I find it hard to believe that any newspaper editor would have let Get Fuzzy strip this appear in print, even if the relevant expression is a little bit dated:
… The last dialog bubble in the fourth panel is closer to overkill than actually necessary, but it certainly makes it clear that the joke in the third panel was intentional.
This Yuval Robichek comic was submitted as a “choice half-Arlo”, but in Bill’s day it would never have appeared on the primary CIDU site: he would have banned it to his separate “Arlo” page. (But since it is a web comic, it wouldn’t qualify for an Arlo “award”.)
Carl Fink submitted this Hägar the Horrible strip, commenting: “I think this is way too obvious to actually be an Arlo. Is there a category for ‘The Funnies just showed a young couple having sex in front of their neighbors, only slightly off panel’?“
There are a series of fine distinctions related to CIDU Bill’s “Arlo” designation. Carl is absolutely correct in recognizing that this comic does not qualify for an “Arlo Award“, because there isn’t any hidden wordplay, and nothing has been secretly smuggled past the syndicate’s censors; the hot action is right there (to the left of the second panel), for all of us (not) to see.
Whether or not this is “Arlo material” is a matter of subjective opinion. There is nothing objectively offensive about two pairs of underwear, and especially not with such frumpy ones as shown here. I don’t think that even Bill would have thrown this comic into his “Arlo Page” purgatory, and he was especially careful about not wanting to offend even the most sensitive of CIDU readers.
Nevertheless, this example is surprisingly risqué for a syndicated comic, and all the more so for one published by King Features, which in my experience has always been the most “sanitized” of all the syndicates. It also shows that someone else (presumably Gary Hallgren, for lack of any official information) has taken over the writing duties for “Hägar”. I cannot imagine that Dik or Chris Browne would ever have produced a comic like this one (even if their name still appears on it).
If this strip (pun intended) didn’t trigger the KF-censors, then it’s probably because the editor decided that the “sex” is indefinite and unprovable: concerned parents could theoretically explain to their curious kids that the new couple have just changed into their pajamas (to go to Hägar’s bed). The duplicity is psychotic, but that’s the way Americans behave about this subject: remember the “wardrobe malfunction“?
Well, there’s a good OY on the left, and a good LOL on the right, and I’m feeling too lazy to get out the cropper, so let’s print it twice, once today, and once yesterday or tomorrow.
Not a huge LOL, but Tiger and Punkinhead here are reproducing a classic problem in the literature of logical representation, going back to Bertrand Russell.
An Arlo-LOL from Divad who says “I’ve got a pretty good guess what was on Arlo’s mind (in general), but I’m trying to not picture what he’s specifically thinking.”
Now that we’ve re-instituted the Arlo Award, who should come along needing that classification but Arlo and Janis themselves. (But of course the Award is named for Arlo Guthrie — and we’re sticking to that story!) But this is also a bit of a CIDU, in need of a little explication. Thanks to Andréa for this contribution.
Yes, the Arlo Award is still an ongoing operation! (The sequestered Arlo Page site is another matter.) The Award is for a somewhat racy or suggestive comic that by virtue of double entendre or sheer bluff can get past newspaper-oriented standards-and-practices.
This LuAnn Sunday strip was sent in by some CIDU stalwarts, most asking about the Arlo Award category, but one also counting it as a CIDU since the “spicy” reading is not unambiguous. And some have taken it to the GoComics comments thread, for that matter. Thanks to Bob Ball, Findus, Unca $crooge, and Karl.
Comics I Don't Understand 