by Kilby

The “U” Word

Extending the “counting on cartoon fingers” topic from Tuesday, Mark H. also submitted this Baby Blues strip, commenting: “Isn’t Uranus the seventh planet, not the eighth?“

Mark is exactly right. The author must be missing a finger or two. Besides that, “Earth” and “Mars” are the only two planets in the whole Solar System that do not have at least one “U” in their names.

Kilby adds: I witnessed (and participated in) the most uproarious pandemonium I have ever experienced in a school classroom during a presentation about the seventh (and not the eighth) planet in junior high school. The student at the board was trying (but failing) to maintain his composure, and everyone in the room (except the teacher) was giggling at least a little bit at the sophomoric joke inherent in the repeated pronunciations of the name.

The fatal mistake occurred when the kid attempted a quick sketch of the planet’s (severely tilted) axis. His intent was to draw a circle with a horizontal line through it, much like a Greek “Theta” (ϴ), but his subconscious played a trick on him, and the resulting diagram had a vertical line, just like a Greek “Phi” (Φ), or (as we all immediately recognized) “two cheeks of the moon“. Everyone in the room blew up: all the students were laughing, and even the teacher’s unbridled fury could not restore order.

Even now, nearly five decades later, and although I have attempted to keep these paragraphs as dry and objective as possible, I cannot help but giggle at the memory of the scene, so I understand exactly the way Hammie feels in the strip above.

by Kilby

Passing Exactly the Same Gasses

I think that these comics are closer to EWWWs, but DollarBill submitted them as synchronous OYs, commenting “same day, same theme, juxtaposition next to each other in my GoComics daily feed“. The latter is not surprising, given that the titles are alphabetically adjacent to each other:

Blazek’s comic was a brief CIDU for me, but it wasn’t that hard to figure out. If there ever was a feature that GoComics should have renamed for just one day, this was it:

Dan Collins wasn’t taking any chances with misunderstandings: the label on the bubble seems gratuitous and unnecessarily crude, but without it, the color might not have been enough to identify the contents, since he did not indicate the precise location of the source.

…
P.S. No matter how it was generated, a bubble that large would have a good chance of capsizing that boat. Aerated water has a much lower density, and cannot support the same weight as normal water, so the vessel sinks. This is a factor with depth charges used against submarines. Even if the explosion itself does not cause a leak, the reduced buoyancy may cause the submarine to fall to a depth where the water pressure is too high, fatally damaging the hull (as happened in the Ocean Gate disaster last year).

by Kilby

Lead Times

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.

by Kilby

Counting Fingers

Mark H. submitted this Hägar strip for discussion:

…
Mark comments: “This is one of the only comics I have seen where the four-fingered cartoon hands were used as part of the joke. But what if he had needed a nine-iron?“

P.S. For the purposes of this discussion, we will ignore the fact that the group appears to be playing a Three Club Challenge, so that asking for a particular iron would be pointless: each player is carrying exactly one wood, one iron, and a putter in his bag. Lucky Eddie has never had a reputation for brilliance.

by multipleciduers

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, October 13th, 2024

Yes, when you say “things can’t get any worse”, it only shows your failure of imagination.

Part of the reason for posting this is that if you subscribe to GoComics, the Sunday lagniappe panel is not included. I don’t understand the reason for this. It’s there in what the syndicate gets. I’m a paying customer. Jef posts it on Facebook, so he clearly wants it out there. Why not show it to me?

Haven’t we always suspected this?

by phsiii

Point of order

BillR offers:

Came across this guy, Cameron Spires, who calls his strip Goat to Self. Most of his are borderline NSFW, or over the line, somewhat surrealistic, or just vague. Can’t figure this one out at all.

This editor posits that the key is that the dolphin (porpoise? beluga?) in the last panel is the defense lawyer, and the objection is to forcing self-incrimination. Mind you, I’m not sure that’s up to the defense lawyer — I think the witness has to invoke that themselves.