Usual John, Unca $crooge, and Dirk the Daring all sent this in, Dirk noting: “Normally this strip is just about sex, repetitive, but easy to understand. But this one I don’t get, what are they laughing at? Am I missing something obvious?”
It’s 9 Chickweed Lane, so it’s almost certainly about sex, but I don’t get it, either. Here’s the previous two days in this story line:
The following day (August 31, 2024) switched characters entirely, and does not help.
Dirk The Daring found this in The New Yorker. Of course a statistically significant percentage of New Yorker cartoons are CIDUs, but this one seems close to making sense. Something about her big ears and the ENT in the window?! Anyone? Bueller??
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When this first scrolled up for me, I had just glanced at it when I was called away to do something else, and my inner ear was repeating the final panel but misremembered with the terms reversed. I thought it was making an excellent if subtle point. Can a dog do a trick without *knowing* it? (Can a human?) Does a dog really know anything, or is that just what we say as a courtesy, while meaning the dog has a habit or pattern? But then, how does lack of knowledge not prevent successful performance? We say a person knows how to ride a bicycle when we see they are able to, but chances are they could not articulate what to do — so is it the same courtesy designation?
And I think we could raise some of the same questions from the way the comic actually presents the line!
Scott Adams was certainly not the first author to draw a comic featuring an Etch-A-Sketch, but this classic Dilbert strip (correction: from 1995) remains the standard against which all other attempts must be measured:
This Rose is Rose strip was published nine years earlier (in 1986), but to her credit, at least Rose can tell the difference between the devices:
As computer technology progressed, more recent comics were able to use tablets (instead of laptops), which made the misidentification more believable:
Here’s a handy guide to distinguish between the two:
Of all the strips showing kids using an Etch-A-Sketch as a “real” computer, this Jump Start is my favorite:
Not everyone is so pleased by the idea of image impermanence:
The Off the Mark at the top already appeared at CIDU (on May Day 2023) but Parisi also drew two other comics that are notable for incorporating pseudo-authentic Etch-A-Sketch artwork into the drawing. The first one is truly superb, especially for including the masterful meta-pun on “line”:
This final Off the Mark comic has a fatal flaw (morbid pun intended). The “sketchy” artwork is actually its best feature, but it would have been even better with a pair of round knobs on the monitor. The tragic defect is that the author did not bother to properly credit (or apologize to) André Cassagnes, who was still alive when this comic was published in 2008 (he died just five years later).
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P.S. Today (23-Sep-2024) would have been the inventor’s 98th birthday.
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Yes, yes! One of these guys sold me a “This is not a shirt” tee shirt.
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Unless it was one of these guys! Number five looks very sus!
Boise Ed sent this one in, noting “The robotic lawn mower is just doing what it is supposed to do, right?”
Your editor, drawing from unfortunate personal experiences, sees allusions to the problems caused when one dog is on leash, but another dog is not, or maybe just barking dogs in general. So we’re marking this CIAU (Comic I almost understand)
Recently surfaced by Dan Piraro for use in his Naked Cartoonist premium essay series.
And his Bizarro partner Wayno on his weekly blog posts sometimes chooses a panel and shows the changes he made to turn it into the strip version. In this case, the strip had to become a column.
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For both versions, I had a mental-block kind of a problem, as the order of names in the caption does not agree with the placement of the characters in the drawing if taken left-to-right. No, there’s no reason they need to agree, so this is not a criticism, just a note on the mental twitch that left me studying them in puzzlement for a good minute. Anyone else?
It seems like we will be getting a lesson, about caring or something like that. But who is the “invisible woman”? The strongly drawn character in the foreground, whose story we have no difficulty seeing? Or one of the dimmed-out supernumeraries in the background, whose narrative we see only in chopped-up pieces? And either way, … so what?
I have no idea what Leigh Rubin intended with this cartoon:
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The symbols on the wall are indeed a pair of ankhs, but why is it supposed to be funny when a goose says that?
Panel 1 says “Dik Browne”, but both he and son Chris are deceased. Who’s doing the strip now? And with Nancy running with guest artists, is that person one of the guest artists, or someone who wishes they were one of the guest artists? (Note Nancy and Fritzi in panel 4)
I did find this on Comics Beat, in Chris’s obituary: “Following the retirement and death of its creator, Dik’s sons Chris and Chance Browne – plus illustrator and cartoonist Gary Hallgren who has drawn the series since 2015 – took over the reins. Chris’ thirty-plus year tenure on the character (his brother Chance works mainly on the continuation of their father’s other series Hi and Lois but assisted with edits) – from 1989 to 2023 – makes him the strip’s longest serving cartoonist (his father retired in 1988, accumulating 16 years of material).”
On Facebook, a commenter dug deep into his comic archive to find this similar gag from Ernie Bushmiller:
Or is either genuinely what the costume suggests?
Comics I Don't Understand 