Does Hootin’ Holler actually have a golf course, or are they just in an open field somewhere
Post Content
Family Circus, 3/15/23
I don’t have kids, but I am given to understand that your child handing you a crumb-covered piece of garbage and explaining how its actually a thoughtful, beautiful gift that you’ll be a bad person for throwing away is definitely in the realm of thing that your kids will do for/to you. This one’s going up on lots of refrigerators everywhere, is what I’m saying! “You’ve got to laugh,” they’ll say, hanging it up with a magnet. “You’ve got to. The alternatives are all pretty bad.”
Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/15/23
I dunno, those quote marks around “exploring America” makes it sounds kind of sarcastic and maybe a little euphemistic, I would not let Sarah look at that phone.
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/15/23
It’s true: A cardiac clinic could be very lucrative, but this poor and sparsely populated region simply cannot support one, so locals must travel hours via perilous cliffside paths to the big city if they need open-heart surgery.
138 replies to “Does Hootin’ Holler actually have a golf course, or are they just in an open field somewhere”
Mary Worth Mashups: Less Mary, more, uh, more Marcy! Yeah. No. More, hm, Laura? Mayo? I dunno.
RM: “Have you heard from Hank Jr. and Yvonne?”
****
“Yvonne sells cartoon balloons in town. She is a cartoon, after all.”
****
“Um, that’s Levon, not Yvonne, Pops!”
What’s next — Garfield golfing? Dagwood? Actually, Wilbur Weston pulling a toe shank might be kind of funny.
CS: Batty is all OVER the latest gasoline “crisis,” which happened — what, a year ago? Cripes, even “Blondie” thinks this is old news.
GT: “This is why you keep cash and change on you.” Of all the things a normal person might say in that situation, I’m pretty sure that’s not one of them.
JP: No doubt about it now: Yelich used the judge as a human shield. Hey, better him than me, right?
RMMD: “Thank you, Sorry Sarah.”
FC – Jeffy also brought home a cone-shaped party hat with a brim. It’s not supposed to have a brim, but the South Korean colorist doesn’t know that.
RMMD – They’re “getting their kicks on Route 66.” They’re “seeing the USA in their Chevrolet.” We are all old as dirt! OLD PEOPLE RULE! YOUNG PEOPLE DROOL! Well, okay, we old people drool too…
Don Abundio, translated:
“I need some coffee to warm me up”
“But it’s dangerous to plug so many things into one outlet!”
“It could start a fire and burn this place down and us with it”
“Well, then I wouldn’t need the coffee”
Alone in the ladies room later, Mary rubs her hands together with glee. “Ha ha HA! My plan is working to perfection! All I need now is for Wilbur to not screw it up. . . . [heavy sigh] But he IS going to screw it up, isn’t he? Yes. Yes, he is. Crap. Oh well, might as well see if I can get Jared back together with Dawn.”
FC: Jeffy enjoys balloons filled with regular air that don’t float, they match his personality.
Smash cut to Hank Jr. and Yvonne smuggling cocaine on motorcycles through the American Southwest, just absolutely out of their minds on acid.
@Inspector Gotcha:
On Crankshaft : Who is this again? Max Axelrod, Crankshaft’s evil(*) rival bus driver (who’s basically just Crankshaft back when he was young), or whichever of Morgan and/or Chase (Crankshaft’s yuppie neighbors) who’s the husband? I’m not saying this strip taking advantage of its vast ensemble of characters is necessarily a bad thing, but a lot of them look alike, and appear so irregularly they’re hard to remember… and the official bio page on GoComics only lists Cranky, Loathsome Lil and the Jeff&Pam…
(*)Max Axelrod IS evil, but he is not MORE evil than Crankshaft, they’re both about the same in terms of misanthropy and being purposefully terrible bus drivers.
**********
Luann :
1. “Why is Mona Lisa smiling?” isn’t a very new subject to explore. There’s been plenty of works about it
including the definitive answer, L.H.O.O.Q.2. Why does Nil need a live model to spoof the Mona Lisa? It’s one of the most easily referenced work!
3. I’m guessing it has to be Bernice modelling because Frederick doesn’t have the matronly-albeit-androngynous countenance and inexplicably missing eyebrows La Joconda has.
This is the nonsense you have to put up with as a parent. That’s the way the cookie crumbles.
FC: I feel like this could have been a Marvin, but with much grosser art…
RMMD: It’s nice that we still get glimpses of old Sarah from time to time, like when she loses patience with a doddering old man who misplaced his phone. C’mon girl, wouldn’t it be funny if you threw it at him?
