(This is under the “not really a pun but word play in general” tag.)
Thanks to Andréa for this Bizarro:
I’m sure I’ve seen this joke used before, but not whether that means this is a repeat or just that the joke has occurred to others. A cursory search does find other examples, and tempting as it is to make a whole post out of three or four of them, let’s leave it at that.
From Andréa:
Just a bit corny.
And a little Oy-Ewww on the side.
But it seems to be offering a moment of inspiration, when he discovers … his own name? (Or his pretend / pun name, no difference.)
It finally turns into a sort of techno-era observational-humor consumer complaint about passwords and online support and automated voice response systems. Stuff we all like to complain about, fine.
But to get there we have to follow a confusing sequence of redefinitions of “cordless” and “wireless” – do these parachutes lack the strings/lines joining the canopy to the harness? Is that what makes them cordless? Oh, you mean automatic deployment of some sort so you don’t use a traditional manual “ripcord”. But the online bit (which is what “wireless” seems to mean here) is an utterly implausible development in the sport.
Y’know, it’s almost there! But there’s nothing at all in the scene to relate to the baseball meaning of bunt, let alone the more specialized sacrifice bunt.
Home, sweet home
An Oy from Andréa:
Oy by virtue of wordplay, broadly speaking
At Arnold Zwicky’s Blog he analyzes this and discusses previous comics uses of the same pun.
A trio-oy from Andréa:
But I have told my cats they are not truly brother and sisters. Even though I need to say “Now be nicer to your little sister!”
In the lane of “I guess I get the intended joke point, but the execution is unsuccessful” we have this “powdery math” example from zbicyclist. “I’m lost here. He’s eating one donut, and has another on his plate. That’s two donuts. So how is it 50% less sugar than two donuts?” I guess the *one* donut Leroy is waving around does have 50% less sugar than the two he has altogether, since it’s 50% less donut.
I thought at first it was going to be the funnish kind of percentage mistake coming from inconsistent base. We’re going to increase your supply of widgets by 10%. But now you have too many, so we’ll reduce your supply by 10%. That should put you back where you started …. eh?
The main-punch of this charming joke is clear enough — curiosity may be fatal to cats (as in the common saying) but not to these patients. But what is it that the vet has diagnosed as a case of curiosity? And is it supposed to be clear why he speaks in the singular, and which one of the dogs is the patient?
I dunno, maybe the problem is that the top section looks like a “throwaway panel” but actually it’s essential that it appear right above the scene with the cars. Because it’s the upper-storey window and sign for the gym? But we still have to pin down the connection between weight-lifting and how that extra car got where it is.
If your thing is to visually or linguistically play off some familiar phrase or saying that almost everybody surely knows …. there’s going to be trouble when you use some that nobody knows. (All right, I know about “disruptor”. But that’s about it.)
Okay, let the anatomists explain from the configuration of fingers (and additional hand in panel 2) that the hand doing the artwork in panels 2 and 3 has to be Nancy’s. Even so, what does it get her? And if it could possibly be Fritzi’s own, does that mean her panel 1 nag about “the expression on my face” was just a fancy prank setup?
An OY-Ewww :
This semi-CIDU OY is from Boise Ed, who notes the apparent error that they are doing downhill skiing but the text is about cross-country. But why is it not actually in error? Hmm?
When I was growing up, and my dad and uncles were into car repair, front-wheel-drive was relatively rare, and most American cars had front engine and rear drive wheels. There was a very important part called the “differential” which sat at the rear end of the drive shaft and connected also to both sides of a rear axle and the drive wheels. The informal term used for the differential was “rear end”.
Since “rear end” was also an informal substitute for “butt”, there was occasion for many a scene just like the one in this cartoon.
This is inflation on count-to-ten.
Jane: I once went on holiday and pretended to be twins. It was amazing fun. I invented this mad, glamorous sister and went around really annoying everybody. And d’you know, I could get away with anything when I was my crazy twin Jane.
Sally: But you’re Jane.
Jane: Kinda stuck. It’s a long story.
And there was a sequel:
(I.e., the fourth batch of these.)
This Argyle Sweater is from BillR, who joined with your editors in debating what is going on in the absence of a typical Hilburn Oy.
Their name could suggest they are of Polish extraction. And the weather suggests a northerly climate. But that wouldn’t be enough for a map to show the home as “North Pole”. Is there anything beyond red herring to noting they are at a mailbox and there is a tradition about letters to Santa getting delivered to some place the USPS designates as North Pole? Or … what?
This was a quite good three-panel joke cartoon. And then …
Hard to put a finger on it, but something about the “deflation punch” in this Brevity seems off. Like offers advertised as “BOGO” and you wonder is that a hip way of calling something Bogus? If CONVO means conversation, and RECCO means reccomendation…
Let’s just call this format something like “text-added photo” and not get into what can or cannot properly be called “meme”.
There may or may not be a discoverable individual “author”, but I wll lazily enough use the name of the person posting to Facebook Group “The Daily Pun”.
Comics I Don't Understand 