Some repeat comics from past Veterans Days, with a couple of additions. It’s a good day to remember.
This one Bill marked “UDIC Frazz Veterans Day” . It was posted as https://cidu.info/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.
It’s interesting that the white character in this comic from 1976 is named Nate. Much later, Nate Bargatze will have a similar theme in this now well-known SNL skit:
On a serious note, it is always worth pondering the end of Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Speech:
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Radio has certain requirements. Sports announcing, too. Dead air is the enemy. Some of the most painful examples to me are long bicycle races (4+ hours) that end in a sprint stage. So until the last kilometer, not much is going on if there’s no breakaway. But 4 hours must be filled with announcing, regardless. Particularly painful if there’s only one announcer, not two.
A quick look around my dwelling shows 6 books that I’m partway through but intend to finish, a couple of which I haven’t make any progress on in at least a year. (Not counting ones I don’t intend to finish, or haven’t started.) Should I invoke a statute of limitations on these 6?
The New Yorker has posted a page of the magazine’s cartoons which were most liked on Instagram.
This one pairs nicely with Parisi’s one above.
[Note from 2023 reposting] No comics added as of this reposting. Comments from 2021 and subsequently are preserved. If the note and link at the bottom are a bit confusing, they lead back to a separate posting which was a different version of the Veterans Day Add-ons idea, and is still available in the archive and by that link, but is not herewith being reposted.
[Note from 2021 original posting] 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://cidu.info/2020/11/11/one-more-for-veterans-day/
This one Bill marked “UDIC Frazz Veterans Day” . It was posted as https://cidu.info/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.
There are more good ones that readers added in various years as comments to the original “Arlo’s Veterans Day” post (reposted earlier this morning). But here are others which got posted in various one-off’s at various times.
A very retro Beetle Bailey with a foreshadowing of Vietnam:
Camp Swampy may not ever have been a fighting base, but as this shows, they were not entirely outside a world where military conflict was a reality. And we can count all who served as veterans, whether or not they were in active combat or even in a war zone.
This strip seems to be dated 1964, and early enough in that year that “Viet Nam” did not yet mean all of what it would soon take on. Still, isn’t it a bit shocking that this might strike some of its audience as simply funny?
Interesting reader comments can be found attached to the 2020 posting of this.
This Rhymes with Orange strip might have worked perfectly back in early summer, but now it just seems awkward. The new corporate name just isn’t easy to adapt into usable slang, and even if it were, the political deadweight surrounding the takeover and renaming ruins any possible remaining humor.
In a curious instance of personal asynchronicity, it wasn’t until a couple of hours after I had written the text above (including the headline) that I saw Sunday’s Doonesbury, which needs no further commentary:
Saturday, July 8th, 2023 would have been Bill Bickel’s 68th birthday; therefore: in his absence, and in his honor: Mazel tov! (מזל טוב)
Bill’s own tradition for the occasion was to create an elaborate “24-Hour Project”, with a new CIDU post timed to appear every hour throughout the day. Partly because these birthday comics are not CIDUs, but mostly because it would have been far too much effort just for a little structural nostalgia, this entire collection has been gathered into a single list (but is divided into appropriate categories).
If you have a favorite birthday comic, please feel free to add it in a comment!
The “featured image” at the top of this post shows Albert, Porky Pine, Beauregard Bugleboy, Bun Rab, Pogo, and Howland Owl doing a “Birthday Dance”, but the anonymous bug appended to the right isn’t actually singing: he appeared in a series of memorial tributes that Walt Kelly drew in the 1950s for his daughter Kathryn Barbara, who died shortly before she would have had a chance to enjoy her first birthday cake. Given that we are celebrating the birthday of a dearly beloved, but departed friend, I thought the image was very appropriate. For more information, see the Daily Cartoonist’s article about the Day of the Little Angels.
P.S. I would like to thank all of the CIDU Editors for their input, assistance, and constructive suggestions, but especially Phil, who took my rough template and laid the foundation for a much better design (and he also documented all the author and strip names in the tags).