BGSS: I refuse to believe that Hootin’ Holler has the capacity to sustain even a mini-putt, so I’m going to assume that these two are just whacking around a couple balls around an open field just to feel fancy. When they’re tired of that they’ll retire to the clubhouse (abandoned shack) to enjoy an Arnold Palmer (crabapple juice and rainwater), and a nice cigar (rolled-up nightshade leaves).
“Afraid the one thing I can’t heal is a broken heart! Well, that and AIDS. And pancreatic cancer. And Lyme disease. Actually, medicine is far from perfect, so though luck!”
That’s the stupidest balloon I’ve ever seen. Like I’m actually mad about it. And what is that, a basket of jellybeans? A muffin with a handle? Jesus. This blog has done things to me. What is my life? Stupid balloon. Stupid Jeffy.
BGSS No, of course it doesn’t make any sense for Hootin’ Holler to have a golf course, but just as the Magicians’ Union requires every professional magic act to include at least one card trick, the cartoonists” union requires every comic strip to have at least one golf panel a year. You wouldn’t want John Rose to be accused of scabbing, would you?
BGSS: From the way Ol’ Doc is holding that driver, he must have learned how to golf from the elliptically-drawn cigarette ads in the 1940s-era magazines littering his waiting room.
REX MORGAN M.D.: Sarah: “I wasn’t trying to steal you phone! It’s…er…right here. I…um…had it in my possession because…uh…I, like any tween, wanted to look at boring photos of South Carolina’s most wood-paneled diner with nonagenarians. Yeah…that’s it….”
REX MORGAN M.D.: Um…ok, at first I thought June’s reprimand about this was her usual stick-up-her-ass routine, but yeah, I can already tell this “Horrible Hank” stuff is going to get as old and as tired as Hank Sr. himself.
RMMD: Move over, Mary Worth. Rex Morgan doesn’t just bold suspiciously random words, it italicizes them as well! Still, neither strip can… can match up to… to Judge Parker‘s stammering dialogue.
CS: I don’t know why this guy is blaming himself. After all, he wouldn’t need an AFV to safely commute in Centerville if the authorities would lock up that geriatric lunatic that’s constantly destroying property and endangering lives with everything from hit-and-run driving to military flamethrowers.
Luann: One of my least favorite comedy tropes that shows no signs of dying is the obtuse-overkill visual gag. For example, if an incompetent-yet-eager cook is preparing a meal, expect them to cheerfully serve cookies that have been burned into hockey pucks and soup that looks like owl vomit. If they claim to be great at pinball, get ready to watch them lose all three balls in record time. And if they’re modeling for a portrait and claim to be familiar with Mona Lisa’s famous slight smile, you know you’re going to be getting an over-the-top Batiukian smirk-grin. Haha, isn’t it funny how obviously wrong it is? Look, I get that nuance can be difficult, but that’s supposed to be the difference in why these artists are getting paid to draw comics.
9CL Sister Steven/ Caligula sure does hate those high schoolers. How dare they take issue with being attacked by the unruly children she’s supposed to be minding?
Sarah: “Mommy, what do Hank Jr. and Yvonne mean by an ‘open marriage’?”
FAMILY CIRCUS: Jeffy: “Mommy, it used to be a cookie! At least when it went in the mouth end anyway.”
Thel (sighing while palming her face): “Jeffy for the last time, just deposit the tissue in the toilet. You don’t need to show me every time.”
Well little girl, you caught me in a quaint white lie I said to protect you, and know your parents are going to have to explain what a Hot Carl is. You played yourself.
BGSS: “Afraid the one thing I can’t heal is a broken heart! Psychiatry has made huge steps forward and there are very good medications for psychological ailments, but I never studied the field and I can barely do basic medicine. Best I can do is moonshine and meth!”
FC – The heck with the cookie, that Birthday Salami looks tasty.
MARY WORTH: “Our chemistry’s amazing, something I’ve never felt before”
It’s called an orgasm, ‘Stell.
MW – So, Estelle has never felt chemistry with a man before. Except for her long, happy marriage, which Moy seems to have completely forgotten about.
BG&SS: Somewhere in the Holler, a crone brews love potions, so it’s covered.
RMMD: So, do we call Jr “Hardly Horrible Hank?”
9CL: Next up: the water balloon victims, who have been nursing a grudge for decades, bombard Amos, just as his pre-coital ardor reaches critical mass. (oh, ick)
MW: Estelle sounds just about desperate enough to start peering through Dr Ed’s windows.
