Tag / Bill Amend

by zbicyclist

Food

These are perhaps semi-CIDUs. So do two semi-CIDUs make one CIDU?

Usual John sends in this puzzler: who is he hiding from, and why? Hiding the purchase from his wife? Hiding so he can avoid tipping?

Dirk the Daring sent in this Foxtrot. May 5th is World Cartoonist Day, but even cartoonists seem to have ignored it, judging by my feed. I guess it’s hard to compete with tacos and margaritas.

May Day!
by Kilby

Bonus Post: So help me, it’s May Day!

There are a number of reasons (and ways) that May Day is celebrated around the world, as these comics demonstrate:

Of course, the “real” reason for the holiday is its significance for the labor movement, but that is precisely why it has a somewhat tarnished reputation in the United States…

… especially because of certain militaristic “celebrations” in other parts of the world:

Therefore, since today is not a holiday in the United States, it may be necessary to postpone the celebration:

by EditorM

BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP-BEEPBEEPBEEP

Thanks to Brian in STL for sending in this FoxTrot Classics:

Brian sez, “Foxtrot dailies are in reruns on GoComics. Today’s is an okay joke on its own. … However, it’s not fully appreciated without —-” But we’re going to “leave you in suspenders” for a moment or two and invite readers to treat this as a CIDU-puzzle requiring the reference to something it was based on. (Which you can read by expanding the block below.))

SPOILER — The backstory of the reference!

“However, it’s not fully appreciated without this Apple commercial that ran around the same time as the original run of the strip:”

Brian continues “The person that provided the link in comments added this: ‘Her side of the story goes that it was late at night when they filmed the ad. It had to be done after school hours for the day. Add to that, she was on allergy medication, which made her a bit “under the influence”.‘ “

by multipleciduers

M is for the Many

With considerable forethought, Chemgal sent this in when it appeared, last July!

There is a motherlode of Mothers Day cartoons from Foxtrot collected at their website, of which we will sample just a couple.

This first one was featured by Bill on CIDU in 2018:

This “Breakfast in Bedlam” strip seems to be from 2001:

MD gifts funded by allowance, a theme for Fox Trot, also features here in Calvin, 1989:

This resurfaced in this Saturday’s Counterpoint mailing, not where I’m used to seeing B&C.

by phsiii

#ComeAgain?

I don’t use webthings that include photo filters, but I’ve seen the results, so I’m willing to believe that they can be used to morph her original picture into that horrific result. And I think I get the #NoFilter tag joke–there’s ONE filter she’s not using. But the progression of images doesn’t seem to support that: if the last one was lacking the flowers, then it would make sense.

Or am I missing something else??

by zbicyclist

Credibility?

Some of you are parents. Others probably know parents. Most of you had parents. Is this something any parent had likely ever said, particularly given the skimpiness of the original outfit?

What saves this from an Arlo tag is that Amend’s women are recognizable as women, but not sexy. One can imagine what this would look like drawn by, say, Brooke McEldowney of 9 Chickweed Lane.

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.
Is Andy Capp dissing The Boss?

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