An analog / digital joke with the wrong terminology? The escalator is actually less acoustic in its broken state, since it’s making no noise.

An analog / digital joke with the wrong terminology? The escalator is actually less acoustic in its broken state, since it’s making no noise.
Kilby sends in this one, which left him moderately confused.
For one thing, what are the circumstances in which you’d text “circulate”?
This comic is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to websites living or dead is purely coincidental.
Thanks to DollarBill, who sends this in as a “chuckle on a variation.”
Greedy for layers of pun, I almost wanted to see a ‘c’ in place of the ‘k’ — to reflect that they are drawn to look quite cute! And we would of course still recognize them as sharcs.
A reminder that it’s prime grilling season!
It’s also an excuse to listen to some B B King:
From Andréa, who says “I see it as more of an OY . . . flippin’ in all its meanings”
Sender Dana K
and I were in minor disagreement over whether the word-play element here is pun-like enough to count as an OY. “Neg/Q Scope Ambiguity” is certainly there potentially in the 3rd panel; but it’s not clearly intentional, and even less the point of the gag.
This Moderately Confused sent in by Rob is in what we might dub the “foibles funnies” genre:
Two funny bits that seem like they might belong more to winter publication. The Kliban of course is a reprint from ages ago, so that makes sense. And the Liz Climo is funny any time. Also noticed by Andréa and used in a comment!
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.
Thanks to Carl Fink for sending this in. He says “I do understand the joke, but …” and then details ways he can’t understand how such bad drawing can pass itself off as professional cartooning.
Meanwhile, the usual gang of idiot at CIDU HQ Central has to confess that I don’t completely understand the joke. Is it a tradition in this family that “our mealtimes will be like going out to a nice restaurant”? Does the dad’s remark to what Carl calls “the monstrosity” daughter presuppose something like that?
A nice little twist on a familiar cat-behavior-pattern trope! Suggested by Andréa.
(From Scott Metzger’s paywalled Patreon gallery, used by kind permission. There is also loads of free material at his home page, https://www.metzgercartoons.com/ .)