by Kilby

April Fools Review

This “Barney & Clyde” strip was submitted by Usual John:

I think the gag is that the strip itself does not have (and does not need) a gag, but I’m sure there are other possible explanations.

I went hunting to see if there were any other worthwhile April Fools’ strips, but was sorely disappointed. Almost all of the “standard” setups simply showed one character playing a typically lame practical joke on someone else. The best strips were those few that elevated the humor with some sort of “meta” component. Here are a few examples:


(I especially liked this “Thatababy” strip because this year, my daughter decided to rearrange the silverware drawer as an April Fools’ joke. Unfortunately, it didn’t work, because we all just assumed that she had forgotten the usual arrangement.)

The last two examples are from the great Comic Strip Switcheroo (1-Apr-1997):

P.S. Feel free to embed your own favorite April Fools’ comics in the comments!

by multipleciduers

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, April 7th, 2024

Keep doing variations on a theme, and sooner or later you’ll hit on one the fans don’t remember!

Have you seen the meme about the Welsh translation service?

Is the shell the choice spot for petting a tortoise?

Quite the wily allusion.

But only on condition they walk in together.

Geezer Alert!

This is the LOL-Weird entry for the week. Bizarro in more than name alone!

Thanks to Grawlix and Chemgal for suggesting this artist:

Here’s the LOL-Aww promised in the tags.

by EditorM

DUST

Is the joke just that there are social distinctions even among these kinds of items? Or is there an aspect that “dustbin” might be more of a British-sounding term and thus carry some cachet for those American cans?

Featured image (at top): “The dust-heaps, Somers Town, in 1836.” From an engraved wood print, circa 1880.
From this UC Santa Cruz site, about Dickens’s last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend (whose early drafts reportedly were titled Dust).

by zbicyclist

Trying to Eke Out a Joke Here

Jack Applin sent this in, with multiple comments;

• A cat is lecturing to people.
• The cat is using a laser pointer, but isn’t chasing the dot.
• “EKEKEKEK”? Not “EEK”.
• The mice have motion vectors; the leftmost is spinning.
• The bottom mouse is dead (x for eye).
• I thought the mice were in/above water, but that is text,
as seen in the bullet points to the right.
• Despite all this data, I have no idea what’s going on.

We are encouraging catty remarks in the comments.

by EditorM

Hagar meets some hooligans

The only joke I can fish out of this might be that we are supposed to know that the kids’ parents are sitting right there in the bar. But that might depend on us recognizing them as regular characters and knowing their families … a bit more than I can muster.

Or are the kids a crossover or tribute from another strip?? Wasn’t there a classic with “Hooligan” in the title? Oh, never mind.

by EditorM

Impossible!

Let’s revisit a topic we’ve seen in different lights at different times: How the English and Spanish versions of Baldo may differ in how a joke works.

Here the joke comes off okay in English, as based in written language (or anyhow spelling). The specifics won’t work in Spanish, so they settle for a less striking point.

P.S. The previous day’s comic clarifies that “work for me” probably means more like “as a substitute” than like “as an employee”.