LUANN: Who is more ludicrous, the artist or his muse?
FC-That’s the way the cookie crumbles.
RMMD-Yay! We’re going to be bored with vacation photos!
MW-“I have lusted in my heart.”
JP-And as for Tiny Tim who did not die.
JP-Continuing to tell the story through flashbacks.
Snuffy Smith-They’re on the Camp Swampy target range.
JP: Okay, so now we’ve jumped ahead in this flashback from the skip-forward. The junkie cops were (or are, or will be) operating on the apparent assumption that Judge Duncan was some kind of head vampire of their poorly-defined and contradictory situation, since they blamblamblammed him and then immediately stopped doing anything to handle their problems. Forget about how they’ve been supposedly trying to kill Sam and Gloria this whole time; instead they immediately gave up after assassinating their sworn enemy that they were also serving loyally. Seriously, I have no idea what to make of the police in this story, they’ve been like a Schrodinger’s cat in a transparent box that keeps dying and then standing back up.
It also turns out that the drug-dealing deputies were careful not to injure Yelich despite having every reason to kill him alongside Judge Duncan. The drunkest detective in Cavelton paid them back by personally hunting each and every one of them down in record time. Never mind that Yelich wouldn’t be allowed within an inch of this IA investigation even if he wasn’t facing termination and multiple criminal charges for his own conduct over the course of this story. What’s more important is that he only sought professional leave for his drinking problem after rooting out all the corrupt cops, so we know he was absolutely schnockered the entire time he was running around arresting confused meter maids and school resource officers. But at least he’s better now, right? “It’s been two months since my last drink,” Yelich says while sipping his seventh vodka double of the day.
BGSS: You know who could heal Barney’s broken heart, probably? Those women from the Sunday comic.
BG&SS: My first thought was “Golf, in Hootin Holler? What’s next – the Hootin Holler Yacht Club?”
But as Josh points out, there doesn’t have to be a proper golf course in Hootin Holler for this to work. They could just be practicing swings in a cow pasture or something. And of all the characters in the strip, these two are at least the ones most likely to play the game – Barney is a visiting flatlander, and Doc may be a native, but he has to have to spent a good part of his life in med school in a city and been exposed to the game there. Plus, he no doubt wants to show off his levle of sophistication to the visitor. That doesn’t mean he’s good at it, of course!
GT – I’ve just got this weird feeling that the narration box is somehow insulting me.
Pl/GT: “You know you’re a Plugger when you still carry a lot of bills and change.” Thanks to Gilbert Thorp, Milford, AZ/OH/CT.
@Baja Gaijin: The last one reminds me of Doonesbury. Wilbur as Mayo jar.
JUDGE PARKER: “My AA meetings aren’t looking so bad now aren’t they?” –Funky Winkerbean
JUDGE PARKER (2): “Oh…I guess we could have called the police on this instead of casually letting someone be brutally murdered right in front of his child. Whoops! Our bad!” (shugs comically)
(“Who knows what wackiness that’ll lead to. We might even find out that we could use those guns and handcuffs that are routinely issued to cops in our battle against crime. Will wonders ever cease?!”)
JUDGE PARKER (3): Narrator: “Also I guess me and Yelich are pen-pals now or something, which is the only way I’d know or care about anything going on in his life. I guess seeing your pop’s head get blasted open like a smashed melon really bonds people together!”
The Family Circus: “I also brought you home this birthday sausage! What, Mommy? Why do you have that look in your eye?”
Archie: I’m a bit surprised that I’ve never seen Blondie use this joke. It sounds like just the kind of compliments Dagwood would pay Blondie.
Given the long history of newspaper comic strip artists hating “that modern art junk”, I assume that Luann is heading for that hilarious gag, never done before, where Nil meticulously puts his model through her paces so he can draw some abstraction that looks nothing like her.
Comedy gold!
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith: No wonder Barney’s perked up there in panel two. After seeing Doc Pritchard’s one-yard drive, he knows that hundred he had riding on this game is safe.
As a parent, a crumbled cookie is the best alternative, as opposed to ‘I brought home cake with two inches of icing in my pocket!’ or ‘they served pudding, and I brought some home for you wrapped in tissue paper!’
Cranky Funkershaft. When you want to make a point about fossil fuel use but your main character is a flame-thrower toting, grill exploding driver of a big diesel bus, there’s nothing quite like a creating a new strawman out of whole cloth.
