Hunting Vermin

Usual John submitted this Working Cats strip as a CIDU, commenting: “This is a strip about Brooklyn bodega cats, and these are the two central characters. Sula, the older and wiser cat, acts as a mentor to Taki, the kitten. But I don’t get what Sula is doing in the last panel.

Even though I can explain exactly what is happening in this strip, I wanted to post this as a Comic I Haven’t Seen. Maritsa Patrinos has appeared at CIDU before, but only for her work on “Six Chix” (Fridays, since 2019).


I think my very first impression may have been the same thing that John thought: that Sula has assumed the same position that she was in when Taki mistakenly attacked Sula as “vermin”. However, what is actually happening is that Sula is calling attention to the real vermin: Taki’s tail. The weakness is that all the symbols surrounding Taki’s head distract from the marks meant to highlight her tail.

P.S. This strip is the first time that I have ever seen the term “vermin” used as a singular noun; I’ve always thought of it as inherently plural.

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, May 19th, 2024


Some comics with socks appeal:






..

From the “Wisdom from the Funny Papers” Department. Sometimes a “cry for help” must be responded to with help. Sometimes when “they’re just doing that for attention” the humane response includes paying attention.

BTW, Maritsa Patrinos of the Six Chix now has her own separate strip, called Working Cats and appearing at Comics Kingdom.


I thought this was going to be about sentence-adverbs; but it was better than that. (Hopefully, everybody remembers what the controversies and pseudo-rules about sentence-adverbs were.)


No, I don’t see a joke here. But also I can’t say there’s supposed to be one, so it’s not really a CIDU. So let’s just take a minute to admire the artistry here. Such draughtsmanship! That ice-cliff shows us both distance and height, even while a whole surface is devoid of detail.



Trying to Eke Out a Joke Here

Jack Applin sent this in, with multiple comments;

• A cat is lecturing to people.
• The cat is using a laser pointer, but isn’t chasing the dot.
• “EKEKEKEK”? Not “EEK”.
• The mice have motion vectors; the leftmost is spinning.
• The bottom mouse is dead (x for eye).
• I thought the mice were in/above water, but that is text,
as seen in the bullet points to the right.
• Despite all this data, I have no idea what’s going on.

We are encouraging catty remarks in the comments.

Not the Midas touch

This striking but very puzzling Six Chix cartoon by the Friday chick, Maritsa Patrinos, was suggested by CIDU readers travelgirl, bobanero, and Jack Applin; and understanding remains elusive also for CIDU editors and for Comics Kingdom commenters.

(P.S., thanks for letting us know about https://www.usatoday.com/comics as another outlet for viewing King Features / Comics Kingdom cartoons.)


P.S.

Little did we suspect, when writing a title for this post based on the Six Chix comic, that we would almost immediately run across an actual Midas-themed cartoon!


CIDU QUEUE REMINDER

As always — but it needs saying explicitly again now and then — we like to think of this as a reader-participation site, and not just for your invaluable (or anyhow amusing) comments, but for suggestions of comics to run and discuss.

Please share your specific suggestions of panels or strips, in CIDU, LOL, and OY categories, either by direct email to

(that’s “CIDU dot Submissions” at gmail dot com) or by using the handy-dandy Suggest A CIDU form page!

Not even published yet, and I already don’t understand it

This Six Chix panel, from the Wednesdays chick, Susan C K, is dated this coming Wednesday, 6 March, but was available by mistake last Wednesday, 28 February, when Comics Kingdom released their revamped website, and among several other issues was noticed to be displaying comics planned for up to a week in the future.

Whut? I suppose there could be a problem with the mechanism so that some dampers cannot stay lifted, making the notes from those strings always staccato. But that’s a stretch, and there isn’t a normal sense in which some strings have staccato as a property.