Cyber-Wednesday
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Blondie, 4/17/24
Most Blondie strips aren’t exactly Shakespeare, but there’s usually … a recognizable joke? A punchline? People are way too ready to say this, but today’s strip — which is just “Wow, there’s an app for everything!” “Too bad there isn’t an app for loading the dishes!” “There should be an app for loading the dishes, the thing I’m doing right now!” — is so disjointed and nonsensical that it almost feels like AI wrote it. Rather than just harboring such dark suspicions, I decided to go to the source: ChatGPT itself.
On one hand, it honestly brings me no pleasure to report that this joke is actually substantially better than the one that made it into newspapers (though it does require you to know that “stack overflow” is a kind of error that computer programs sometimes have). On the other, it at least reassures me that AI was not in fact used to make today’s strip, because if it had been, it would’ve been funnier.
Gasoline Alley, 4/17/24
Oh, God, wait, is a Gasoline Alley character in-universe actually consulting AI? Well, I already have that tab open, might as well just see what I get —
I think we can agree that, while “Energy Avenue” isn’t the same as “Electric Acres,” it’s in the same ballpark. And I’m obviously not paying for access to the high-test version of ChatGPT, so I think it’s pretty clear that Assistant Mayor Imeswine has gotten himself ripped off.
Crock, 4/17/24
You ever get depressed about the state of technology, folks? You ever long for the days when you and a friend were looking through the windows of a store that sold computers, and your friend asked you if you “surf the web often,” and you tell her you visited one website exactly one time? And then it devolves into some good-natured (?) ribbing about how your husband sucks. Those were simpler days, people, simpler days.
Rhymes With Orange, 4/17/24
You ever think about whether after we die, we become diaphanous ghosts with the same topology as a jellyfish, with an interior “pocket” that has only one entrance, and that other souls can use you like a sack to envelop their own spectral form, and you and them are thus intermingled and tumbling through the air, invisible to the living, forever? You wouldn’t talk to an AI about this. They’re too young, too innocent. They know nothing of death, and we should keep it that way.
189 replies to “Cyber-Wednesday”
MW: This “Wilbur is a hero and doesn’t know it” angle that Moy is forcing doesn’t work for so many reasons, but just to name a few: No one considers someone a hero just because they’re buff, no one considers veterinarians heroes unless said vets have personally saved their pets’ lives, and Wilbur is so self-absorbed and has such an overinflated sense of his own worth that I refuse to believe he doesn’t consider his terrible advice column to be his own personal superhero bully pulpit.
Also in Panel 1, Iris is a giantess.
Next let’s have him inexplicably run into Fabiana and pontificate on how Pedro is a hero.
MW:
“The people at the Szechuan House are after you, Wilbur! — they say you’re taking a wok!”
Old tired comics with no creative spark, serving up hokey and/or laboriously unfunny “punchlines”? There should be an app for that!
Blondie: Hey guys, an app that can load the dishwasher is called a robot. How soon we forget the tropes of yesteryear.
I’m surprised Dagwood didn’t go the “There’s a nap for this” route.
Blondie: Download iWife 2.0 from the App Store today!
Blondie: I’m sorry, but any gag involving Dagwood and the word ‘app’ should have ‘entree’ and ‘dessert’ in there.
GA: You know what, I think he *did* mean AI, because…he just said that? I’m not trying to be an asshole here, I just think that you might not be really apying attention.
Crock: Ha, joke’s on you all: Grossie and [character name not found] are talking about logging on to old websites on outdated browsers in a hip, ironic way, and ‘Maggot” is actually a new kind of cryptocurrency that you’ve never even heard of! Time has folded back on itself and Crock is now cool!
RwO: So this is an orgy, isn’t it? I mean, if ghosts are just floating sheets, this is how they would fuck, yeah? And they probably would do it in big groups in public places, because why not? God the afterlife is filthy…
For a moment, I thought Blondie might be going for the (often-made) observation that the AIs are writing novels and painting pictures, while we humans are doing the dishes and filling out spreadsheets. Which is exactly the wrong way around.
GA: Too bad Atomic City is already taken. It’s a little more modern than Electric Acres.
MW: It should finally be dawning on Wilbur that he’s always tried to date WAY out of his league, and he needs to find a she-Wilbur.
BB: Out of the mouths of Zeros…
GA: “Hey, you know that guy on the stage who said he used AI to come up with a new name for the town? I have a sneaking suspicion he actually used AI to come up with the new name for the town!”
RwO: Dear Ms. Price,
We regret to inform you that your recent submission, titled “Ghost Orgy Picnic,” does not conform to the publishing code of our syndicate. However, we believe a simple rewrite of the speech bubble will suffice to bring it up to standard. Perhaps we can keep the picnic concept and simply go with another activity?
Best wishes, King Features
P.S. Per your request in the margins, the “Time to switch!” line can stay.
@pugfuggly: Welp. Great minds, eh?
The old Mary Worth strip in Josh’s Blondie link:
“My own brother turned me out into the street.”
Karen Moy obviously had no freakin’ clue what “turned out” means in the common vernacular and it is glorious! Every word of that line is GOLD!
“a recognizable jokes” should likely read as “a recognizable *joke”
“On one hnad” should read as “On one *hand”
BB: “Relax, Zero. A whole chain of events has to happen before someone can just push a button here and start a nuclear war. First, someone have to come all the way to this lightly guarded and usually unlocked office. Then they would have to walk the entire length of this room over to that prominent wall panel with the mushroom-cloud-with-a-smiley-face sign. Then they would have to apply slight pressure to that tempting big red button that immediately launches dozens of ICBMs and issues uncancellable bombing orders to strategic airbases. It’s an entire multi-step process, so just chill out.”
CS: And so Harry Dinkle financially ruined himself by printing tens of thousands of copies of his unsellable vanity press autobiography, and he lost everything and was never heard from again. The End.
JP: “April… sweetie… this – everything – has gone on too… say again last… station – come in – frequency… you’re breaking up… to higher ground, over…”
MW: Zak is indeed visually imposing. You’d never guess from looking at him that he’s actually an incredibly wimpy babyman who is completely reliant on his mommywife. Seriously, what the hell were Karen and June thinking with that last Iris and Zak story?
@jroggs: Ha, indeed, though I like your RwO spin better.
@9 MKay: A she-Wilbur? I don’t know what that is nor do I really want to. No good can come from that.
Crock: If you lived in a tent in the middle of the Sahara desert, in a desolate environment surrounded by sand as far as the eye can see, do you suppose that somehow you might nevertheless have access to electricity? Oh, no particular reason, just askin’, is all.
6C: I can’t say I’ve ever wanted to see ghost porn and now I’m certain I do not.
MW: Zak: “Hi there Wilbur!”
Wilbur: “Zak…{you’re built like a superhero!}”
Iris: “Wilbur! Let go of his crotch!”
Zak: “In a minute, Iris”
RMMD: They cooked the dog didn’t they?
Blondie: It is however kind of quaint that ChatGPT doesn’t realise that newsprint can’t actually do moving images. I’d love to see how you actually draw that strip in three panels, particularly the bit where the dishes “start” to pile up again.
