Space is the place!
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The Phantom, 10/16/24
The Avarice AI’s suicide attempt was actually a murder-suicide attempt, but it failed in both respects ignominiously, so now the poor robot has to sit there and listen to further lecturing from the Ghost Who Lectures, this time about how its declaration yesterday that it was “the unified sovereign of this planetary body” was wrong, since it thinks it’s on the moon, since the moon isn’t a planet. Far be it for me to chastise a guy for pausing his violent battle against a novel machine intelligence in order to smugly establish that he’s technically correct, the best kind of correct, but if you do that, you have to actually be technically correct, and I regret to report that the big purple guy is, in this case, not. In astronomy, a “planetary body” is an alternate term for a planetary mass object, which is defined as any body large enough to achieve achieve hydrostatic equilibrium (to hold together as a sphere or something close to it, in other words), but not large enough to sustain fusion like a star would. Plenty of objects in our solar system meet this definition, including a whole suite of natural satellites, of which our moon is one. So the score is now Avarice 1, The Phantom … well, several higher than 1, and we know he’s going to win eventually, but we gotta give this robot this one, it deserves it.
Gasoline Alley, 10/16/24
Ida Noe the evil magic doll has already tried to kill these children once, by taking them back in time to the horrors of the Civil War, but has now realized that it would be much more efficient to simply transport them beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, where they will quickly asphyxiate.
76 replies to “Space is the place!”
Gasoline Alley:
Okay, girls. No jokes now about the seventh planet from the sun in our solar system.
BB – And Buxley Wednesday has her on her knees in front of the General.
Phantom:
“You really are confused, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Because I read Judge Parker every day.”
You can’t travel to other planets to write a report! Personal experience is not a legitimate source and which quotation style are you even going to use to reference a magic travel by cursed doll?
Hagar and Helga Browne leave their modern(ish) lifestyle and escape via time machine into the scandinavian past where there are no laws.
Phantom:
“You really are confused, aren’t you?”
“Hey, look who’s talking. You wear that garish purple get-up, with striped skivvies on top of them, even in extreme heat, and the boots you sport are confining and nonfunctional!”
I wonder whether there are “Gasoline Alley” purists who complain about magic dolls nonsense and cats and wished the strip would focus on its core business of Walt, cars and family trees. But they probably all died during the Ford Administration
GA: “I’m a magic doll! I can do anything!” “Can you fix our eyes so the villagers stop calling us hideous monsters and forming hunting parties to kill us?” “…I can do almost anything!”
JP: Absolutely nothing is wrong with Neddy! Domestic violence isn’t a horrible crime, it’s wonderful and righteous!
RMMD: Yes, random guy in the crowd, the Mirakle Method is indeed “woo,” as in extremely scientifically dubious and potentially dangerous beliefs and ideas peddled by irresponsible buffoons and deceitful charlatans. Also, holy crap this is dragging on. If Mud warms up this crowd of boring idiots any longer, he’s going to have to flip them over to keep their undersides from charring.
DT: [smacks forehead] Of course! It was Mr. Mirror, the killer with a tiny mirror for a head! It all adds up! …Christ. The only “mystery” here is where Tribune keeps finding all these ridiculously godawful guest cartoonists, and solving that one would probably take more than a minit.
CS: Other ways from what? Crankshaft didn’t specify a category in which fall was his favorite season, he just said it was. For the hundred thousandth time, Batiuk: this is not how the English language works. Anyway, it’s looking more and more like we really are done with the book burnings, huh? I was going to wait until Monday to do my postmortem, but seeing as this story started back in August and was scheduled to terminate in October, it would be pretty weird if it ran for roughly two months, took one week off for a bland “Wow, it sure is fall now” week, and then ran for one more week after that. Then again, it’s Batiuk, so predicting this comic’s trajectory based on what makes sense is a very bad plan. If last Sunday’s anticlimactic nothingburger really was the final strip of the arc, though… well, can’t call it unfitting.
GA: Ida Noe’s not going to punk them by promising to take them to a planetary body, then just going outside, is she?
