Once again: In memory of CIDU Bill Bickel

Several years ago, Bill commented upon the unusual frequency of “Grim Reaper” comics, and he even held a contest (called “Deathmatch!“) to prove his point.

For this reason, I suggested scheduling the following comic collection for today, the second (now) fourth anniversary of Bill’s extremely untimely passing, in memory of a dear friend whom we all miss terribly, and who (I believe) would have understood this rather unorthodox memorial presentation in the humorous and good-natured fashion in which it is sincerely intended.

It’s simply a shame that Bill never had a chance to read and comment upon these comics with us all.

P.S. The comments are still open: everyone is welcome to read them and all the comics that were added there (currently seven dozen), and to add new ones.






This Strange Brew was contributed by Andréa, originally as an Oy:


Leigh Rubin keeps on returning to the Grim Reaper theme:


Saturday Morning OYs – September 14th, 2024



Okay, they can have one now and then!


Two driving comics that arrived in my email inbox on the same 06 September delivery. (The Zack Hill was one in a series about Jan’s assignment to anger management school.)



For a while this felt like it should go somewhere in the “All we needed was the first panel” family of picky categorizations. But then it turns out I would have entirely missed the extra pun, were it not for the final panel telling us exactly what we were missing!



Sunday Funnies – LOLs, July 07th, 2024



Continuing the metaphor: orange traffic cones are like the Legos strewn around the floor for the enjoyment of our feet. Potholes are teenage acne. Tickets are tuition bills.


A little cross-strip banter –



Hey, I don’t care that it’s been debunked, we can still have jokes based on it!


Sunday Funnies – LOLs, April 7th, 2024

Keep doing variations on a theme, and sooner or later you’ll hit on one the fans don’t remember!


Have you seen the meme about the Welsh translation service?



Is the shell the choice spot for petting a tortoise?


Quite the wily allusion.


But only on condition they walk in together.


Geezer Alert!


This is the LOL-Weird entry for the week. Bizarro in more than name alone!


Thanks to Grawlix and Chemgal for suggesting this artist:


Here’s the LOL-Aww promised in the tags.


Let’s debate which way would be funnier

You ever think — or find yourself actually writing a comment — that the comic we’re seeing maybe has a point or makes a joke, or maybe doesn’t really, but in any case would be much better off if only some aspect were changed?


We just have to agree with some commenters on the GoComics appearance of this panel in October 2023 that getting a joke from this would seem to require knowing which of the gorillas ordered the virgin daiquiri. Is it the one facing us from the far end of the banquette and looking (maybe) a little abashed? Or could it have worked better with one gorilla and three humans? Or how about …

One original commenter said The joke isn’t about which ordered it – the joke is that the virgin one is simply a banana…. Does that help? Or does it just emphasize that *all* of them would probably want the plain banana?


Okay, sure, the little one is the “sub” woofer because it’s subordinate. I guess. 
— But, but … When it comes to actual acoustic speakers (where the terminology originated), a sub woofer produces even lower pitches than a woofer, and therefore needs to be larger. 
— Okay, that might fix the technicality, but it would ruin the joke.
 – Nah, it would be funnier that way, with the facts working. 
 – Nah, it would be stupid that way. Everybody would say, “But what’s the joke?”


And what do mice know or care, about an MRI scan? Ah, but if it were about CAT scans, then we would understand the issue!

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, December 10th, 2023

Yep, that’s what I thought she meant too! Did anyone here not think that first?


Such a nice use of expressive objects.


BTW, if you are looking for a great read, try The Wager. There’s also a long excerpt in The New Yorker a few months back.



End of [drawing a] line

The GoComics comments for this 21 November Strange Brew seem to not hit the target until they start asking if it’s Fortran or what programming language it’s in, or what the backslashes are for. Well, it’s not Fortran! But I am ready to accept remarks from one commenter (with a posting name that makes me think of one regular CIDU commenter!) explaining that This is in TeX or LaTeX or MathTeX. They use backslash all the time, for various things including, say , names for symbols. So the “\\in” you see in the top line produces an “element of” symbol…

Whether we can then go on to say that the represented math might be defining “line segment” or something like that, I can’t venture. We can’t go further, it looks like we’ve reached, erm, reached the terminus …