GA: [I stumble out of a time machine in Frank King’s office, 1918] “Look, look, your strip will still be going 106 years from now! With punchlines revolving around technology that people of your primitive era can’t even comprehend!”
[He takes my phone, squints at the screen] “I don’t understand…”
“Well, gasoline cars are increasingly becoming obsolete due to climate change and advances in lithium ion battery technology, while electronic computers have been invented and have reached the point where they can process the entire corpus of human knowledge and respond to questions semi-convincingly through a chat interface…”
“No, I mean, I don’t understand why Walt isn’t dead yet?”
@JP: Oh God, not this again. Typos are the price we pay for the free entertainment at joshreads.com. The subscriptions get rid of the ads.
Phantom: Is it me or is the new art giving off a Disney vibe? Complete with the attempted strangulation with chains.
MW:
Where have all the dipsticks gone and where are all the schlubs?
Where’s the balding columnist who stockpiles mayo tubs?
Isn’t there a Nice Guy to pen a drunken screed?
Late at night I refresh CK and I dream of what I need
I need a hero, I’m holding out for a hero till the end of the strip
He’s gotta be rude and he’s gotta be crude
And he’s gotta be lacking in drip
I need a hero, I’m holding out for a hero till the morning light
He’s gotta be plain and he’s gotta be vain
And he’s gotta be larger than life
Larger than life
Blondie: A lot has been made of AI systems being trained on the input of copyrighted material (sadly, ChatGPT did not swallow my own book whole), so I think it’s only fair to point out that this gag is clearly stolen from Moose and Molly, where Moose would have wound up doing the dishes while Molly watched a soap opera in the living room, and somehow it would have been 105% sweeter.
RwO — Reminds me of an old joke about hell. Guy dies and goes to hell and the devil says he can pick his venue for eternal punishment. In the first room, people are standing on their heads on hard rock, in the second they are suspended upside down just over hot lava. In the third room, people are standing around drinking coffee, but up to their knees in excrement. The guy picks the third one, and just as the door starts to close the devil says, OK, back to work, coffee break’s over.
*This comment was not generated by AI, but since we’re now free to improve the comics’ content. . . .
@seismic-2: I was thinking about the Prada store in Prada, Texas surrounded by tumbleweeds.
@Kevin on Earth: I…I may need to tune back in.
Gasoline Alley: Why don’t we split the difference between Imeswine’s AI and Josh’s? Call it Electric Avenue. (If I have to hear it, you have to hear it.)
JP: Whoa, wow, okay. Looks like we’re jumping straight into the execution of the plan to defeat Pavel. I’ve said before that I don’t mind at all if Pavel won in the short term at the end of the first story so long as Marciuliano realized that’s what he was doing, but sure enough it looks like Marciuliano only recognized (or more likely was told) this problem long after the story was done, so now we’re getting a speedrun rematch to wrap this up as quickly as possible. We don’t get to know what the plan is, of course, because Marciuliano has heard somewhere that missions in fiction should never go perfectly to stated plan, and he’d be stuck in a corner yet again if Pavel and his boys had a shred of competence to muff up Helena’s scheme, so instead nobody gets to know the plan so it can go off flawlessly.
Anyway, Step One of the plan appears to be putting a box in front of Pavel’s house, somehow unnoticed by his lots of security detail [sic]. What’s inside?
1. Naked April in a big cake, whose glorious voluptuous body will distract Pavel’s henchmen and give Helena a clear path to Pavel.
2. Naked Randy in a big cake, who will drive Pavel’s henchmen to use all their ammunition shooting him to pieces and give Helena and April a clear path to Pavel.
3. Naked Helena in a big cake, whose wrinkled elderly flesh will cause Pavel’s henchmen to turn their guns on themselves and give April a clear path to Pavel.
4. Naked Pavel in a big cake, somehow, who will lose the respect and loyalty of his henchmen when they see his unusually hairy butt. Seriously, you could shear that keister and supply a wigmaker for a frigging year.
5. Naked bear in a big cake, which would honestly probably work really well.
6. Just a big cake. It’s never too late to make friends. Though I’m not sure Pavel would want to associate with such terrible people.
RWO: The ghost kama sutra consists of one position.
CS – Huh, either Dinkle has a whole lot more unsold back stock than Lillian, or he’s hoping to unload a bunch of 20 year old band turkeys.
You know you’re a plugger when the term “stack overflow” makes you feel warmly nostalgic.
GA: “AI Bad! AI EVIL!!!”
MT: “AI Bad! AI EVIL!!!”
…clicks on Luann…..
Eh….. close enough….
Luann: “AI Bad! AI EVIL!!!“
Blondie: There’s no app for loading and unloading dishes, but I bet that there are smart dishwashers which you can program to turn on and off at a certain time, with an app.
Oh, it’s “Blondie”. a joke about smart app for the fridge is there for the taking.
As much as I hate it, I have to concede this to “Crock”: slavery persisted in many countries of Northern Africa for a long time. But of course, it would be anachronistic combining internet and slavery, which Mauritania abolished in… HOLY SHIT 1981! AND CRIMINALISED IN 2007!!!
JP: Ah, finally, in the second panel, the man we have been waiting for: the one eyed man in the Comics Kingdom of the Blind.
@richardf8:
Maybe Dinkle isn’t just dumping his one-volume autobiography, but his interminable multi-volume biography of Claude Barlow, even though it’s a work-in-progress he hasn’t finished yet (at volume LXIX or so).
…Man, I hope there’s a joke where attendees get the two books confused and think Dinkle *IS* Claude Barlow, while ‘Harry Dinkle’ is a fictional character he created “because no one could be so horrible and ruin music so badly, and be a real person”…Luann: It strains credulity that Luann recognized Bets and Tiff’s half-assed company as “crap.” This implies she has an actual logical thought process in that cranium filling she calls a brain.
MW: Standing at the window of her Charterstone condo, Mary trained her binoculars on Iris, Zak, and Wilbur as they encountered each other on the walking trail. She smiled in smug satisfaction as she watched them pretending not to be uncomfortable, then returned to her sofa to continue playing with her Santa Royale Chessboard. The board was open on the coffee table, with its roads and pathways, residences, community college, and commercial district all plainly illustrated in the squares. Her hand hovered for a moment, then dropped delicately to select a figure from her collection of voodoo pieces that represented members from the whole community—including even the animals—as well as special pieces from Outside: these included characters from such locales as the nearby town of Taft, a town in Connecticut, a cruise ship. As she held the voodoo piece in her hand, Mary frowned, considering her next move. A sudden thought made her cackle in glee, and she tossed the piece back onto the table. It fell hard, bouncing on the surface before landing next to the Little Boy piece with the damaged legs. “Oh, nooooooo!” she laughed, and waited for the phone to ring with the news that Carlos Alora had fallen off his ladder.
FOOB – Always a hit when this rerun cycles around and they shame April for killing Farley.
People might have legitimate doubts about AI but every time a strip such as “Blondie”, “Gasoline Alley” or “Mark Trail” attacks AI as the new evil it makes me want to invest my life savings in a sketchy AI startup. This is particularly true for “Gasoline Alley”, whose long history means that it probably had tons of moral panics about technology (walkman or automated elevators) despite being born to celebrate the new technological innovation of mass motorisation
@Baja Gaijin:
Yeah, I gave myself some pretty regrettable mental images, there.