StripeyButt: A couple of BLAM BLAM BLAM and talky-talking that would bore Batliuk, and Kit defeats AI. Worst remake of “The Forbin Project”.
I guess I gotta give the ancient, creaking Gasoline Alley creaters some props for including an African-American child in this group (if that is indeed what I’m looking at). But someone needs to have a talk with the colorist! African-Americans have a range of complexions, from light tan through warm mahogany to a striking ebony. But GRAY? I have never in my life seen a GRAY person. Unless they’re dead. Is that child dead? Have I misinterpreted the whole thing, and this is some kind of evil doll zombie fu???
If so, eek.
MW:
“Kids, you two animals are eating chopped-up fellow mammalia! — doesn’t that make you feel good about yourselves?”
Typo. I know it’s spelled creators.
GA: The teacher probably thought that their explanation of “research” was sufficient, and so it probably was, for the students without crazy, glittering bug eyes.
MW: I call bs. Dogs don’t pause in the middle of a meal for ANYTHING, much less to say, “Girl, you run to him, NOW!”
9CL: Did Alistair sleep through Health class? And life?
@jroggs, CS: September was Banned Books Month, and F451 just celebrated its centennial, so this was considered Pulitzer Bait.
Gasoline Alley-“Now put these plastic bags over your heads and seal them up tight since there is no air in space.”
Gasoline Alley-Ida Noe is a magic murder doll.
Ph: Is…Is Phantom talking right to us? Because yes, I am confused. Profoundly.
GA: While you’re up there, maybe swing by Arrakis and drop off Alia there…
DtM: Fed up with his mom’s terrible cooking, Dennis takes matters into his own hands as he prepares a root beer based sauce for the brisket he’s smoking in the yard.*
*FYI, “Mop” is a technical term in BBQ’ing for the mop-like wand used to apply basting.
Beetle Bailey-“Can you come back later? Ms. Buxley was going to adjust my belt.”
B. Bailey: Mrs Walker asks shouldn’t the General’s laces be shown untied in the first panel?
“Ha ha” responds Greg; “No one’s going to look past the second panel.”
The Phantom – Neil DeGrasse Tyson is both furiously writing a letter to the editor about all the facts that are wrong, but at the same time feeling an uncomfortable kinship with the Phantom ‘s obnoxious pedanticism.
Gasoline Alley – Ida Noe is the evil version of Ms. Frizzle from The Magic School Bus
GA: So the way that things work in this strip is that the teacher of the hideous children’s class assigns them to write a report on some subject, and then the hideous children do the research on that subject by traveling to the location in time and space of that subject, thanks to a magical doll. OK, teacher of the hideous children’s class, please, please, PLEASE make your next assignment for the class be to write a report on “black holes”. And offer extra credit if they write a report on “The effect of black holes on Rufus and Joel”.
Phantom: Stripey, if you’re going to pull a Captain Kirk say it like Kirk. You-really-are-con-fused!
@Bob Tice: Urectum? [/Futurama]
Space is the place with the smugful Phantom man!
Frazz: And another econ major mops another floor.
RMMD: Trying to coax a little love from the crowd, Mud gets a single “Woo!” It’s not going to be a good night.
MW: Actually, your actions were influenced by Ed’s complete disinterest in planning your stupid little costume party. The dog emergency was just coincidental. You can’t solve a problem if you don’t know what it is. Woof.
Now I’m starting to question, if Ida Noe is actually magical or if these kids are just having a pretend play session?
“Let’s go to the moon!!”
(Cue kids with their eyes closed acting like they’re running around on the moon)
Well, I WOULD suggest this but the Santa’s Workshop visit, continued even after the kids left (with weird sexy elf who may or may not be a robot or spy) but questioning the logic in Gasoline Alley is going down the rabbit hole…
FC: Dolly is lagging on her o’clocks but caught up on her gozintas. “Two gozinta six three times;” she says.
