampex introduced the 2-inch quadruplex videotape, which became the first commercially successful format for television broadcasting.
Wouldn’t the joke work better with “new”?
The New Yorker has a feature called Laugh Lines. The challenge there is to place several cartoons in chronological order. We’re going to play a version of this with pairs of cartoons that appear in the CIDU archives. Each pair will be from the same comic, so style will be a clue. The link with the letter points to the original posting here at CIDU. The years aren’t that far apart, because they only go back to when Bill had to restart the site. I’ve added a couple at the end that aren’t from the CIDU archives and are farther apart.
Pair #1. A:

B:

Pair #2. A:

B:

Pair #3. A:

B:

#4, a triplet (not from CIDU archives)
A:

B:

C:

#5 (not from CIDU archives)
A:

B:

JMcAndrew sends in this old Beetle Bailey: “I collect vintage advertising and I am very aware of the crimes against humanity committed with aspic Jello salads.”

He also sent in a bit of vintage Jello advertising:

You may wonder about that fish. Fish in Jello? But some years ago your editor worked for a US pet food company, and we wanted to see what pet foods were sold in other countries that we might sell here. One we had shipped in from Australia was “Pilchards in Aspic”, essentially small herrings in a gelatin matrix, sold as a cat food. We passed on this one.

from Wikipedia: “By the 1950s, salads became so popular that Jell-O responded with savory and vegetable flavors such as celery, Italian, mixed vegetable, and seasoned tomato. These flavors have since been discontinued.”
Usual John sends this in: “Is this perhaps a colorist’s error? I don’t see any premature gray other than hair.”

Or is this a cultural reference? An obscure pun?

JMcAndrew asks, “I’d think at age 5 Dennis would already know what a zoo is. Did Henry take Dennis to some kind of strip club and tell him it was the zoo?”
From the expression on Henry’s face, I think that might be the case, though this seems odd and inappropriate for a DtM strip!
I’m reminded of the alleged bar or strip club named The Library, a great place to spend an afternoon “studying”…


He’s gonna need a bigger raft.


JMcAndrew sends this in: “Firstly writing a memo asking for a tooth check is still pretty insane. Wouldn’t this be called an oral or dental exam and be performed by an actual dentist?
Also this isn’t what I expected a toot check to be. This could have been a much more interesting comic if they had the platoon taking turns farting in his face. [probably wouldn’t have made it past the comics editors then -ed.]
Maybe this is why the US army has a mandatory retirement age of 64 for senior officers?”

Ah, but those of us who worked in any bureaucrazy are well aware of something apparently nonsensical coming down from above. Is that really what they meant? Should we just do it as requested, or kick it back up for clarification? How many times can you question the bureaucrazy without getting labelled as a troublemaker?

Boise Ed sends this in.

Flagging the third one as a comic fan’s OY, but need to do two earlier ones in the series as a setup:




Mitch4 sends this in:

And while we’re on the subject of Freud, Mitch4 also sends this:

Freud’s unconscious cravings had more to do with sex, if I recall correctly, but there are other unconscious cravings.
JMcAndrew sends this in: “Why does he have the giant poster of a fly to begin with? Is he going to start eating anything vaguely associated with fruit? This isn’t a comic I normally read.”

billr sends this in, a bit late in the season for snowman comics: “I got nothing.”

Some hints here.
But while we’re on the topic of CIDU snowmen, there’s this momentary CIDU from 1966.


Probably something obvious I’m missing here. What is it?