FC – This has to be a recycled strip. I vaguely remember it from one of their little books of collected strips we had as kids. Even if that weren’t true, those little tiny candy basket things are a total throwback to the 60s/70s. Actually, they’d probably be popular today amongst the Pinteresty set, but let’s face it, Jeffy isn’t getting invited to the A-Lister parties.
Luann: Hold on, I know that letter was from Piro, in which he wanted to meet with Bernice. But here we are with Nil. Did I miss something? Uh oh, I’ve been outsmarted by a Luann plot. That can’t be a good sign. Help me Comics Curmudgeon, you’re my only hope!
FC: Love the party hat plopped on Jeffy’s head. It doesn’t even come close to fitting, it’s just sort of sitting in the center of his head. The bill doesn’t even reach to his face, let alone shade his eyes. We’ve seen other children in the strip, they seem to have the same large melon heads. It’s a mystery! And the sausage balloon others have mentioned is good too.
Family Circus – This comic about coming home from a party looks all wrong. Jeffy’s cone-shaped party hat appears to have a bill on it. The birthday balloon is one of the long ones clowns use to tie into animal shapes, yet it has a string like it was filled with helium. The take-home gift bag is a small Easter basket with jelly beans. Either this was an early attempt by an AI, or the few friends Jeffy is allowed to see outside the Keane Kompound are aliens attempting to appear human.
@popomatic: “Luann: Hold on, I know that letter was from Piro, in which he wanted to meet with Bernice. But here we are with Nil. Did I miss something?”
I can see three reasons for this:
1. The syndicate screwed up and published the strips in the wrong order. Those things happen even though they shouldn’t.
2. The Evansii realized that they had no idea where they would take the Piro/Bernice story and decided to silently shelve it. Those things happen even though they really shouldn’t, but the Evansii have an infamous history of dropping plotlines, don’t they?
3. The Evansii have a really juice plotline in store for us, where Bernice will pursue both Nil and Piro at the same time. Yeah, right. Those things just don’t happen in Luann.
@Baja Gaijin:
More “Entertainer Esme “!…We haven’t seen her in a long while. (Hopefully she didn’t work on the same cruise ship Wilbur fell off of).
Sarah reveal her disdain for her true ancestry as the Star Child from 2001 by merely handing a monolith over to some guy. “Here, this is TMA-7, neither from Tycho, magnetic, or – at least to me – an anomaly. Maybe it will evolve you into something interesting.”
MW: “Chemistry? Who said anything about CHEMISTRY? If all you’re looking for is something from a LAB, believe you me, Wilbur Weston is your man! Pretty near!”
9CL: I’m trying to imagine how it might be reasonable for Edda to refer to teenagers older than herself as “kids,” but I’m not succeeding.
@Baja Gaijin: The wit and witticism of Laura Jansen would be, in general, a great improvement over the pablum and platitudes of Mary Worth. Laura needs to get real on Estelle’s ass, and moving her into Charterstone would solve the most pressing issue in the Forthverse at the moment. Then we could devote a week to “Who would win: Darth Maul or Godzilla?”
BGSS: I don’t know about the states in the Appalachians, but in Nebraska, every town with a stoplight has a golf course. They’re pretty cheap if there’s a spot of land that floods too much to be good for farming.
In Hootin’ Holler, they play golf the way it was meant to be played, the way their ancestor Scots played it, on a course barely indistinguishable from the natural landscape, drunk, and with open hostility to lowlanders.
FC: Did the cookie get crushed in Jeffey’s pocket on the way home, or did he eat it out of an inability to control his base impulses? One is kind of sweet, but the other is a lot more in character with the Keane kids.
RMMD: I assume Hank Jr. and Yvonne are driving to the Ft. Lauderdale/Miami area, where the vast majority of American cruise traffic home ports, but where are they starting from? Knowing their route would help me determine the likelihood of encountering certain landmarks, roadside attractions, and/or murderous hillbillies.
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith: the art today is terrible. It’s bad enough we had to look at “Spark Plug’s” mutant feet yesterday, but that golfing is just distracting, and not in a good way, like Blondie’s rack.
@TheDiva: I think they’re starting from Fairbanks, Alaska, so maybe they get eaten by wendigo before the hillwilliams get a chance?
For years, comics fans have wondered “Why did they bring back Barney Google?” Well, this week we learned the answer: so he can be dumped, cucked and sexually harassed over and over for the amusement of BG&SS‘s dozens of fans.
MW: so Dr Ed and Estelle haven’t been able to sneak in a conversation during this time? Is it possible Ed isn’t as invested as Estelle?
