Tag / Dik Browne

by zbicyclist

Sunday Funnies – LOLs – June 29, 2025

Again, Again!

JMcAndrew notes: “He’s pretending to be having a medical emergency? A seizure? Allergic Reaction? As a way to entertain his grandchild on video chat? Why?”

Parisi is 64, about the age to have young grandchildren. I’ve done this with my grandchildren, who are always amused, and usually want me to do it again.

JMcAndrew sends this in: “I have to agree with Ditto. It’s ridiculous that they only have 3 birthday candles and her plan was to just hope her 6-year-old wasn’t perceptive enough to notice. Is the family in such financial hardship that they can’t afford some new birthday candles? This is sad more than funny but I like how mad Lois looks here as she cuts the candles in half.”

In honor of the past week’s heat dome:

by zbicyclist

CIDU’s Swimsuit Issue

It’s May 2, the average day of the last frost here in lovely northern Illinois.

Pools and beaches aren’t open yet, but JMcAndrew sends in some Hi and Lois swimsuit comics to get us in the mood: “Here are several Hi and Lois comics about swimsuits, some of which are just very bizarre. It’s apparently been a theme since the very early days of the comic.”

by zbicyclist

Many Questions, but not a CIDU

Panel 1 says “Dik Browne”, but both he and son Chris are deceased. Who’s doing the strip now? And with Nancy running with guest artists, is that person one of the guest artists, or someone who wishes they were one of the guest artists? (Note Nancy and Fritzi in panel 4)

I did find this on Comics Beat, in Chris’s obituary: “Following the retirement and death of its creator, Dik’s sons Chris and Chance Browne – plus illustrator and cartoonist Gary Hallgren who has drawn the series since 2015 – took over the reins. Chris’ thirty-plus year tenure on the character (his brother Chance works mainly on the continuation of their father’s other series Hi and Lois but assisted with edits) – from 1989 to 2023 – makes him the strip’s longest serving cartoonist (his father retired in 1988, accumulating 16 years of material).”

On Facebook, a commenter dug deep into his comic archive to find this similar gag from Ernie Bushmiller:

by multipleciduers

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, August 04th, 2024

Back in May, Mark H. wrote that “This [Shoe] caught me completely off guard“.
Perhaps it will do so again in August?

Wait a minute! Doesn’t the “you had me at” trope use something the other party said *early* in their dialogue turn?
Here’s the same comic in single-panel format. These get published under the name “Reply All Lite” and have become re-arrangements (sometimes radical) of the same day’s horizontal-format and usually multi-panel strip. The single-panel “Lite” series used to be somewhat more separate, with a less verbatim relationship to the strip version. The new approach strikes me as sensible. Note that it pretty much coincides with her move to distribution via Counterpoint.

Nope, I’m not sure I would have recognized the title characters if they weren’t named.

And it’s remarkable that they were able to hire domestic services from Amazon even way back then!

by CIDU Bill

Beginnings

Today’s premiere of Heart of the City 2.0 prompted me to think about other “first strips” and how, for better or worse, they set the tone for everything that would follow.

helen

Peter Zale hooked me with the very first Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet

something positive

Basically, Milholland was telling us on Day One that if you’re capable of being offended, you should leave now.

(And don’t worry: the “baby” is now in his late teens, a regular in the strip, and Davan’s surrogate son)

Perhaps somebody who has a Comics Kingdom membership can supply the very first Hagar the Horrible, which I also remember as setting the stage for the next half century.

Does anybody remember any other significant Day Ones?