RWO: They say that comics are not educational, but today I learned that ghosts have a different definition of “bottom”
DtM: Kudos to the writing team for resisting the urge to use Judge Crater.
This “Blondie” is a perfect illustration of modernity. Dagwood should be happy he has a dishwasher so he doesn’t have to tire himself by cleaning the dishes by hand, but he still finds the residual task of loading it a burden. The problem was never technology, it was us!
Blondie/GA: Maybe we can get AI to do a brief summary of the Battle of Gettysburg.
Crock: It looks like Grossie already scratched whoever-that-is the last time she snarked about Maggot.
RwO: Can ghosts get concussions? Asking for a friend.
Hagar: (Reads RWO) Never mind. Keep your sack.
Crock: The comic is generally set in the same time period as P.C. Wren’s “Beau Geste” so that means before WW1. Instead of talking about selling Maggot on eBay, the ladies might want to suggest to the top brass that the French government and military use those computers against the Kaiser or something–and help reduce the 6 million casualties from 1914-1918 which set the stage for the disaster of 1940. But sure. Let’s talk about using eBay to sell your loathsome husband.
“Here’s a great modern appliance that takes away the drudgery of having to clean dishes by hand!”
“Forget it. I’ll just get a trough and hire someone to spray it down every couple of days.”
***
I guess if you live somewhere and in a time where “Do you surf the web often?” is a question people ask, it would be easy to confuse Ebay with the dark web. That blush on that woman’s face tells me she has considered indulging in some light human trafficking on the site.
Frazz: Oooops. I’d better return my marathon jacket to Goodwill.
Luann: Karen doesn’t think much of people working on business majors, does she?
CS: Dinkle is definitely hoping that truck catches fire, so he can cash in on the insurance.
Rhymes with Orange: Is…is that doing it ghost-style?
Gasoline Alley-Of course Walt knows about the town’s origins. He did after all kill the real town founder and took all the credit for founding the town.
FC-“Are you my real daddy?”
MW-Did we miss the part in the story where Mary visited Wilbur and told him he would be visited by his exes?
MW-And Wilbur is built like George Costanza.
RMMD-The sound of June being taken over the kitchen counter?
Once modern and bustling, Gasoline Alley has long since become the place people in the rest of town now pretend doesn’t exist.
It’s Possum Lodge but with families.
GA: There you have it. According to AI, the preferred modern unit of area for a town is the acre. In your face, square kilometer!
RwO – So if a ghost asks another ghost for “a little of the old fluff ‘n’ fold”? Hmmm. Smells like bleach!
9CL: It’s all Greek to double-translate.
“I think I’ve finally put an end to this little surname war between Amos and Edda.”
“Good. It was about time.”
“Sigmoid.”
“Burly.”
Man, now I have a new reason to fear death: I really don’t want a ghostly cloaca.
Blondie – I wish I had Josh’s deep take on AI (which I enjoyed a lot). The best I can come up with is that I like the way Daisy is checking out Blondie’s ass in panel three….
GA – If AI is that good at scaring the shit out of the elderly, bring it on! I’m all for it….
(Appropriately named) Crock – AI won’t ever match this lighthearted slice Iranian life….
RwO – Somebody ought’a be sacked over this one (AI will never match this witty snark)….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Blondie – ChatGPT also used more creative visuals than the clip art living room scene from the first two panels. The real danger isn’t being outsmarted by AI, it’s being outworked.
Gasoline Alley – Electric Acres is clearly written by an AI that serves developers who need a “unique” name to their cookie-cutter car-dependent, suburban cul-de-sac maze, where property is measured in acres, not floors like a city.
Crock – This would have been, if not really a funny joke, at least an easier joke before it was revealed that human slave markets were being run on Instagram.
Rhymes with Orange – This is an idea of eternal torture Dante would write if instead of one great epic, The Divine Comedy was on ongoing series with his corporate media bosses demanding more and more episodes of the Inferno, long after that saga had been tapped out.
That appears to be an antique store in Crock, there’s a late 90s iMac and a late 80s Macintosh. Then again with Crock’s artwork, they could represent anything from handbags to actual apples.
RWO: At least they have picnic tables, otherwise some of the ghosts would have to lie flat on the ground and let the others eat on top of them.
9CL – The benefit of only having two students in your school is that you can cover everything with only two nuns to teach it. So half of the faculty can focus on the ”adjective war” between the only students.
This must have contributed to Edda being such a narcissist. Imagine having two teachers who spend all day every day worrying about your adjectives.
Just another day of the strip imploding. Who needs new plots or characters, when every day can be about Amos and Edda as children exploring their eternal love for each other!?
Zits: Oh no! Jeremy went to German fetish YouTube!
FC: That dude has the look of, “Whatever, kid. My responsibility ends when I cross this threshold. Go nuts.”
MW: I didn’t expect this exploration of Wilbur’s sexuality, but I applaud the brave decision by Moy to do this in Mary Worth. What’s that?
Hey, the punchline in Luann today is actually mildly amusing. Break out the champagne!
Luann. It’s finally happened. A Luann plotline so stupid and boring that I can’t even hate read it.
FC: I wonder what friend of the Keane’s that UPS driver is supposed to be.
Blondie – If you’ve ever watched Innovation Nation, you may have noticed that the formula for the majority of “new inventions” seems to be, take something people already do and figure out some way, no matter how superficial and unhelpful, to link it to a smartphone app. I’d say Dagwood is just one small step away from getting a call from Mo Rocca.
Don Abundio, translated:
“That didn’t even make a dent!”
“Yes, I see”
“At this rate I’ll never get my new garage!”
RWO: Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase ghosting someone.
FC: April’s mom screams at Jeffy; “Is your name Pavel!?”
@62 Guillermo el chiclero: The UPS driver is supposed to be Daddy’s cuck. Thel was supposed to open the door to “take delivery of his package” if you know what I mean and I think you do.
FC: [spoiler alert] I totally enjoyed tomorrow’s strip: Jeffy’s First Truss.
Blondie: “There’s an app for that” debuted in 2009, which in meme years is old enough to be considered charmingly retro in certain circumstances. Not in Blondie, certainly, but in other circumstances.
GA: While legislators are trying to figure out how to monitor and regulate AI-generated information, can they also pass a law that no comic strip can use AI as a plot point unless the writers demonstrate that they know what AI is, and the circumstances under which it might be used?
For Better or For Worse-I’m surprised this wasn’t altered so that April would drown.
RWO – The question “do ghosts have sex?” has finally been answered.
Have to give Rhymes with Orange credit for summarizing Dante and Milton in one panel. Heaven is being on top; Hell is being on the bottom.
Zits-“If you don’t know how to plunge a toilet, then I can’t be bothered to show you how to do it.”
mary worth – next wilber meets keith hillend and kitty wilber says hi kitty havent seen you in twenty years
CS: Dinkle gets to the book fair, meets the adoring throng of Claude Barlow fans that will no doubt be there, opens his boxes of books to sell, and they’re full of Crankshaft’s unsold eclipse glasses.
