July 20, 2022July 19, 2022 by EditorM

“It’s Horace, the guy who tells jokes so sophisticated no one can understand them.”

Sent by Andréa, who also kindly linked this Bernoulli explainer. (Which however doesn’t make the joke really clearer.)

Barney and Clyde have a whole series of these this month. They are obscure, but are they funny? Here’s another. The humor seems species-ous.

And then again there are some, like the most recent episode, which we would gleefully consign to an “Ooopses!” list if we didn’t have this post to use it in.

Let us pass over in silence the syllable count of guacamole, and get right to the point: why isn’t there superscripting? If there’s an excuse in “He’s supposed to be speaking these”, still they should be written correctly and trust the reader to vocalize them appropriately; or heck, even write out him saying “times ten to the twenty-third” and something like “inverse moles” or simply “units per mole”.

July 4, 2022July 4, 2022 by zbicyclist

And Some Fireworks to End the Day!

If fireworks were sentient:

From Kilby, with a nod to Andréa and many other pet owners.

It took twenty years to find the solution in the cartoon world. But could this wizardry be commercialized?

By now, many of us have eaten our fill, perhaps of delicious sausages we know we probably shouldn’t be eating. Or maybe we have the FoxTrot Dad for a cook.

Stay tuned to your news source for more exciting adventures of The American Experiment, 2022!

June 18, 2022June 18, 2022 by EditorM

Saturday Morning Oys – June 18th, 2022

Thanks to Bill R, who says “It’s like they’re daring us to figure it out”. Which is why there is a CIDU category (“tag”) on this, along with the “(Not a CIDU)” for the OYs list in general. Look, don’t question it too hard. Oh, and it’s not a pun really, but gets an OY as a language-related item. Also this list was sitting bare too long …

The usage they’re disputing over was taught in my schooldays as one of “those common mistakes to be avoided”.

OK, I think (but am not positive) that I get the alternate meaning the joke depends on — from too many crime shows, the best deals a defendant’s lawyer might hope to extract from a prosecutor would involve setting no additional jail time, so the defendant gets to “walk away” or “take a walk”.

First I thought the outside guy was wearing an odd bathrobe; but throw in his laurel wreath and I guess he is at a toga party. But not the inside guy. Oh well, it doesn’t seem to affect the joke.

Possible cross-comic banter, based on spelling of the name?

June 11, 2022June 10, 2022 by EditorM

Saturday Morning Oys – June 11th, 2022

This took me a minute, as I don’t often use “home” for a physical house, the building.

For anyone not familiar with the comic, the character on the right, Lyndon, is a psychiatrist or therapist. So Freudian slips are like his stock in trade. But there is something funny in how this patient or client responds to the “Say again?” with an almost-repetition and not acknowledging he has made a correction.

An excellent OY that also had me at least chuckling out loud.

(But I have to confess I don’t know who the guy on the right is. I hope his identity wasn’t another part of the joke.)

Thanks to Rob for these next two OYs (and some hard-to-classify strips coming up elsewhere on the site):

I guess I’m wrong here — I would have said this doesn’t work unless he actually says “Heckuva” (variation possible for the c and/or k, but the v obligatory). But the crowd at GoComics seemed to take it in stride.

Time for some Andréa!

And a Sandal Synchronicity:

May 31, 2022May 29, 2022 by EditorM

You thought we couldn’t do another collection of Oopsies, Quickies, We-can-improve-its, Semi-CIDUs, Mysteries, and flops? (12th Series)

Thanks to Dana K for this Today’s Szep. The main joke is easy enough: the mere unlikely existence of this rack and these categories of card message. But what is all that ancillary action supposed to be about? Do these two know each other? Or is the woman just a judgemental bystander? Is she saying something, or just standing there with her jaw dropping?

On the first hand, this seems to me an excellent job of working out a technical experiment in the art of cartooning. Color-coding the speech bubbles could represent an improvement on trying to aim the pointers with precision, or stretching them around, or finding a basis for making the comic multi-panel so the dialogue can be rearranged.

But OTOH, the content of the dialogue is miles away from being at all funny. And is not even folk-wise, in that pseudo-deep way Frazz is so fond of trying.

Here’s a FoxTrot sent in by Kilby for the Oopses list. He says there is a real-world chronology error in showing Alpha-bits cereal in a current cartoon scene. “Alphabits was taken off the market in 2006, and made only brief periodic re-appearances, before disappearing again a year ago (May 2021). [Wikipedia link] The reason I checked is that I was not able to find them the last time I visited Washington. It’s possibe that Bill Amend is writing his strips a whole year in advance, but I seriously doubt it.”

Kilby also presents a judgement dilemma. “When a cartoonist recycles an ancient joke (albeit with ‘improvements’), is it better (A) To admit the crime, or (B) Just pretend that nobody will notice how ancient the gag really is?”

(A)

(B)

A classic case of “Oops!” from Le Vieux Lapin. Oops, I forgot to draw a cloud that looks like a comma.

April 28, 2022April 27, 2022 by EditorM

Barney & Clyde & Geezers & Zippy & Bill-the-Cat

B&C have been going in for geezer / boomer / retro references a bit lately.

The sender of the Spy v Spy one remarks Prohias stopped drawing “Spy vs. Spy” in 1987, and died in 1998. § Wikipedia claims that the series is still “ongoing”, but I still wonder whether the character in the fourth panel would be recognized by anyone under the age of 50.

Meanwhile, back at the Zippy, more geezer callout action:

William Bendix was among the actors I came to know of from 1950s or early 60s television sitcoms or sometimes drama series ; and found out later had been minor or major movie stars in the 1940s or early 50s. Fred MacMurray, Donna Reed, Raymond Burr…

And from Brian in STL we have a synchronicity of Bill the Cat references:

March 14, 2022March 8, 2022 by EditorM

Once more unto the Oopsies, Quickies, Semi-CIDUs, Mysteries, and flops? (8th Series)

Maybe it’s a genuine CIDU? But I think that punch line is all there is.

I think we all can sympathize with Duane’s motivations for his … little prank. And that’s the main joke, which is not in need of explication; so this isn’t quite a CIDU. But if we wanted to get into it a little, we could ask whether he’s getting revenge more on the kid or on the mom. And at the practical level, what does it mean that he still has the barber’s customer-apron as he’s leaving?

I guess this Working Daze fits an offshoot of the “CIDU-Quickie” category, where the joke is utterly incomprehensible until you are shown (or realize you already know) an instance of something-that’s-going-around, and then that entirely exhausts the mystery.

Linked here is a compilation of what lies behind the joke. (I can’t watch this all the way thru.)

February 20, 2022February 18, 2022 by EditorM