@Lothar+of+the+Hill+People: Speaking of poorly drawn feet*, I definitely thought at first that Barney was wearing cleats under long pants while standing on pancakes. Even though I’d call it 50/50.
*(Rarely a wise thing to do on the internet.)
@jroggs: “Even now…” How did I even do that?
9CL: Oh, so about the time it takes for a Brookeworld plot to go anywhere.
C’shaft: Batiuk’s timing is, as ever, impeccable.
GT: Admittedly I haven’t been to a whole lot of arcades recently, but the ones I have been to have gone cashless, using a refillable playing card to activate the machines. Gil’s kid asking for more quarters seems about as likely as them finding a video game that costs a quarter anymore to begin with.
HotC: I admit, it will be nice to hear “homemaking is a valid and generally underappreciated role” from something that won’t go all-in on ridiculous tradwife rhetoric.
<b.JP: It’s like the Simpsons’ “And they were rescued by, oh let’s say Moe” gag played 100% straight.
Luann: I’m guessing the answer is “she finds your idiocy amusing.”
MT: Nothing says “bohemian beauty” like Mary Worth yoga gear, and Apartment 3-G hairstyle and taking your purse on a hike.
MW: Sorry, Wilbur, Mary’s found another man’s behavior to rationalize.
MARY WORTH: “It’ll eventually be clear whether he’s interested in you or not. And, of course, if he is, I promise to do my very best to break you up, so these dreary plots can continue to drag themselves out to the last syllable of recorded time.”
SLYLOCK FOX: “True, False, or What Have You Been Drinking?”: Pigs wear t-shirts and speak English.
DICK TRACY: “I know all the hacks there. Most of them write comic strips, but a few of them drive taxis.”
Beetle Bailey-Lt. Fuzz is hoping to poison the General.
BG&SS – The strip’s artist needs to Google “how to draw a realistic golf grip.”
@TheDiva: re RMMD: Since Hank Sr. wanted a picture of the Hillbilly Moose Statue in Asheville, NC, we might assume they are traveling from the Midwest, if that landmark is “on the way” to their Florida destination. But as I recall the road trip Junior and Senior made to Las Vegas, they meandered all over the West. So the Harwoods are not limited by the rules of geography.
Does anyone remember where they left from for that trip?
@Weaselboy: Why bother when you can just repurpose art of the doc using a butter churn?
GIL THORP: “Thanks Mr. Thorp. For sending us back to 1982 when everyone had Pac-Man Fever.”
GIL THORP (2): Dad can I have more quarters? We want to put more time in for the peep booths and…I mean for the video games. The video games. Yes…that’s what kind of “arcade” we’re visiting…uh-huh….
GIL THORP (3): Maybe Gil should skip the power-lifting challenges and do more “leg days”. I haven’t seen femme-y chicken legs like that since David Hasselhoff heyday at Baywatch.
@gardenornament: #32
BARNEY GOOGLE & SNUFFY SMITH: Doc “has to have to spent a good part of his life in med school in a city”? Not really; his medical diploma is probably from the Appalachian Medical Eddication Establishment based in Insideofmatchbookcover, Kentucky.
@Shrug:
” BARNEY GOOGLE & SNUFFY SMITH: Doc “has to have to spent a good part of his life in med school in a city”? Not really; his medical diploma is probably from the Appalachian Medical Eddication Establishment based in Insideofmatchbookcover, Kentucky.”
That’s quite possible! In that case, he wants to give the impression of having spent time in the city, and he must have heard of flatland doctors playing golf in their spare time, so he does as well. Or at least tries to.
I could never have believed I’d see the day, but I have people doing fan art of my strip! But here we are.
The characters are Ukranazi Andriy (left) and Ukranazi Stepan.
There’s also been Rule 34 stuff, but I’m not linking to that.
MW – While the ladies commiserate at SALAD TOWN, Dr. Ed and Wilbur are bonding at SAUSAGE FEST.
Mary Worth – meanwhile cranky vet steven is on his way to a mountain retreat to hike with a woman named holly folly
JP: Stories well told drive up to and through the climax of the tale. Once again, this strip slowly, messily and almost incoherently drives the plot line up to the climax – “BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!”- and then stops – “It’s been a few months since.” And, begins telling the story retrospectively. The reader misses the climax. It is blue balls storytelling.
@Voshkod: Thanks for the T.S. Eliot yesterday. A definite lift to my mood at the time.
Wary Morth:
Listening to these two has caused the woman in the next booth to go into a coma from boredom.
If she’s lucky, Rex Morgan MD will not be her attending physician.