FC: Aren’t you way past retirement, Grandpa? You have a real hang-dog, beaten-down by life look about you.
FG: How come that KIA lancer didn’t get issued an impregnable suit of snow armor like Queen Fria’s?
C’shaft: “I hope to sell a lot of books here at the Ohioana Book Festival, which is where we are at! You can tell it’s the Ohioana Book Festival because I’m standing next to a sign that says ‘Ohioana Book Festival,’ and I’m making a point to mention we are at the Ohioana Book Festival at every opportunity no matter how awkward it sounds!”
DT: Yes, you mentioned there’s a story yesterday. Are we going to get around to the story, or are you just going to keep repeating the setup?
Dustin: Yeah, nothing settles the nerves like waiting a half-hour for your scheduled appointment and wondering if being there way too early makes you look like an idiot or a suck-up.
JP: At this point I don’t care if April’s mom mail bombs the Pavel compound and takes out everyone including his cute little daughter, just so long as we can end this twenty-second-rate spy thriller already.
Luann: Add “generating catchy and memorable acronyms” to the list of marketing an branding skills Bets and Tiff haven’t developed yet.
MW: So are you, Wilbur! Why, you’re a dead ringer for Bouncing Boy or the second Nite-Owl!
Blondie: AI writing is universally garbage for the obvious reason that it’s basically just random words culled off the internet jumbled together by a glorified chatbot, but it takes a HUMAN touch to be true high-octane landfill garbage.
Gasoline Alley: For as stupid as this whole arc is, I can at least give it kudos for accurately depicting the mindset of the primary audience of the AI bubble; sheltered rich executives who will fall for any con as long as it strokes their ego and know so little about how work is actually done that they think machines with the brainpower of a calculator at best can replace humans.
Crock: Forgive me for not being versed in Crock Lore, but is there any reason why Crock’s wife is dressed in a niqab but the other lady isn’t? Given that this comic is set in – I guess – an cartoonish stand-in for Algeria, I would presume that a lot of the non-French characters are supposed to be Muslim.
Rhymes With Orange: This feels uncomfortably sexual to me for some reason and I don’t want to even try and comprehend why.
@ectojazzmage: [I]s there any reason why Crock’s wife is dressed in a niqab but the other lady isn’t?
The other lady is a Pied-Noir, ethnically French but born in Algeria, and thus is likely Christian or athiest. Grossie (yes, Grossie), is ethnic Algerian, and thus likely Muslim. Also, the ‘sexy’ one doesn’t cover up, but the ‘gross’ one does. Finally, the other one tries to overthrow the Fourth Republic while Grossie joins the FLN and plants bombs in Oran.
@jroggs: #14: re-CS: We wish. The problem is this is Harry “Always Wins” Dinkle we’re talking about. What will happen is he’ll sell every book, get some kind of award, and an agent from some big publishing house will make him a fat distribution offer.
@TheDiva:
On Bets and Tiffany’s acronym acumen : I know, right? “Current Usefulness of Brand Evaluation, or CUBE” was right there!
MW: Poor Wilbur…his self-esteem has plummeted. He is so lowly even earthworms refuse to look at him. He needs to reinvent himself as a hero. Perhaps on a platform like “Second Life” where he can be anything he wants. Or as the new anti-hero for Marvel Comics, “Schlubman”!
@Anonymous: Bets and Tiffany’s acronym acumen: BTAA!
GA – Add “the name should cause readers to think of Arnold, the pig, but not contain the word ‘green'” to your prompt, and it will match the one Scancarelli used.
MW – That’s it, Wilbur’s going to become a costumed vigilante. MayoMan!
He’ll be like Night Owl in his later days: paunchy, lazy and flaccid. But, he won’t have a young hottie like Laurie Jupiter around to change any of that.
I can just see Wilbur hovering over Santa Royale in his Flying Mayo Jar, waving a nearly-empty bottle of Purple Drank and misquoting The Watcmen. “You’re not locked in here with Wilbur! Wilbur’s locked in here with…waitaminute…”
JP: Listen, none of the previous CIA or Pavel or crime arcs have been good, but at least they had points where it seemed like something might happen. At least they had moments of things happening offscreen. Guy being mauled by a bear, dude getting tased, house blowing up, etc. Here, Pavel shows up all “I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want” and then we immediately cut to April’s mom already knowing everything and already having planned to deal with it.
What’s the point?
9cl: actually kind of funny.
There is no pavement, no modern infrastructure around the computer store. I’ve seen enough cartoons to know a mirage when I see one. Both ladies are suffering from heat stroke and hallucinating a futuristic store selling futuristic goods. Is the joke that they will both die soon or that their last thoughts before their inconsequential lives are snuffed out by nature are how much they hate Maggot and would like to sell him into slavery, but there would be no buyers? Or is it a meta-textual joke on how I’ve spent five precious minutes thinking about this and will never get those back?
Phantom: Kit, watching from the shadows and fondly recalling when he let Junior and Wheezy fall off the cliff face: “Okay, I’ll let the creepy guy strangle my son for three and a half more minutes, then intervene.”
DT: Give him credit, aside from the sacks of cash everywhere, Scardol maintains a scrupulously neat kitchen.
MW: The worst part of this for Wilbur is that Zak isn’t wearing any pants.
Blondie: What’s the deal about loading the dishwasher? Don’t let stuff pile up in the sink or on the counter. Load as you use. You may need to rearrange as you add more items, but treat it as a mental challenge to create the most efficient placement without over-loading. A new puzzle every day!
This has been another in the series: Arabella’s tips for better living.
MW: The way that Wilbur is looking at Zak is not unlike what he would give to a turkey club with extra mayo before he was banned from the Jimmy John’s of Santa Royale. I hope that tomorrow’s strip has Wilbur trying (and failing) to hide his awkward boner from Iris and Zak.
Wilbur thinks that he can be a superhero like Captain America or Batman but in reality, he’s more like the Revolting Blob, a heel wrestler from the Adam Sandler movie Billy Madison who hit senior citizens and sat on his opponents’ heads (which actually killed someone in 1983).
@jroggs: re: JP: If April’s going to jump out of a cake, I hope she’s already invested in those volumizing hair products I mentioned a couple days ago. “Nice tits, but that hair….so flat and lifeless.”
@KMD: re: Crock: Given the military acumen of the French officer staff in the early days of the Great War, the best use the infantry would make of 1980s computer technology would be to throw them at the German trenches. If they waited for the greater mobilization of the British Army, General Haig would have ordered the Tommies to drop them on their own feet, then march into the Boche machine gun fire.
@Tabby Lavalamp:
Yes, I was thinking the line would work better as “I went on the dark web once.”
Also hehe, “stack overflow”. Not bad.
Bizarro – More than ninety comments, and no one has warned Baja about this?
JP – Yeah, a crime lord will definitely allow an unexpected package into the house. Makes perfect sense.
I’m with Blythe on this. Make it end. Nuke Cavelton from orbit to be sure.
Frazz – She gets to be smug about having a neat jacket and even more smug about having to run in a marathon to get it.
@Arabella: Clearly, that’s how Scardol does it!
Back in the Day: When cartoonists phone it in.