GA – it’s mercury poisoning, right? That girl has mercury poisoning and Ida Noe now knows where to take these monstrosities. (These kids are based in real folk, right? Like, when a character in this strip becomes hideous because of trying to capture an actual likeness it’s hugely apparent, see also Luann)
The Phantom: “The Ghost Who Talks” was sitting right there, Josh. I also would have accepted “The Ghost Who Talks (Too Much),” “The Ghost Who Mocks,” and even “The Ghost Who Balks.” The last one needs further context, though.
Now we have to wait for a Phantom storyline about Kit Walker redoing his shower. Here’s to a “Ghost Who Caulks” joke waiting in our collective futures!
@Twinkles the Elf: Funny, I took that color for a shade of purple (mauve?) and assumed Josh’s asphyxiation was already in progress.
The Ghost Who Misses the Obvious — Wouldn’t a supposedly artificially intelligent entity know that it wasn’t on the moon when it found itself in the middle of a jungle?
H&L: A lunch conversation I never had with my sister.
CS: Just then the release of toxic intestinal gas simultaneously emitted by these two instantly killed the tree.
GT: As Lucas is about to enjoy the anonymity of the Outcast Table, he is suddenly hailed by his former douche-bros. Just when he thought he was out, they pulled him back in.
“How can we write a report about something we don’t know about…?” Apparently you just need to throw on a mask and some skin-tight purple spandex and you’re golden.
Phantom: “You really are confused, aren’t you?” the Phantom says to his canine companion. “Seriously, could you please stop humping my leg? This is like the fifth time today.”
GA: I think these kids’ next magic school assignment needs to be “learn where the library is.”
MW: No, Estelle, you’re not the problem here! You were hurt because your fiancee blew you and your friends off for some routine mutt surgery any other vet in California could have done! To be honest, your wedding plans are completely stupid, but it’s not your fault no one is telling you this.
Didn’t expect a Gasoline Alley/The Conjuring crossover this Halloween, but here we are
@Little Guy: CS: September was Banned Books Month, and F451 just celebrated its centennial, so this was considered Pulitzer Bait.
When it comes to the Pulitzer Prize, Tom Batiuk is a master baiter.
The Fan Dumb: “But Jessica was on trial for killing the tennis pro she and her daughter were involved with, while Burt got abducted by aliens, Chuck and Bob ran for President of Delaware, Benson considered an offer to produce.a cable sports show and Billy got kidnapped by Freddy Kruger!”
“But you won’t be confused after the next episode of ” Soap! ” “
Dustin: Today’s Dustin just adds to my suspicion that to Dustin’s dad, “donuts” is a euphemism for “sex”, and specifically buying it. The different flavors represent different acts.
GA – The little blonde girl looks like she’s wearing a wig made of McDonald’s french fries and banana peels. All three of the kids are creepier than the doll. The kids look like what happened when your Memaw decided to sew you a Cabbage Patch doll back in the 1980s, rather than give Xavier Roberts a dime of her hard-earned cigarette money.
RMMD: were I in the audience I’d be looking at my watch. Actually I’d be looking at a calendar. Get on with it. I don’t care what you sing just movie along.
@Ettorre: MLA?
H&L: Trixie holds up two middle fingers. “I’ll give you opposable. Now feed me!” She thinks.
FG: Hah! Sojas got his ass kicked by a girl twice, and the second time he was even jacked and roided up on Ming juice.
BB: “Your zipper is stuck, sir….”
DT: From The Third Man to Caligari to Meshes of the Afternoon. Movie fans are swooning at this progression into avant-garde obscurity.
Jim Scancarelli, upon hearing a Millennial describe “The Magic School Bus Lost in the Solar System” as a fever dream:
“You call *that* a fever dream? Hold my beer!”
GA: The evil magic doll is the *least* creepy thing in this arc, honestly.
RMMD: Mud makes references to “Lil’ Fergus” and “Swingset on the Moon” to test if the crowd wants to hear a pornographic Roots-Country set.
“Count Weirdly has launched his autonomous robot to the moon. Upon landing, the robot declared itself the ‘unified sovereign of this planetary body’. Why is Slylock Fox unimpressed by the robot’s declaration?”