@oldgold: Yeah. And if we’re going to have more days of narration, I say bring back the brown thrasher to do it. That bird was better-looking than the son.
“Oh… you didn’t mean your actual heart… you want something to deaden the emotional pain. Why that’s easy, Snuffy, I got all kinds of cure alls for that. Most of them contain opium, so if you see the Feds pokin’ around, shoot first, and say, “Am I being detained?” second.”
@astroboy: You may end up being the only person who remembers that marriage. Take care of yourself.
Luann: Borenice is a such a miserable, uptight hag, she grinds her teeth when she tries to smile
BG&SS: Speaking of Josh’s headline, it just occurred to me that I went to college in Appalachia and our campus was so hilly that all we had was a five hole golf course. I used to slice off the first tee into the president’s back yard.
@Old School Allie Cat: The Family Circus strips are all recycled with color added. Jeff isn’t drawing new ones. The most effort he (or someone at King Features) puts into them is updating technology and Thel’s hairdo. Today’s ran in January 1995, though that itself may have been a repeat. The artwork is Bil Keane’s original. Jeff may have approved the color monkey’s work and added his name to the signature in larger type, but it’s possible the syndicate did all of that for him, meaning he did nothing at all.
BG&SS: Docs be golfin’, amirite?
FC: Jeffy be stupid, amirite?
MW: With those gargantuan bowls of salad Mary and Estelle be shittin’ like ducks, amirite?
FC-It used to be a cookie and it was delicious.
FC – I went to the party and all I got was this crumby cookie….
RMMD – This “Horrible Hank” is in quotes to distinguish him from any other Hanks, either living or dead, who are also so lonesome they could cry….
BG&SS – But if an enlarging pneumatic penile implant would help….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
DT: What exactly does Dick mean with “The tables would be turned”?
Does he man that if he were in Manhattan, would he have been kidnapped with Wolfe and Godwin trying to find him?
Or does he mean that if he had jurisdiction in NYC, he’d be arresting Wolfe and Godwin and putting them behind bars for interfering with the cops doing their job, and for being a general pain in the behind?
I suspect that it’s the latter.
DT: I unironically appreciate that this story arc seems much more consistent in the period of the setting. It seems to be set solidly in film noir-time, probably the early 1950s, with fashions and cars consistent with the time, and no distracting anachronisms like desktop computers. It somehow feels more genuine when you don’t have to constantly wonder which period it’s actually set in.
There’ll probably be no female police detectives either, which is a pity. On the other hand we could perhaps expect the dames to be more dame-like.
And, of course, this may just be a coincidence, and the in the very next strip we’ll se computers and cellphones and flat TVs. Let’s enjoy the non-anachronistic atmosphere while it lasts!
@Flipper: FC: (A song for Jeffy) “The smile on your face as out the door you are dashin’….
to the mailbox to pick up the checks you’ll be cashin’
The touch of your hand on the golf club you just bought online
tells it all…
Oh, you like it best…
when you do nothin’ at all”
@Guillermo el chiclero: “BG&SS: Docs be golfin’, amirite?”
In 99% of all comic strips, that would just be a sure sign of a lazy artist who leans on stereotypes. But here, I cling to the hope that this is actually ironic, and that it’s Doc who in-universe uses the stereotype and plays golf to seem more like a real doctor and not the quack he is.
MW: Can we be sure Estelle’s previous marriage was a happy one? All I remember her telling Mary was that he had not liked cats, but she did and would be glad to take Libby. So maybe there was always tension over Estelle wanting a cat?
As usual, we get only the bits of information that will move the plot along. It would enhance the story if we knew more about him. What was his personality-type? His occupation? Did he call her “Stell”?
Luann: “Just sit there and smile like Mona Lisa. That should be simple, right?”
@gardenornament: That taxi has a running board, which would give us a setting no more recent than the late 1930s, probably about the time of Too Many Cooks.
BGSS: The Hootin’ Holler public golf course was built by the federal government in 1935, under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration. An electrical generating facility or a water-purification plant would have been more useful, but a public golf course is what they got.
After all these years of searching, Barney Google has discovered that love is the one inquiry that produces zero results. Where is the algorithm for his heart?
Is it just me, or did Comics Kingdom just go bananas and refuse to show any comics newer than March 1?
@gardenornament:
Oh good. So it’s not just me that sees it.
@Ukulele Ike: “@gardenornament: That taxi has a running board, which would give us a setting no more recent than the late 1930s”
Ah, I didn’t notice that. But were cars in the running board era really that streamlined? If you go back to yesterday’s comic, the cars are shaped more like in the 1940s. Except for the running boards.