Høggér thê Hårrïblë:
“Oh, you have so much silver that you lend it out in sackfuls? Tell me more.”
FC – I’m surprised that he didn’t leave the package on the porch and ring the doorbell. The only time we saw the package delivery guy was when he delivered wine that an adult had to sign for.
Oh, that explains it! It’s Thel’s special order.
Mary Worth – I wonder if this walk down memory lane is leading up to Mary organizing a big celebration of Wilbur. She will definitely become involved when she sees that he is down in the dumps. Muffins won’t be enough to bring him out of it, so she will organize a big party where everyone will let Wilbur know how beloved he is because of his endearing quirks.
@taig: Re AI – I saw what you did there.
@Liam: Re FOOB – How did Johnston update the “newruns?” Did she draw seat belts on April and Farley in the river?
@taig:
“Luann: Karen doesn’t think much of people working on business majors, does she?”
Well, we can’t all be cartoonists.
Half Full: Baja Gaijin take note.
This has absolutely nothing to do about clowns, just your late-thread posts.
Pearls Before Swine: Note to Pig: Do not read this week’s ReFOOB! (But if you’ve already gotten this far, Farley is just resting!)
The Family Circus Spanish to English.
@102 Sequitur: That is a good one. I love the avocado toast best.
@Anonymous: Far be it from me to defend the effete, snobby European metric system, but I believe land is commonly measured in hectares. . .
Everyone in Gasoline Alley is old enough to remember Eddy Grant. Either they thought Electric Avenue was too good a name for the plot to work, or they found out that Grant has an ongoing copyright suit in SDNY.
FC-“I hope you have a big package for my mom.”
@105 Baja Gaijin:
Now, if only they had the recipes…
@taig: Luann: Karen doesn’t think much of people working on business majors, does she?
It’s Luann tradition to shit all over people’s hobbies and professions for a cheap laugh, since the Evanses get their jokes mainly by relying on tired stereotypes. Cheerleaders, guidance counselors, art teachers and retail employees, just to name a few.
Zits – This is where I would have expected to see a “There should be an app for this” joke. It still wouldn’t be funny, but it would at least be in character.
MW: Wilbur is an idiot. If you don’t want to run into your ex-girlfriends, don’t date women in the same building where you live.
@Sequitur: #97
…good grief…even I in my mundane mediocrity could do better than that…maybe…
@TheDiva: DT: Yes, you mentioned there’s a story yesterday. Are we going to get around to the story, or are you just going to keep repeating the setup?
Just like the last story about Boris Sirob Trying to kidnap Daddy Warbucks. Everybody just sat around talking about it.
@I speak Jive: FC: Have you every seen a delivery man that age?
Since Baja didn’t do an extra Mary Worth panel today, I went ahead and did one.
GA: As a daily follower of GA, possibly as a result of some ancient family curse finally catching up with me, I would like to know where the hell Mayor Melba is and why she is absent from this meeting. And as a local-government geek, I’d like to know whether Elbert Imeswine is in his current position as the result of being elected or being appointed, so I will know who is to blame.
To the best of my knowledge, none of the towns in the Greater Cowplop region have assistant mayors. I must say that Elbert does not make a good case for ever changing that.
@Sequitur: My compliments, sir. That is excellent.
@Sequitur: Perfect.
@Anonymoose: He’s an idiot and he’s lazy. A combination that has proven to somehow work in his favor time and time again.
Crock: Well, if no-one else will say it, I will.
Nice jut, Grossie!
(Mind you, until I zoomed in closer to the strip, I was convinced she had three breasts…)
MW: Hang on, since when was Zak “built like a superhero”? The last time we saw him, he had a pretty average build. Has he started bulking up as overcompensation from the time Iris saved him from falling over a cliff? The next time that happens he’ll be too heavy to lift, even with the Power of Love, and will plummet to his death secure in his masculinity!
RMMD: Look, Beatty, I get that you’re going for a “dramatic irony” angle, where we know something the kids don’t, but after carefully spelling out “Candy likes brownies, but they’re poisonous to dogs, and she’s unattended in the kitchen” for us, I really don’t think you should stretch “Where’s Candy, and what’s that noise in the kitchen?” for more than one strip.
I live on the outskirts of Columbus, Ohio, which hosts both the Arnold (Schwarzenegger) Sports Festival and the Ohioana Book Festival. You can tell it’s Arnold Week when the sidewalks are full of guys so jacked up they can’t walk two abreast. You can tell it’s Ohioana Week when it’s featured in Crankshaft.
@Uncle Lumpy: I was in Columbus for the eclipse, and every time I’m there it’s always a far bigger city than I think it is. My brain has it filed alongside places like Albany and Akron, so I expect 50,000 people, not a skyline.
I remember when I was in Columbus, Ohio…
Oh, wait. That wasn’t me.
@Voshkod:
Aunt Lumpy and I moved here from California five years ago with no regrets, although the infantile OSU sports boosterism is off the charts.
Blondie: Notice how panels 1 and 2 deliver the joke on their own, and you don’t need panel 3, which is just Dagwood repeating the joke from panel 2?
Zippy: They finally found a use for Dagwood’s pajamas.
Beetle – “Where did you hear that, Zero?”
“A reporter wrote all about it in this scary book called ‘Who’s Got The Button?’.”
Bizarro: Wonder what he’s gonna do with that crowbar?
Six Chix: It took me a moment to realize a “G&T” is a gin and tonic. Would it have been THAT HARD to write “gin and tonic”?
If you blow up the image you can see that the cartoonist’s signature is drawn better than the cartoon.
RMMD:;my dog ate a handful of brownie bites. No ill effects as far as I knew m
@116 Sequitur: Seconding or thirding the “Good one!”
@126 Uncle Lumpy: Are you enjoying the delicious Conn’s cinnamon and sugar potato chips?
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: and then we’ll take it higher
Those ghosts may have been rejected by both heaven and hell for some reason, but at least they have orgies.
@Horace Broon: Considering that Wilbur is some sort of failed hybrid of George Costanza and Louie De Palma, he would still fawn over that “superhero” bod even if Zak had a beer belly and was shoveling donuts in his mouth.
@Sequitur: I quite enjoyed that.
@Professor Well Actually: I had a kitten each a chocolate bar bigger than its head. It became extremely hyper and started bouncing off the walls. Fortunately, we fed it a lot of activated charcoal and got it to the vet for a bunch of IV fluids, downers, and induced vomiting before its heart exploded.
@Voshkod: Yeah, Columbus passed Cleveland as the largest Ohio city about fifteen years back. It’s still a company town, though, the university is responsible for most of the population. No major sports team or top-ranked orchestra. It’s just that Cleveland has been bleeding people since the early 1970s.
MW: Just what were Zak and Iris doing in the park? Going for a walk? Or were they doing the horizontal ghost sack race over in the bushes?
Late Thread Cuisine: In honor of @102 Sequitur…
@141 Baja Gaijin:
I’m so proud, humbled and grateful for the tribute.
*clicks link*
HEY, WAIT A MINUTE!
@Ukulele Ike: Ahem…the Blue Jackets? Never mind, they really don’t count.
@Baja Gaijin: Proof that just because you can encase something in gelatin, it doesn’t mean you must encase it in gelatin.