(Of course, Slylock Fox wouldn’t get terms like this wrong. So congratulations: not only has the Phantom descended into Slylock Fox-style nitpicking, it’s not even as good at it as the original.)
GA: Doesn’t Gasoline Alley have a library? Wi-fi access? A school bus driven by a quirky lesbian and her pet iguana?
Phantom: “Phantom mansplains with the smugness of the sated leopard!” ~Ancient Bandar saying
“I’m a magic doll! Shall we go to Yuggoth or Carcosa?”
MW: I’m definitely curious if Pierre’s “woof”‘s are meant to come off as sarcastically as I’m making them in my head.
I do also wonder what it says about me that I’m attributing sarcasm to a dog’s “woof”‘s but…sometimes you just shouldn’t pull on a thread.
@Little Guy: Fahrenheit 451 was published in 1953, so its centennial won’t come around for another 29 years.
Gasoline Alley is making a serious play for Twilight Zone fans. Which one will Talky Tina dispatch with first?
I don’t expect the writers or readers of Gasoline Alley to know about Google, but libraries with books existed back in the 19th century so… just go to the library, children… or is reading the works of Galileo and Copernicus still more damning to the soul than consorting with a possessed doll from Hell?
GA: If only NASA knew about the magical doll – they wouldn’t have to worry about their main rival Space X outperforming them! I can see it now…future astronauts will be fitted with Ida Noe dolls to take them anywhere in the galaxy. Just put them all in a big room with their dolls, pull on the magic straw hat and say whatever incantations the doll commands, and off they go. This will save countless billions of dollars in space exploration.
C’shaft: Nothing says Funkyverse like “even the joys in my life are a nuisance.”
DT: Correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding was the “Minit Mysteries” were supposed to be a longer-form version of Slylock Fox’s shtick: the reader is presented with a logical or lateral thinking exercise in the form of a whodunnit, encouraging them to attempt to work out the puzzle themselves before the answer is revealed. “The dead man’s phone was visible in his last selfie because the killer had a mirror for a head” is not the sort of solution that lends itself well to that particular format.
Dustin: “Anything I can do to speed along your death from heart failure.”
GT: Where have you been, mysterious off-panel heckler? Milford-to-prison isn’t a pipeline so much as it is a revolving door, or maybe the gate between the indoor and outdoor enclosures in a zoo’s lion habitat.
JP: Imagine looking Neddy in the eye and saying with a straight face, “Absolutely nothing is wrong with you.” If Ronnie’s wife took acting tips from her, she’d have more Oscar nods than Meryl Streep.
Luann: Geez, Karen, just get a puzzle app on your phone if you want to do them by yourself, don’t go dragging us into it.
MT: If Mark was lecturing me in the middle of my medevac, I’d call him something much stronger than “crumbum.”
MW: “Meow!”: Of course it did, you idiot! How do you manage to remember to breathe?
“Woof!”: Not for you, at least. It must have taken all your brain power to pull the pop top on my can of Alpo!
Pluggers think “elevator music” is still a thing.
LUANN: Today’s Luann is actually pretty amusing, mostly because of the utter hilarity of the Trufans accusing someone else of “not reading the room.” That clueless bit of irony’s the punchline, right?
The Phantom: Thus begins the true meat of this storyline; the Phantom giving Avarice a grade school lesson on astronomy.
Gasoline Alley: Ida Noe is kind of emblematic of how disconnected and bizarre Gasoline Alley’s various cast members and storylines are. Like, you get arcs about Walt and his maid and his dipshit hillbilly friends where everything is vaguely realistic in the most boring and tepid way possible. Than you get arcs like that freaky-ass talking bear trying to steal human children to raise as his own. And than you get stuff like this with a time-traveling talking doll taking these freakish mutant kids to historical tragedies and space. And none of them ever really connect to each other. How the hell is any of this supposed to be happening in the same world?
Calvin and Hobbes ran so Gasoline Alley could walk:
https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1989/10/27
@Professor Well Actually: Yvonne (hold a switchblade to commenters throat, wild demented look in her eyes*): Don’t you dare listen to this louse. Mud, you play Muddy Boots, or it’s curtains, got it?!”