The first Peanuts strip in this collection doesn’t fit into any category, because it has a singular “birthday” significance; it was originally published on Friday, July 8th, 1955 (the day that Bill Bickel was born):
Schulz never depicted any adults (and only very rarely mentioned any of the parents) in Peanuts.
With a few notable exceptions, this 1971 strip predates almost everything in this collection by more than two decades.
…even if he did rip the flower right out of her own garden. (Note: other than Stahler’s “pickleball” comic from 2023, this 2018 Marmaduke is the newest item in this entire collection.)
He should be comforted to learn just how much Rat thinks of him.
That cake must have been pretty tough to hold together like that.
Snoopy suffered a whole series of cat attacks in the 1970s, but this was one of the best.
For Bill we would need a pair of 34s, or (more likely) a 50 and an 18.
Only the Peanuts and Doonesbury strips are older than this Calvin & Hobbes strip.
Does this mean that they would rather celebrate the day he got laid?
This Peanuts strip (from 1951) is the only one in this collection that predates Bill’s birth.
Apparently Andy had already quit smoking 20 years ago, but he and Flo were still indulging in violent spouse abuse.
Bill had trouble understanding feline behavior, so this might have been a CIDU for him.
Garfield only rarely acts like a real cat, so Bill wouldn’t have any trouble here.
After all that trouble to escape, even his visit is no longer a surprise.
Color might have made this “Liō” strip easier to understand (each stack should be a different pastel shade), but Tatulli may have been going for the “dawning realization” effect.
If you cannot move the ball, just change the position of the goal posts.
One of the many running gags in Garfield is that he hates birthdays.
This appeared just in time to be included here; it’s also the only comic in this memorial collection that was published within the last three years (in other words: since Bill passed away).
This category seems more tragic than funny.
Mobile telephones can generate automatic reminders, so nobody really has to bother remembering birthdays any more.
This is the only Sunday strip in this collection.
This 2007 strip predates the widespread availability of 3D printing technology.
These three comics complement the previous memorial post (September 16th, 2022).
See also: https://cidu.info/2023/09/16/in-memoriam-bill-bickel/
P.P.S. Remember: if you have a favorite comic to help celebrate Bill’s birthday, please feel free to include it in a comment!
Oh, is this how it works?
(Sequence of two so far.)
Andréa noted these two rerun strips appearing on the same day last week. Not exactly the usual synchronicity, where two comics make the same joke or take up the same (unexpected) topic. Rather, one is making a direct reference to the other.
This Boondocks comes at the end of a week series in which Grandpa expects Huey to help out with household chores, specifically mowing the lawn, and Huey likens this to illegal child labor practices and even to slavery. Here he returns to the child labor idea, and brings in the example of American companies using exploitative practices, including child labor, in their overseas facilities or those of their suppliers. And what is his news source? Another comic strip!
Here is the week of Doonesbury on this theme, concluding with the one appearing in rerun on the same day as the Boondocks above.
From Le Vieux Lapin, who says:
Is the phrase “stick the dismount” from gymnastics? I found several instances of it on the web, ranging from a couple of gymnastics references to one in a report on the current US president. However, nothing I found explains what it means or provides enough context to do better than a slightly-educated guess. Maybe “land on your feet”?
Often with long-running and high-continuity strips, I want to write off some puzzlement at a particular episode as a matter of “Well, wait to see how it fits with the whole story”. But in this one, I think we were handed a recap right there in the dialogue.
Speaking of Garry Trudeau, Phil Smith III sent in the following recent Doonesbury and reports that the commenting crew at Go Comics didn’t get far with this. Your Editors, meanwhile, confess to not having recently followed Doonesbury closely enough to even know what it would be to get somewhere with an explanation of this episode. But Phil will be on hand to help propel the comments here. Apparently the crux is just what they said or did to lead Mel to face-plant like that.
Comics I Don't Understand 