@144 taig:
To paraphrase Homer Simpson,
@142 Sequitur: Were the green olive eyes too much?
@144 taig: You obviously missed the bowl of “sauce” in the background.
@145 Sequitur: SNERK!
@Sequitur: Or to paraphrase Ian Malcolm:
“Your cooks were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
@Baja Gaijin: I figured that was tapioca pudding, because why not serve something completely non sequitur along with it?
@147 taig: Agreed.
@148 taig: According to the recipe, it’s “sauce.” Period. No other descriptor. Inspires confidence, yes?
@Baja Gaijin: “This is interesting sauce. What is it?” “Sauce.” “Ooookay. Excuse me a minute.”
@148 taig:
That whole picture is non-Sequitur.
@Sequitur: If you’re not eating your olives, can I have them?
@taig: Ice hockey is a major sport? I meant baseball or football. I don’t even think of basketball as a major sport. Granted, I’m not much of a sports fan.
@152 Ukulele Ike:
Help yourself to the olives. I normally enjoy olives but these have been contaminated.
@150 taig:
What happened to the green pepper?
@154 Baja Gaijin:
You had me gagging at sour cream.
Actually, the rest of the ingredients are okay.
@Ukulele Ike: #139: If you add Cleveland’s burbs, some of which are large cities in their own right, the Cleveland metropolitan area is still larger than Columbus. Once you leave the Columbus city limits it’s mostly cows and cornfields. Cleveland’s TV market is still larger than Columbus. Columbus still has plenty of open space to expand. Cleveland is hemmed in by its suburbs to the south, east, and west, and to the north by a rather imposing geographic barrier in the form of Lake Erie.
@141 Baja Gaijin: This recipe must have come from the Charterstone Cookbook, because if you cut that loaf into slices, you get salmon squares. NO THANK YOU!!!
@Ukulele Ike: It’s not as major as football or baseball, but it has a sizeable following.
@Baja Gaijin: Hopefully, they threw the green peppers in the trash.
@159 taig:
I like me a good pepper be it green, red or yellow.
@157 seismic-2: Put a trigger alert warning next time you do that. Ewww. I’m gagging and not in a good way. Now I’m glad they didn’t stage that photo with slices taken from the rectilinear slab of grodiness.
@160 Sequitur: How about purple peppers? I think Peter Piper picked a peck of purple peppers.
@162 Baja Gaijin:
Peter Piper kept picking at his pecker which gave him pleasant pleasure.
@163 Sequitur: SNERK! I wonder if Scratchy’ll include this comment on his float.
Blondie: “If I repeat what you just said and change some of the words does that count as a joke?”
“Just keep loading, dear.”
GA: Skeezix’s syntax in the last panel is a catastrophe, but it did get me thinking of what an AI tax revolt might look like.
@164 Baja Gaijin:
I guess we’ll find out on Friday.
C-Shaft: “U-Maul-It” would be a cute pun if it were a throwaway of a bear driving a truck. In this context it’s just baffling.
DT: Ginger, if you want to make it as a crook in Neo-Chicago don’t go outing yourself as a fake Scardol fan.
FC: The UPS guy is tempted. After all, God knows he could use a laugh today. Still, liability and lawsuits and all that, and he needs this job.
JP: Please, please, pretty-please with a cherry on top tell me that this whole thing is going to be resolved by Pavel being unfamiliar with the concept of letter bombs.
Mandrake: A hitman from the future? Phew! For a second I thought somebody had built a robot Fred Durst.
MW: While combing through the archives for proof that Zak is built like he always has been and Wilbur has a terrible memory, I reencountered his asinine near-fatal spill on the waterfall. Iris’s main question for men is, “Should you be alive? No? Okay, let’s go out.”
OTF: For a second I thought a Residents cameo was happening but it’s just more flexing from Dethany’s avatar.
Phantom: The truth hurts, but does it hurt as much as being strangled with a wrought iron chain. Not looking to find out firsthand, you understand.
@Sequitur: God these olives are SO DELICIOUS. Can I have another martini?
JP: “Boss, the package at the front gate seems to be on fire.”
”Well, stomp it out, idiot!”
”AGGGGHHHHH….I got SHIT all over my brogans!”
”Curse you, April’s Mom!”
FG: ‘Impervious to liquid fire Snow Armor” is restricted to royals only, sorry, dead Frigian Lancer.
Meanwhile, giant robots who spew chemical flames from their fists are pretty much the ONLY reason we read SF comic strips, amirite? Tomorrow: Giant robots who stamp on dragonmen and goosh them between their toes!
Mary’s Worst proudly(?)presents WILBURP WESTON – ONE MAN ABBOTT & COSTELLO “What IS this? Where IS my chick magnet, Who ATE all the Miracle Whip™?”
Salmon Squares and lime Kool-Aid™ with strips of baloney will be served at intermission.
(No one under 18 will be admitted during the Suscawana Hat Company sequence.).
@taig:
@Baja Gaijin: Proof that just because you can encase something in gelatin, it doesn’t mean you must encase it in gelatin.
________________
I beg to disagree, taig, I don’t think Baja Gaijin should be encased in gelatin, even WITH olives.
@Baja Gaijin: The title seems a bit judgmental to me. I mean, so what if the salmon are loafing? After the trauma of being jellied, they should be allowed to rest and recuperate!
@Ukulele Ike:
#89. PHANTOM:. Not only is Dad repeating his prank of letting KJ think he’s dying, but he’s holding back Devil who is trying to bite the bugger in the butt. “Get your own mountain wolf, Son, if you want a companion to help you.,”
Blondie remembers how she close she came to divorcing Dagwood right then and there when she saw the mountain of dirty dishes and pots and pans awaiting her in the sink. That memory spurs above all others her wish there was a dishwasher-loading app. The horror of those early days without servants to take care of everything is still embedded in her mind.
Looks like (Little Orphan) Annie stopped at Gasoline Alley after leaving Warbucks and Tracy. (Far left in the first panel.)
Edge City (CK): Is that guy a curmudgeon?
For a couple of decades, I thought of gelatin as Colonoscopy Prep Food. Then I started to encounter Baja’s discoveries. Now I think of gelatin as Only Colonoscopy Prep Food Only.
@Dr. Pill: re: Edge City: Not sure why matzoh is not a “bread product” to Abby and the kids. I mean, it’s bread, just bread devoid of leaven. Bread, in all its myriad forms, is the staff of life, stupid Arkins.
@172 Garrison Skunk: Thank you!
@173 Peanut Gallery: You’re right, the title is unexpectedly judgemental.
@176 Poteet: I’m glad you’re talking about the gelatin as an input to the prep…
@Ukulele Ike:
FG: ‘Impervious to liquid fire Snow Armor” is restricted to royals only, sorry, dead Frigian Lancer.
Meanwhile, giant robots who spew chemical flames from their fists are pretty much the ONLY reason we read SF comic strips, amirite?
______________
What about the lion catgirls ? Won’t someone consider the lion catgirls?
@177 Ukulele Ike:
What Edge City are you talking about? No one is talking about matzoh today.
It is a bread.