OK, so much for consistent treatment of period. Sigh. I guess somebody will pull out a 1970s-era pocket calculator soon. And then a digital camera.
@gardenornament: Of course, even if the period is supposed to be the late 30s it would still fit with Nero Wolfe canon – as I understand it, the Wolfe books were always set in the period they were published, which was from 1934 to 1975. Wolfe and Goodwin didn’t age but the world around them changed.
@Ukranazi Stepan: Congratulations! Your comic is now officially a thing!
Andy Capp: That is something young people say. Or people as young as that woman appears to be, anyway. Last week there was a strip that actually seemed to be referencing current events. It’s all very weird in a strip that doesn’t always seem to be entirely aware the UK’s had decimal currency since 1971.
Crank: Goodness, it’s much-loved character Ed’s Yuppie Neighbour, who hasn’t appeared in the strip for so long that I genuinely believed he’d moved (and maybe the Literalism Twins and their parents had his house now).
DT: I think I’d find the fact streets in Neo-Chicago are named after former Dick Tracy writers cuter if the strip wasn’t all references, all the time.
JP: So it turns out that the solution to “We can’t go to the cops, because some of them are crooked! Trust nobody!” is “What if we went to the cops who aren’t crooked?” It’s a shame nobody thought of this before so many people were killed. It’s especially a shame that nobody thought of it before Steve was killed as a result of Sam and/or Yelich going to the cops without being this specific.
Peanuts: I guess this strip originally ran before the invention of the Cone.
@Flipper: “The Family Circus strips are all recycled with color added. ”
And sometimes some details are changed, like old-fashioned TVs redrawn as flat-screen ones.
But is the art style updated as well? I’ve seen some old FC cartoons which used a different drawing style. And Thel used to have a different hairdo. Or are strips that old not recycled?
I know that some details in the recycled strips are changed
Slylock Fox: Which would you choose? Boy Scout, or pig? In addition to the qualities enumerated here, Boy Scouts are also reverent and brave. Pigs have better taste, though.
@gardenornament: It could be very odd, the way the main characters remained the same. On at least one occasion, Wolfe and Archie were retained by the adult son of a man they had known decades before, when he didn’t have any children. It was like the brownstone and Cramer’s precinct lived in a protected time bubble.
@Bob Tice:
Junior blows up balloons all day
Sits on the porch swing watching them fly
Three Pluggers walked into Salad Town…
RMMD: Hank Sr , didn’t you die in the back seat of a Cadillac on your way to a gig in Ohio?
@gardenornament: #95: One must keep in mind that all passenger car production was suspended for the duration of WW2. When passenger car production resumed in 1946 the ’46 and ’47 models are what would have been the ’42 models if Pearl Harbor had not intervened. New body styles didn’t come out until 1948. A lot of older pre-war cars had to be kept running until postwar production could keep up. In fact, for a couple of years after the end of the war used cars were going for outrageous prices.
MW – “Our chemistry’s AMAZING! One weekend we synthesized a whole rainbow of aniline dyes together.”
@N. Scudder, the “Okay Boomer”: I, for one, welcome our new porcine masters.
@Rube: And during the Kennedy administration, Archie stopped wearing hats.
@Weaselboy: Pressing your buttons, eh?
@gardenornament: #99:
“used a different drawing style”
In the real early cartoons (early ’60s) the melonheads were more circle heads. Thel looked about the same (wasp waist, jutting rack) other than the hairdos. HTT Grandma looked more like former Texas governor Ann Richards with horn-rimmed catseye glasses and wasn’t so holier than thou. The biggest difference was Bil, who was drawn paunchier and more cartoonish.
Jeffy didn’t actually intend to bring a cookie home for his mother – there’s no room for that kind of recognition of his mother as a real person with wants and needs in that malformed tuber of a brain. More likely he saw some crumbs and thought, “Oh, mom loves crumbs! She’s always collecting the ones I leave on every surface.”
@gardenornament: The anachonisphere.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Kind of like current car production, after the pandemic.
JP: I was interested in the bird’s nest story.
Shoe-I see Les Moore is working his way into ‘Shoe’.
@MKay: bombard Amos, just as his pre-coital ardor reaches critical mass.
I don’t think that even atomic clocks have sufficiently fine enough resolution to time that.
6Cx: “…and no, I won’t be home for dinner. This job is going to take a long time. Feels like I’ll never finish it, actually.”
