A nice Thurber shout-out here. And do you agree the Bliss dogs bear a resemblance to Thurber dogs?
And for fun let’s compare the color version:
I’d say the color is nicer as a mild-humor comic, but the Thurber book identity is obscured.
But no, I can’t figure out what the pairings and lines are doing. It’s certainly not the standard March Madness sort of bracketting. Maybe if I had reread the book at some point in the last 50 years I would do better. … OK, here’s a help page. Wait, how can it fail to mention Dorothea’s nickname, “Dodo”?
Oh, oh, oh! I think I know!