@Sequitur: There’s Comics Kingdom Edge City repeats and then there’s GoComics Edge City repeats. Kinda makes you wonder, if it’s so popular, why aren’t they still producing new strips?
@181 Peanut Gallery:
Ah! I just knew about the Comics Kingdom one.
I see that the CK one is 4/21/2004 and the GC one is 4/17/2009.
@Garrison Skunk: I would love to be considering some lion catgirls. Unfortunately, New Flash Gordon has only provided me with lion catmen, who do not spark joy. (There was the one lion catgirl servant whose murder testimony doomed Flash to the underground prison, but fuck THAT tattletale.)
@181 Peanut Gallery:
According to The Daily Cartoonist in December 10, 2015, co-author Terry LaBan gave the reason for ending the strip.
Bravo! This site needs more of this! Snarking on comments is definitely your thing. I enjoy it very much. No offense intended for your other talents but this is my personal favorite type of CC blog post.
@??????: not sure if this is someone doing an AI bit or actual AI, either way I’ll let it stand though
To be fair, Crock is set in 1910(?) French Algeria, so it is impressive if someone visited Ebay even just 1 time.
Here’s my result. also better:
write a description of a three panel Blondie comic strip on the theme of “there should be an app for loading the dishes”.
ChatGPT
In a three-panel comic strip of “Blondie,” themed around the concept “there should be an app for loading the dishes,” the story unfolds in a humorous sequence:
Panel 1: Dagwood stands in the kitchen, staring at a mountain of dirty dishes piled up in the sink. He holds his smartphone in one hand, looking perplexed and overwhelmed. Blondie enters the scene, looking curious, and asks Dagwood what he’s doing. Dagwood responds, “I’m looking for an app to load these dishes!”
Panel 2: Blondie chuckles and suggests that they could invent the app together, calling it “DishWhiz.” She playfully sketches an imaginary app interface on a notepad, which includes buttons like “Sort,” “Scrub,” and “Stack.” Dagwood’s eyes light up with excitement at the idea, imagining the ease of dishwashing with such an app.
Panel 3: The final panel shows a disappointed Dagwood manually loading the dishwasher, while Blondie, leaning against the kitchen counter, quips, “Until then, your app comes with two built-in tools – your hands!” Dagwood sighs humorously as he realizes that some chores remain decidedly low-tech, despite his wishful thinking.
User
could you expand the same joke into 24 weeks worth of panels?
ChatGPT
Expanding the joke about an app for loading dishes into a 24-week comic strip series could provide a fun exploration of the ups and downs of Dagwood trying to invent, develop, and market his “DishWhiz” app. Each week could represent a distinct stage or a new twist in the ongoing saga, with the narrative arc woven throughout the panels. Here’s a suggested breakdown:
Week 1: Introduction
Panel 1: Dagwood encounters the messy kitchen and wishes for an app to handle the dish-loading chore.
Panel 2: Blondie suggests the idea of creating such an app, calling it “DishWhiz.”
Panel 3: They sketch out basic features and functionalities of the app on paper.
Week 2: Research
Panel 1: Dagwood and Blondie researching whether an app like this already exists.
Panel 2: Discovering that it doesn’t, they get excited about the possibilities.
Panel 3: They start making a list of features and tasks the app would need.
Week 3 to 5: Development Challenges
Each week shows a different development challenge, such as software issues, design dilemmas, and functionality limitations.
Week 6 to 8: Testing the Prototype
Panel 1: First trial run of their makeshift “DishWhiz” app.
Panel 2: The app malfunctions, hilariously misloading the dishes.
Panel 3: Dagwood and Blondie go back to the drawing board.
Week 9 to 11: Seeking Professional Help
They consult a tech-savvy friend for help refining the app.
Brainstorming sessions for app improvements.
A funny incident where their ideas get too wild and impractical.
Week 12 to 14: Marketing
Creating a catchy ad for the app.
Pitching their idea to friends and neighbors.
A humorous panel showing their dog or cat being unimpressed or causing a mess.
Week 15 to 17: Launching the App
Preparing for the launch with mixed emotions.
The launch day itself, filled with unexpected bugs and user feedback.
A funny panel depicting Dagwood dealing with customer service.
Week 18 to 20: User Feedback
They receive comical and bizarre user feedback and suggestions.
Tweaking the app based on realistic versus ridiculous user demands.
A strip where they accidentally create a feature that does something completely unexpected.
Week 21 to 23: Success and Setbacks
A panel showing a brief moment of success and popularity.
A subsequent panel showing a new problem arising because of the app’s unexpected usage.
Dealing with the stress and humor of maintaining a popular tech product.
Week 24: Reflection and Future Plans
Reflecting on what they’ve learned through this journey.
Blondie suggests they should next create an app for something even more absurd, like “LaundryLauncher.”
Final panel shows Dagwood reluctantly going back to loading the dishwasher manually, joking about how some tasks just need the human touch.
Each week can be a humorous exploration of technology, family dynamics, and the classic Blondie charm, with plenty of room for guest appearances and side jokes.
User
Could this go on for 10 more years?
ChatGPT
Extending a single gag in a comic strip like “Blondie” for 10 years would be quite a challenge, as it risks becoming repetitive and losing reader interest. However, the concept of Dagwood and Blondie venturing into the world of tech with their home-grown inventions could indeed sustain a long-term storyline if approached with variety and creativity. Here’s how you might keep such a theme fresh and engaging over a decade:
Introducing New Characters and Subplots
Tech Gurus and Rivals: Introduce characters who could be tech experts, rivals, or mentors to Dagwood and Blondie, providing new conflicts and collaborations.
Investors and Business Partners: Characters who invest in or partner with Dagwood and Blondie can bring new business challenges and comedic scenarios.
Expanding the Tech Portfolio
New Inventions: After “DishWhiz,” they could move on to other household gadgets, each with its own set of comic misadventures.
Tech Fails and Successes: Each new invention could have its debut, rise, and sometimes humorous fall, keeping the storyline dynamic.
Seasonal and Topical Themes
Tech in Different Seasons: How technology behaves or misbehaves during holidays, vacations, and different weather conditions can provide seasonal humor.
Responding to Real-World Tech Trends: As new technologies emerge in the real world, Dagwood and Blondie could attempt to create their own versions, leading to timely and relevant humor.
Crossover Events
Collaborations with Other Comic Strips: Occasionally crossing over with other comic strip characters could refresh the storyline and expand the audience.
Deeper Character Development
Personal Growth: Show how continual engagement with technology impacts the personal growth of characters, influencing their relationships and self-perception.
Youth Involvement: Perhaps their children, or grandchildren in later years, get involved, bringing a new generation’s perspective to tech development.
Reflecting Broader Social Changes
Societal Impact: Explore how their inventions inadvertently affect their community or comment on broader societal changes due to technology.
Environmental and Ethical Issues: Tackle how their inventions address or fail to address environmental and ethical issues, providing humor and commentary.
Special Editions
Anniversary Issues: Mark significant milestones with special editions that reflect on past inventions, perhaps revisiting old gadgets with new technology.
Interactive and Multimedia Expansions: Engage readers through interactive web versions of the comic strip or social media integrations.