Shoe: If crime doesn’t pay for you, you’re committing the wrong kind of crime. Fraud can be very lucrative, or so they say. And the best thing is that you can have the best of both worlds. First you commit the crime and reap the unjust awards of that. Then you write about it and sell the rights for a fortune.
@Lord Flatulence: re JP: Ah, yes, m’Lord, we all would have liked to see the Bird’s family dramedy be the primo storyline here – definitely an upgrade! The phone’s been ringin’ off the hook since their appearance on Monday – they’re the feel-good story of the spring season!
We were of course hoping for more than a one-shot narrative device… especially after they relocated their family to Cavelton! We’re looking into reimbursement for that, as well as damages for mental anguish – they’re having to listen to this flashback narration!
@Lord Flatulence: “JP: I was interested in the bird’s nest story.”
Since this is the comic affectionately known as Juggs Parker, I’m pretty sure those birds are tits.
@els: I hope to see that one again on Friday.
@2+2=7: Gaaaah! *politely attempts to subdue retching*
@Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars!: Agreed!
All together now, those of us who are in accord on this — We Want the Birds! We Want the Birds! We Want the Birds! Team Nest, Yes! Team Nest, Yes! Nest Is Best!
@els:
? A muffin with a handle?
_________________________
Why hasn’t Mary Worth explored muffin handle technology yet?
The Familliar Mucus: “Mommy, I brung you a whole line of new ants for the ant farm. Please tell Dolly to not eat them this time.”
RMMD: Yeah, I’m with Josh. The way “exploring America” is written I’d guess Hank Jr.’s Florida is in Yvonne’s…well, discretion is the greater part of valor.
SSmith: If yore havin’ gal problems I feel bad for you son
I got ninety-nine problems and my golf swing is one
FC: Are we 100% sure what Jeffy wiped with that napkin?
RMMD: With Sarah and June standing side by side it’s noticeable that Sarah has June’s hair worm on her forehead and June’s quasi sideburns. Please Sarah, don’t let them cut the hair on the back of your head to give you that June helmet head. But get rid of the hair worm and sideburns. Poteet and I beg of you.
@Shrug:My understanding is he didn’t even go to that much effort. Just put out a shingle and started selling
moonshinesnake oil.@gardenornament: I haven’t seen any completely new strips since Jeff took over. The strips getting recycled are from the mid-70s on. I think the repeated Grand Canyon trip is one of the oldest. Those cool strips from the 60s don’t get used. The character design is just too dated. Anything from before May 1996 requires replacing Thel’s hair. It was a big deal when Bil had her go to the hairdresser at the suggestion of readers! The clunky updating of TVs & phones is the technology updating I meant. Rather than redraw strips with TVs, Jeff just replaces the old consoles with flatscreens sitting on the floor, sometimes with a planter still on top. Jeff also shortens the family station wagon into an odd crossover thing. And though I say Jeff does all this, I imagine it’s really being done by low-paid grunts. But that doesn’t stop him from signing his name to his dad’s work, which is such a Jeffy thing to do.
@N. Scudder, the “Okay Boomer”:
I’ll take your word for it, since I never tasted a boy scout.
BGSS: “In Panel A, we see how to render the extremely rare reverse meat claw backwards double fuckstick golf grip. Panel B is a handy quick study on how to draw a hillbilly snapping his own neck.”
@N. Scudder, the “Okay Boomer”:
So by rejecting the plate licker Eshtelle lost a great swimmer with an excellent sense of direction, good memory, superb taste and smell, and someone who’s very clean to boot? Come back, plate licker! Come back!
DT: This has been “Unhelpful Counterfactuals with Dick Tracy and Archie Goodwin.”
JP: The other people in Yelich’s AA court have heard all the rote “two months since” crap before. They’re waiting for the good stuff about Judge Duncan getting ventilated. Sorry, guys. You’re in Judge Parker, where even the longueurs have longueurs.
Shoe: Treetops has never seemed to have a particularly big population, but apparently they can lose a few to a serial killer without the population dying out.
C’est la Vie: I think this is the first strip that has shown a character in more than a three-quarter shot.
Am I to believe that the protagonist wanders around greater Los Angeles….in a black catsuit???
@70 Ukranazi Stepan: Congratulations! Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
@119 Poteet: STOP PEEKING!
@N. Scudder, the “Okay Boomer”:
. Pigs have better taste, though
____________________________
“But,Charlie, Star Kist wants pigs that taste good!”
Barney Google with his goo-goo-googly ventricles!
Six Chex: “Untalented? No, they just have a fear of humor.”
Gil Thorpe: “My Dad loves Pikachu more than he loves me.”