Beware the Ides of March! We all know that phrase, but it seems odd that it has crept into the language, since we know few other facts about Roman history. The meaning of “Ides” is a bit confusing to us in the modern world, as these comics show.
Interestingly, the Ides of March were notable in Rome as a deadline for settling debts.
(It turns out this strip is one from a series that do cross-reference and play off one another somewhat. Probably you’d agree that the context doesn’t help that much; but those who disagree are welcome to pump the other steps in the series into the comments here.)
Did you catch the posting earlier today, Frazz riddle … answered soon ? It incorporated the Monday and Tuesday strips from last week, where one of the kids tells Frazz that she is giving her dad a vacation, and it cost only nine bucks. She adds a clue, that she could have spent twice as much but then it would have lasted just half as long. Oooh, paradox!
The Tuesday strip shows Frazz asking “Where will he go for $9? What will he see?” and the student answering “Nowhere. And nothing new. Just in a whole new way.” Evidently still in clue mode.
But the the Wednesday strip goes right to the answer. And Thursday and Friday just round off the story. Here they are:
P.S. It wasn’t quite done as of that Friday installment. It continued for one more, on Saturday. (But Monday — and probably not Tuesday either, but this will be already posted by then, so … who would care?). Here is the Saturday strip:
Monday’s strip seemed to be the start of one of those extended riddles Frazz sometimes undertakes (such as with Halloween characters).
How can a vacation cost just nine bucks? And why would one costing twice as much last only half as long? Hmmm, put on your thinking caps.
Tuesday continued the riddling, with maybe a small bit of new clue:
And then what on Wednesday? Further clueage, helpful but not giving it all away?
Nope, Wednesday’s strip directly gave the solution! Then Thursday and Friday rounded out the story. (I’m writing this on Friday so it remains to be seen if there will be more of this tale next week. But you are reading this on Tuesday or later, so you’ll already know…)
On the off chance some CIDUers are seeing this but haven’t seen these Frazz strips, can we do something to allow for puzzle-solving and speculation in the comments here, but still give the solution? Well, ideas like throwing in tons of vertical space are not really effective. And that time we tried protecting a spoiler with that sliding-panel image-comparison gizmo was broken on some people’s platforms, and is anyhow a pretty flimsy test of patience.
Well, fine. The next three strips from this series will be in a separate post, this afternoon. Meanwhile, feel free to opine here on how that bargain vacation would work!
This took me a minute, as I don’t often use “home” for a physical house, the building.
For anyone not familiar with the comic, the character on the right, Lyndon, is a psychiatrist or therapist. So Freudian slips are like his stock in trade. But there is something funny in how this patient or client responds to the “Say again?” with an almost-repetition and not acknowledging he has made a correction.
An excellent OY that also had me at least chuckling out loud.
(But I have to confess I don’t know who the guy on the right is. I hope his identity wasn’t another part of the joke.)
Thanks to Rob for these next two OYs (and some hard-to-classify strips coming up elsewhere on the site):
I guess I’m wrong here — I would have said this doesn’t work unless he actually says “Heckuva” (variation possible for the c and/or k, but the v obligatory). But the crowd at GoComics seemed to take it in stride.
And a Sandal Synchronicity:
Andréa says “We’ve had a pool for five years now, and other than kids peeing in it (which is why only dogs and adults are allowed in ours), I don’t understand this. Chlorine is MORE necessary when it’s warm and sunny . . . and yes, I remember we had some kind of discussion about kids in pools quite a while ago.”
What I even more don’t get is what the four descending inset panels are doing here at all. When are they taking place? In what way do they relate to the dialogue?
Thanks to Dana K for this Today’s Szep. The main joke is easy enough: the mere unlikely existence of this rack and these categories of card message. But what is all that ancillary action supposed to be about? Do these two know each other? Or is the woman just a judgemental bystander? Is she saying something, or just standing there with her jaw dropping?
On the first hand, this seems to me an excellent job of working out a technical experiment in the art of cartooning. Color-coding the speech bubbles could represent an improvement on trying to aim the pointers with precision, or stretching them around, or finding a basis for making the comic multi-panel so the dialogue can be rearranged.
But OTOH, the content of the dialogue is miles away from being at all funny. And is not even folk-wise, in that pseudo-deep way Frazz is so fond of trying.
Kilby also presents a judgement dilemma. “When a cartoonist recycles an ancient joke (albeit with ‘improvements’), is it better (A) To admit the crime, or (B) Just pretend that nobody will notice how ancient the gag really is?”
(A)
(B)
A classic case of “Oops!” from Le Vieux Lapin. Oops, I forgot to draw a cloud that looks like a comma.
Cartoons with Veterans relevance that we recently ran across, or that CIDU Bill had saved to the site’s media library with a note for possible Veterans Day add-on use.
This one Bill marked “Nov 11 Veterans Day addon”. It was posted in https://comicsidontunderstand.com/2020/11/11/one-more-for-veterans-day/
This one Bill marked “UDIC Frazz Veterans Day” . It was posted as https://comicsidontunderstand.com/2018/11/09/udic/
These two we noticed on sequential days in Maria’s Day. Since that strip is on a reruns cycle at GoComics, the actual dates of the recent appearance were 31 August and 01 September, but apparently the original publication was on 10 and 11 November of some year.
A near-synchronicity noticed by Bob Ball. The theme in common might be phrased as “knowing who you should be listening to”, or we can leave it up to the gang to better describe it.
Thanks to Chemgal for sending this in, and identifying two areas of doubt: 1) Though not a public designated observance, the 7-Eleven company, at least in Canada, has traditionally marked the 7/11 date with promotional giveaways. Is Mallett just unaware of this? 2) Wot th’heck do the last two panels mean? A mystery, in themselves and in their relationship to the first nine panellettes.
P.S. A Geezer identification question — Do you remember when 7 AM to 11 PM were in actual fact the hours for 7-Eleven stores?
Comics I Don't Understand 