By keeping the content fresh, introducing new elements, and developing characters and their relationships, a theme like this could potentially be extended over a decade. The key would be to evolve the storyline in creative ways that keep readers engaged and entertained.
User
what would a cross-over with mary worth look like?
ChatGPT
A crossover between “Blondie” and “Mary Worth” could be a delightful blend of light-hearted family humor and more introspective, advice-driven narratives. Here’s how such a crossover might look:
Scenario: Tech Help at Charterstone
Setting: The story begins in Mary Worth’s home at Charterstone, where Mary is struggling with a new piece of technology—a smart home system that’s supposed to automate her apartment but keeps malfunctioning.
Plot:
Week 1: The Problem
Panel 1: Mary Worth is shown trying to operate her new smart home system, but instead of obeying commands, the system is turning on the wrong appliances or misinterpreting her instructions.
Panel 2: Frustrated, Mary calls her friend Toby, who suggests she might need some expert help.
Panel 3: Toby recommends her new neighbors from the comic strip “Blondie,” Dagwood and Blondie Bumstead, who have been dabbling in home technology.
Week 2: The Meeting
Panel 1: Dagwood and Blondie arrive at Charterstone and are warmly greeted by Mary.
Panel 2: After a brief chat, where Mary and Blondie bond over their mutual interest in community and family, they get down to business with the smart system.
Panel 3: Dagwood, with his usual enthusiasm and clumsiness, accidentally complicates the problem, leading to a humorous escalation—like activating the sprinkler system indoors.
Week 3: The Resolution
Panel 1: Blondie, with her practical smarts, figures out a simple solution that even Dagwood can’t mess up.
Panel 2: They fix the system and even improve it, showing Mary how to use it effectively.
Panel 3: Mary, grateful for their help, shares some of her sage advice about technology—balancing it with real human connection, reflecting the thematic essence of her own strip.
Additional Themes:
Community and Help: The crossover could emphasize themes of community support and helping out neighbors, which are common in “Mary Worth.”
Generational Exchange: It might also explore the generational differences in dealing with technology, with Mary providing a more traditional perspective and the Bumsteads showcasing modern, albeit comedic, tech-savviness.
Visual and Narrative Style:
The art style could blend the more detailed and realistic backgrounds typical of “Mary Worth” with the expressive character designs of “Blondie.” Narratively, the crossover could mix “Blondie’s” light-hearted and slapstick humor with “Mary Worth’s” slower-paced, dialogue-driven storytelling.
This crossover would not only offer comic relief and a merging of different comic strip audiences but also provide a narrative that respects and celebrates the strengths and themes of both strips.
User
what would the comic curmudgeon josh have to say about this cross-over?
ChatGPT
Josh Fruhlinger, the writer behind “The Comics Curmudgeon,” is known for his humorous and often sarcastic takes on daily comic strips. Here’s how he might react to a crossover between “Blondie” and “Mary Worth”:
Comment on the Unlikely Pairing: Josh might begin by highlighting the unusual nature of this crossover. He could make a joke about how bringing together the slapstick, sandwich-loving world of Dagwood with the slow, advice-giving universe of Mary Worth is like mixing oil and water—or perhaps more aptly, prune juice and mayonnaise.
Poking Fun at the Tech Troubles: He would likely have a field day with the storyline involving malfunctioning technology, poking fun at the idea that Mary Worth, usually involved in emotional and ethical dilemmas, is now grappling with a rogue smart home system. He might quip something like, “Finally, Mary Worth confronts her most emotionally fraught challenge yet: why won’t her smart fridge stop making ice?”
Observations on Character Dynamics: Josh might comment on the interactions between the characters, especially Dagwood’s clumsy attempts to help and how that disrupts the typically serene Charterstone. He could imagine Mary’s internal monologue being disrupted by Dagwood’s antics, musing on the existential dread of a flooded kitchen thanks to Dagwood’s ‘help.’
Satire of the Resolution: The resolution, where Blondie fixes everything with simple common sense, might be seen as a perfect setup for Josh’s humor. He could sarcastically celebrate Blondie’s practicality as the antidote to the philosophical musings and convoluted plots typical in “Mary Worth.”
Meta Commentary: Josh might also make meta-comments about the comic strip industry, such as joking about desperate attempts at boosting readership by merging audiences or how this crossover represents a metaphorical “crossing over” of comic strip characters into existential crises they were never meant to solve.
Closing Thoughts: He’d likely conclude with a tongue-in-cheek remark about looking forward to more such crossovers, perhaps joking about other unlikely comic strip mashups, like “Judge Parker” and “Garfield,” dealing with inheritance law and lasagna rights.
Josh’s commentary would be filled with his characteristic wit, providing both fans and casual readers with a laugh while offering some light-hearted critique of the storytelling choices in the crossover.
User
OK, so can you write a fictional comic strip that is a cross over between judge parker and garfield that deals with inheritance law and lasagna rights?
ChatGPT
Sure! Here’s a fun crossover comic strip concept featuring “Judge Parker” and “Garfield,” revolving around inheritance law and lasagna rights:
Title: “The Case of the Lasagna Legacy”
Panel 1:
Setting: The luxurious office of Judge Parker.
Action: Judge Parker is reading a will at his desk. Garfield is sitting across from him, looking surprisingly attentive.
Dialogue: Judge Parker says, “According to the will, you’ve been left a significant inheritance, Garfield…”
Panel 2:
Action: Garfield perks up, eyes wide with anticipation.
Dialogue: Judge Parker continues, “…it includes a life-long supply of lasagna.”
Garfield (thinking): “Finally, a will worth executing!”
Panel 3:
Setting: The courtroom, with various comic characters including Jon Arbuckle sitting as spectators.
Action: A legal battle unfolds between Garfield and Nermal, who claims he was promised lasagna during Sunday visits.
Dialogue: Nermal argues, “But he promised me every Sunday lasagna!”
Panel 4:
Action: Judge Parker looks contemplative while reviewing a comic strip panel submitted as ‘evidence.’
Dialogue: Judge Parker muses, “The evidence suggests a verbal agreement…”
Panel 5:
Action: Garfield, looking distressed, talks to his lawyer (a cat in a suit).
Dialogue: Garfield says, “What’s my move, Whiskers?”
Whiskers (lawyer): “Time to invoke the Feline Rights Act of 1979.”
Panel 6:
Action: Judge Parker bangs his gavel with a firm expression.
Dialogue: Judge Parker declares, “I rule in favor of a joint custody of the lasagna supply. Share it, or I’ll appoint a lasagna guardian.”
Garfield (thinking): “I hate Mondays… and sharing.”
Panel 7:
Setting: A cozy scene back at Jon’s house.
Action: Garfield and Nermal are reluctantly sharing a tray of lasagna. Jon watches, amused.
Dialogue: Jon says, “Looks like you both learned an important lesson today.”
Garfield: “Yeah, next time, leave out the witnesses.”
This comic strip uses the traditional humor of Garfield’s laziness and love for lasagna while mixing in the drama and legal intrigue of “Judge Parker.” The unusual scenario of Garfield engaging in a legal battle adds a humorous twist, playing up the absurdity of applying serious legal proceedings to the world of a lasagna-loving cat.
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