Tag / Off the Mark

by zbicyclist

Snailed it

JMcAndrew sends in this festival of snail comics. The same joke used by two cartoonists, or by one comic separated by time.

Glenn and Gary McCoy are responsible for these next three.

Also here are 2 LOL comics where the word escrow is being misheard as escargot.

Last May 24th was National Escargot Day. We should have posted these then, but we were slow to get around to it.

by multipleciduers

Happy Valentine’s Day

Danny Boy sends this in.

JMcAndrew sends these two in. “Not only does this comic end with a rabbit about to hook up with a shoe but it also manages to slip in a joke about the title character from the movie “Babe”in a relationship with “Oscar Mayer””

“There’s also this one suggesting a relationship between Madonna and Sandra Bernhard and OJ Simpson with Lorena Bobbitt”

by Kilby

Pick a Holiday, ANY Holiday!

This year they all fall so close to one another, it’s hard to keep track.

Or perhaps not:

…
I really doubt that any mohel would be willing to perform 1/8th of a bris.

by multipleciduers

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, December 22st, 2024

Jack Applin submitted this “Edison Lee” last year as a CIDU, but Comics Kingdom refused to produce it, until I remembered to change the URL from the old “.net” to the new “.com” address. Ooops.

…
Jack commented: “Sure, the Rankin/Bass special. But what’s this about a finger in a nose? It wouldn’t BE in the special, if he were edited out.”

The humor is mostly just slapstick, but “nose” is probably a reference to the line in “The Night Before Christmas” (and the elf just messed up while “…laying his finger aside of his nose“).

Speechless Santa. Fill in your own dialogue. (GoComics posting error on 12/15. It’s clearly a GoComics error, because Arcamax shows the dialogue. GoComics corrected the error a day later.) It’s oddly meta, because panel 3 in the actual dialogue accuses Santa of not keeping up with the latest technology.

Steve B. sends this in. “Thought this was clever. Not sure everyone will get this if they don’t pay attention to the news.”

Mark H. send this in, noting “It took me a while”.

by multipleciduers

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, December 8, 2024

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.

by Kilby

Peanuts Redux

The first “Peanuts Day” retrospective ten weeks ago seemed to be reasonably popular, so here is another collection of Peanuts references and parodies, in honor of what would have been Charles M. Schulz’s 102nd birthday.

Back when it was originally published, Aaron submitted this Tom Falco comic, which was part of the 100th birthday tribute:

…
It’s pretty clear that Jason needs what Lucy is selling.

Nomen est omen:

…
This “Cleats” strip was published early in the 2004 season, back when Kevin Brown was still a popular new acquisition for the Yankees, months before he became the notorious losing pitcher in game 7 of the ACLS (which at one point the Yankees had led 3:0). Kevin Brown retired just 16 months later, before the start of the 2006 season; I think Charlie Brown would have understood how he felt.

…
Only one of those three characters on the wall is actually missing.

Mark Parisi frequently references Peanuts in “Off the Mark“. To his credit, he produces extremely accurate renditions of all the characters:

Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it:

Various cartoonists seem to enjoy letting Charlie Brown have his moments of retroactive glory:

Snoopy finally gets his due as well:

If Charlie Brown had only known what was really happening:

And finally:

by Kilby

It’s that time of year again…

… and the less said about it, the better.

Finally, one bastion of sanity in a lunatic world:

P.S. All of the previous appearances of Pumpkin Spice at CIDU were posted by Bill in the Fall of 2019; three of these presented some fairly hideous pumpkin spice flavored products (some real, some fictitious); click on the link if you are interested in seeing them. (Please note that the whole “pumpkin spice” collection will be presented in reverse chronological order, so you will have to scroll down past this one to get to Bill’s “spicy” material.)

P.P.S. – Edit: both links have been corrected, thanks to deety!

by Kilby

Would you like to look at my etchings?

Scott Adams was certainly not the first author to draw a comic featuring an Etch-A-Sketch, but this classic Dilbert strip (correction: from 1995) remains the standard against which all other attempts must be measured:

This Rose is Rose strip was published nine years earlier (in 1986), but to her credit, at least Rose can tell the difference between the devices:

As computer technology progressed, more recent comics were able to use tablets (instead of laptops), which made the misidentification more believable:

Here’s a handy guide to distinguish between the two:

Of all the strips showing kids using an Etch-A-Sketch as a “real” computer, this Jump Start is my favorite:

Not everyone is so pleased by the idea of image impermanence:

The Off the Mark at the top already appeared at CIDU (on May Day 2023) but Parisi also drew two other comics that are notable for incorporating pseudo-authentic Etch-A-Sketch artwork into the drawing. The first one is truly superb, especially for including the masterful meta-pun on “line”:

This final Off the Mark comic has a fatal flaw (morbid pun intended). The “sketchy” artwork is actually its best feature, but it would have been even better with a pair of round knobs on the monitor. The tragic defect is that the author did not bother to properly credit (or apologize to) André Cassagnes, who was still alive when this comic was published in 2008 (he died just five years later).

…
P.S. Today (23-Sep-2024) would have been the inventor’s 98th birthday.