Tag / Off the Mark

by multipleciduers

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, June 4th, 2023

Show of hands, did the term “body shop” make you think of lotions and scents, or crumpled fenders?

A couple of maggiethecartoonist suggestions:

When BillR sent this one in, we all racked our brains for common sayings, or notable events, or famous stories, involving tomatoes and lemons …

… but then it dawned on us that there is a traditional remark about comparisons, and it involves apples and oranges. So this could be a joke about literalizing that idiomatic remark, thrown into confusion by a colorist’s error! (Subsequently we found it discussed at the Comic Strip of the Day site, and there also attributed to colorist error.)

Here’s one spotted by Usual John at Comics Kingdom. It feels eerily like something we just recently saw, and discussed, with remarks about how it could stand in for a motto for CIDU. But then again, there’s today’s date, 5-31, right there in the panel; which makes it less likely this could actually be an oldie that CK happened to replay today.

Update! We put the above questions to an expert archivalist, who came thru with answers!

First of all, yes this was a rerun; but because the previous Comics Kingdom appearance was exactly a year earlier, on 2022-05-31, the date “5-31” embedded in the artwork for panel 3 does not mean this comic was actually new this week; nor does it make that date a paste-over job. (Though the syndication copyright notice running vertically between panels 1 and 2 does have the current year inserted.)

Also, it did appear at CIDU, and get discussed, on its publication date last year. Which is not really “just recently” as suggested above, but also is not absurdly far off.

by multipleciduers

M is for the Many

With considerable forethought, Chemgal sent this in when it appeared, last July!

There is a motherlode of Mothers Day cartoons from Foxtrot collected at their website, of which we will sample just a couple.

This first one was featured by Bill on CIDU in 2018:

This “Breakfast in Bedlam” strip seems to be from 2001:

MD gifts funded by allowance, a theme for Fox Trot, also features here in Calvin, 1989:

This resurfaced in this Saturday’s Counterpoint mailing, not where I’m used to seeing B&C.

by multipleciduers

M’aidez with some Not-Quites and Oopsies

Peculiar but not quite an intriguing CIDU, wry but not quite a LOL, pun-adjacent but not quite an OY, or just based in a factual mistake …

Here in a current two-day sequence for Reply All, is there room to agree “Neither one is actually funny at all”?

Thanks to Mike Pollock, who says “You don’t often see graphical captions with typographical errors. Is Curly Bracket [ } ] there intentionally?”

Okay, maybe this is just quibbling, but we all know a real Etch-A-Sketch doesn’t erase that way. You need to turn it face-down and shake. Or maybe it can marginally work to keep it face-up and shake vertically as well as side-to-side — but the shake lines here don’t suggest that enough.

Well, no. Frank does have multiple sources, multiple origins — so the Ancestry.com jokes work well. But there’s nothing about his special situation that puts him here, and here, and here too.

And the squirrel trying to justify it accomplishes nothing much. The map notations say “You are here” not “You have been here” – just as real building directories do.

This says “WANTED — [strikeout]ALIVE[/strikeout] OR DEAD”.

But, but … which party is supposed to be pictured on the poster, the hunter or hunted?

Sorry to pick on Whamond, but while we all know about cartoon physics I have some doubt about cartoon math. That’s the plain number three, he’s not in any respect irrational or in danger of turning irrational. He could slide up to pi nearby and be not only irrational but transcendental — but there is no indication of that happening. He’s just three, the natural number, not irrational and not even negative.

by EditorM

Some random retro LOLs

This next one depends on remembering when Lars von Trier and friends declared the Dogme 95 principles for filmmaking. (And probably does not require remembering the Kevin Smith film Dogma.)

With this December 2011 Brevity, we’re getting a bit into OYs.

And we interrupt our parade of Oldies to drop in a Duffy Lug Nuts on the same theme from current GoComics publication:

by multipleciduers

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, January 8th, 2023

Wow, the last two Sundays were on the holidays, so there were a lot of LOLs people saw but we didn’t have the right place to post yet. And now …

A bit of synchronicity in my GoComics feed suits this post to a T.

Off the Mark

Yep, that should have more cat-appeal than pizza.

And can’t let it go without a last-minute Zack!

by Winter Wallaby

Happy Chanukah [2022 repost]

[2022 Repost] [On 19 December, the first full day.]

[This was one of a series in 2021 which Winter Wallaby posted with different spellings of the name of the holiday.]

[Links at bottom]

Happy Chanukah, if you’re celebrating. (The comics aren’t here as Ewwwws, they’re just fun Chanukah comics.)

Happy Chanukka!
Happy Hanuka
Happy Chanukkah
Happy Hanukkah
by zbicyclist

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, December 11, 2022

You get to vote here: is the cat giving money to Big Ornament to pay for replacements, or is Big Ornament paying the cat for breaking ornaments, so they need replacement?

This is fine! But tickles the memory cells – haven’t we recently seen a cartoon with just about the same joke?

by multipleciduers

Saturday Morning OYs – November 5th, 2022

Some of these are somewhat CIDU for me, actually. I’m just guessing “Frankenstein’s Castle” is a thing, and “Vampire Bass” draws a blank.

Since we seem to have a subcategory under Oy for “Literalizing an Idiom”, might as well provide it some examples!

When he dons it, is it part of his gay apparel?

Should this strip have appeared on a Throwback Thursday?

by zbicyclist

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween — a good excuse to post some monster-themed cartoons. Here’s a couple that might fit into a Halloween-themed library.

This man isn’t worried that he’s out of candy, because he’s planned ahead.

If there is something left, it might not be the good stuff.

Andréa sent in this ThatABaby, and reminded me of an earlier CIDU discussion of Candy Corn: https://cidu.info/2020/09/07/ot-candy-corn/#comments

One measure of how influential Peanuts was is how familiar the Great Pumpkin is to us all.

First mention of the Great Pumpkin, October 26, 1959. You can follow this arc at https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1959/10/26

Some veggie substitutes work out well. Others …

So, Monty Python’s science was right!

If you’re partying tonight, party responsibly!

Andréa sends in this synchronicity. Cartoonists are always looking for a new angle, but sometimes push it too far.

Finally, like that house at the end of the night that gives out multiple candy bars so they won’t eat them all themselves, there’s this bonanza from John Atkinson — some cartoonists would have spread these out one at a time, and gotten a whole month out of this idea.