Thanks to Usual John for pointing out this Blondie episode with a mystery. He asks “Is this a reference to someone in Blondie’s flapper past?”

We noticed later that Josh at The Comics Curmudgeon also features this cartoon. But he doesn’t truly answer the mystery, so this independent find doesn’t obviate the usual spirited CIDU discussion.

From Stan, saying “I have one or two ideas about this, but they don’t really hold much water. Wouldn’t mind a solid explanation if one exists. Also, why didn’t Dagwood just drive Herb all the way home? It couldn’t have been too far out of his way.”

From Stan, who says “I don’t know what’s going on here. Is he hiding the hamster in his armpit?”

But anyhow, this little story has the structure of a Turnabout or maybe Topper trope. (Thorne Smith allusions entirely accidental!) Blondie looks shocked in the last panel, as though the mom’s substitution of the iPad as the plaything is even more of a shocking violation than the phone was. But is that so? Or is the mom’s “reasoning” sort of correct, and there is a greater likelihood of the child being able to make some use of a tablet than of a smartphone?

Sure, Dagwood likes doughnuts. But what’s he zooming around for if there’s no doughnut cart? From Phil Smith III and larK.

We think there’s a modern use of “I’m done [with that]”, probably more common among people considerably younger than Dag, amounting to “I’m never going to be involved with that at all, ever again”. Do you know that sense? Is Dagwood meaning it that way – in both places? Since Blondie is taking it the standard way, is anybody doing the Bumsteads’ taxes this year?

That “I’m done” — or at least the second one? — is pretty much equivalent to Cookie’s “I’m really over [it]” here: