Tag / Dan Piraro

by zbicyclist

Poorly drawn, or efficient?

They don’t draw them like this anymore. This is a Rex Morgan from 1955.

Or this Buz Sawyer from 1977:

Jef Mallet has some thoughts on the subject (July 10, 2021):

Stephan Pastis and I have been friends quite a while — both Frazz and Pearls Before Swine were in development at the same syndicate at the same time and launched one right after the other in 2001. Stephan occasionally teases me in his strip, mostly via Jef the Cyclist, and once in a great while I tease him back.

Pearls has been a great success. It’s well earned, and I’ve never been jealous of that success. But I have, occasionally, wondered why I was putting all that effort into posing, composing, positioning and shading my characters when, apparently, it’s not really all that necessary. Perhaps an experiment was in order.

So there you go. If nobody notices today, I can forgo the detail work. On the other hand, I’ve already learned from the experiment that it doesn’t save me that much time. It just saves me time spent shading, which then gets poured into other busy work. In other words, I have a problem, but it’s my problem and I might as well make the most of it.

Without shading:

Previous day:

and this recent one — which shows he kept shading (and brings us back into CIDU territory):

Terry Beatty’s 2025 Rex Morgan has a lot less detail than the 1955 version, but still a lot more detail than, say, Pearls Before Swine, as befits a strip that’s still a continuing story rather than a gag strip.

by phsiii

It’s a miracle!

JMcAndrew sends a set of related cartoons:

The last two are obviously just different versions of the same joke from the same cartoonist, even if they’re 14 1/2 years apart. I’m not sure if that’s a bad thing or not.

These all remind me of an axiom I was taught long ago as a relationship test: Have lunch at your prospective partner’s house and ask for mayonnaise. If they present Miracle Whip–especially if they aren’t even apologetic about it–RUN.

Miracle Whip is to mayonnaise as carob is to chocolate. As someone else once wrote, “Carob is not an acceptable substitute for chocolate. It is not an acceptable substitute for anything except, perhaps, brown shoe polish.”

by zbicyclist

Old Men

JMcAndrew sends in these two, with an old man theme: “Trying to figure this one out. I’ve seen the movie “Grumpy Old Men” and don’t think that Walter Matthau looks anything like Saddam Hussein.”

JMcAndrew: I get the joke and I have seen “Blow Out” which is actually an excellent film. Submitted as an obvious eww but also considered that Travolta is now over 70 it wouldn’t be that surprising to find out he does have need for incontinence products.

by multipleciduers

Saturday Morning OYs – March 1, 2025

Boise Ed submits this one: “I get the Area 51 gag, but the name panel’s secondary gag (“All tea served with a saucer”) eludes me.”

It seems to pair nicely with panel one here:

JMcAndrew sends this in: “I spent more time than I care to admit contemplating how the mechanics of this relationship would possibly work and how a sandwich would be the end result.”

Well, just look at Mr Peanut. You can see he’s well bread!  

by zbicyclist

Snailed it

JMcAndrew sends in this festival of snail comics. The same joke used by two cartoonists, or by one comic separated by time.

Glenn and Gary McCoy are responsible for these next three.

Also here are 2 LOL comics where the word escrow is being misheard as escargot.

Last May 24th was National Escargot Day. We should have posted these then, but we were slow to get around to it.