I guess I missed out Part I. This is trying hard, maybe too hard, but deserves to be seen for cheerful persistence even if not really for brilliant OY-ness.
Since this strip seems to offer a pun every day, it is hard not to over-indulge. But this one was immediately right in the OY spirit!
Ohhhh nooo! There is no way to stop at just one!
Thanks to Boise Ed for sending in this excellent Mutts, and for calling it a “fifth wall” cartoon!
Have you kept count for how many times this joke has come up this week?
Woops! Turns out this is now the third appearance of this “kerning pun” (as jjmcgaffey called it) on CIDU in one path or another.
This fun Rubes from a few years ago was brought to our attention by Professor Jerry Coyne (a big supporter of ducks) on his Why Evolution is True web site (blog, but he doesn’t like it called that).
As reported by The Daily Cartoonist (but nowhere visible at mutts.com), Patrick McDonnell has announced that he will be taking a six-month sabbatical to work on other projects, and that (almost all of) the strips from now to June will be re-runs (note the absence of any year in the copyright line on this one).
It’s New Year’s Day, 2024, so why not post some New Year’s cartoons from another NY, The New Yorker? Wait. Wasn’t that yesterday’s theme? But this is a theme so nice, we’re using it twice.
1931 (i.e. first issue of 1931): some wake-up bells to start your year
1930
1932: not a cheerful New Year’s
1933: Roosevelt’s been elected, but not inaugurated. The man here is not hopeful.
1933
Similar theme from 1934:
To all our readers, commenters, editors, and cartoonists who make this possible, best wishes for a wonderful 2023 2024!
Reflect and think? Or maybe just do some things appropriate to the season. Change out that furnace filter that should be changed every 3 months. Is your toothbrush getting too long in the tooth? Check your IRA balances if you’ll need to make RMDs. Check the refrigerator for stuff that expired in 2022. Make some Hoppin’ John with those black-eyed peas in the back of the pantry. Feel free to comment on your own ways to mark (or ignore) the day.
Or, perhaps like Mooch, you’re perfect and can just take a nap.
Let’s end with an OY:
Your editors are greeting today’s holiday with some favorite comics, some Christmassy, some not. Enjoy!
Here’s one for the great CIDU cat-admiration tradition!
Seems like the reindeer might take a lichen to an in-flight snack, also.
I’ve been following Mutts for decades; I really enjoy the artwork and its gentle and simple nature. Unfortunately, McDonnell frequently uses the strip to promote various “worthy” causes and ideologies. Although perhaps admirable, the campaign propaganda frequently damages the humor beyond repair.†
The Mutts strip shown here is one of (very) many in which McDonnell protests against the abusive habit of keeping dogs chained up, but it is notable for the excellent pun in the final panel. One minor detail that I find puzzling is the expression on Guard Dog’s face: I think that he should be smiling, or perhaps wincing.
P.S. † – One of the worst examples was a sequence in which the Fatty Snax Deli suddenly went “vegan”. I don’t think it has shown up again in the strip even once since that arc appeared.
McDonnell usually has a theme for each entire week of daily Mutts strips; last week he produced a very nice collection of “meta” and “fourth wall” gags:
As an unusual bonus, the Sunday strip also fits in with the overall topic of the daily strips:
P.S. I decided to fetch the monochrome originals from Mutts.com, in particular because I felt that the Thursday and Friday strips do not work as well in color.
P.P.S. I was very disappointed when Arcamax switched Mutts to the colorized daily strips, and neither Arcamax nor Comics Kingdom bothers to include the title panel for the Sunday strips, which is often a real loss.
It turns out that this isn’t a CIDU once you see the followup, but Kilby quite rightly flagged the first of the pair:
The sequel is here:
https://resources.arcamax.com/newspics/253/25327/2532765.gif
These are just whatever was at least pretty good, was dated today, and was in some way about the Labor Day holiday or tradition. … A quick survey of which cartoons were willing to be about the holiday and which preferred to go on their own way.
From maggiethecartoonist:
Suggested by a reader who is fond of both Mutts and meta-comic jokes:
Thanks to Maggiethecartoonist for this GibbleGuts:
And Maggiethecartoonist also provides these two more Garfield entries — with brief comments for each!
“Farms must be fun.”
‘I cleaned out all the comic folders, and my computer still looks like a meatball!’
Comics I Don't Understand 