*Well as wild as they can look behind a thick miasma of mild-mannered banality anyway.
MW: I just caught up on Mary Worth and, I gotta say, all this dead husband stuff feels like ex post facto justification to me. “Oh, I was only ring-throwing-enraged about Ed skipping out of the wedding planning because I was worried about him working himself to death!” Uh-huh. I’m sure.
Phantom – Fascinating, Mr. Science – now explain how Goofy – being a dog, mind you – can have his own dog? And based on the transitory laws of logic and science – could not Pluto, a planet, have a Goofy fucking moon? And none of this shit about Pluto’s not a planet anymore….
GA – Shouldn’t that doll be locked in a cabinet in Ed and Lorraine Warren’s basement….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
@Noel: I have only been paying attention to this when Josh or Lumpy has featured it here, but in anything resembling real life it would be next to impossible to walk back that insane display of Estelle’s that took place in front of his employees and patients. Of course, nothing in this strip has any particular connection to real life.
The Ghost Who Apparently Doesn’t Watch TV needs to check out how Captain Kirk outfoxed the machines in Star Trek episodes such as The Changeling, The Ultimate Computer and Mudd’s Women by using their own logic against them. Advanced studies would see him employ the “What Is Kiss?” gambit.
Damnit – the episode is I, Mudd. Never mind.
Ida Noe may be tempting fate with her plan, if she messes up the magical teleportation spell we’ll have weeks of crossover Gasoline Alley: Across the Alleyverse strips as another relatively current pop culture reference.
@Noel: Even calling it ex post facto is giving it too much credit. This is just straight-up gaslighting; Estelle’s motives were entirely about feeling personally dissatisfied and slighted until Mary talked her into this retroactive and artificial PTSD crap.
@Give Me A Ping Vasili: #65: Don’t forget “Return of the Archons”, where Kirk did it first.
Beetle Bailey: I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought this was a setup for a fellatio joke.
Zits: this is one reason why online shopping is popular, you no longer have to go into a store to buy embarrassing items.
I’m going to comment on Tuesday’s Dustin, which forces the reader to explicitly imagine Dustin’s mother giving birth.
BLONDIE:. Game time! How many ambiguous, noncommittal compliments can we list? “Boss, your presentation was…”
– What can I say, Boss.
– One of a kind.
– Awesome.
– Memorable. Truly memorable.
(Your contribution)
LUANN:. We see how Bern’s superpower, focus, is also her kryptonite.
BF:. Plus the new baby. Don’t forget an infant wants near total attention. Hmm, maybe that’s where Mom could help out.
JUMP START:. “Rookie, stay in your lane. I’ll get info out of the suspect by my own way, the traditional arts of deception and lying.”
FG:. Even if you’re not a reader of Flash Gordon, take a look at Aura’s fun power play today.
TG:. Remember when Amazon was primarilya big bookstore?
@Pozzo:
#9. GA:. That would be a good joke, but the incredible AI supercomputer spacecraft, Avarice, in Phantom wouldn’t get it.
Gasoline Alley – I don’t routinely read this for a multitude of reasons, mostly because the characters and artwork are so repulsive that they give me a serious case of the willies. Ye gods, those children and the doll are horrific. They could be models for Halloween yard decorations. Move over, twelve foot tall skeleton.
9CL – Alistair shops at the same Ratty Clothes For Elderly Gents Shoppe that Amos frequents. He’s slipping – he needs to pull his pants up a little closer to his armpits.
What is the masculine equivalent of frumpy?
Mary Worth – Libby isn’t paying attention to Estelle’s blathering. She’s looking at her food with dismay. “This isn’t Fancy Feast!”
Rex Morgan – It’s amazing that this has been dragging on for weeks, and it’s about a locked finger. Heaven help us if anything really serious happens to any of the core cast. The diversion to roots country will be strange.
@Roscoe:
#60. GA:. Roscoe, thanks for finding this one. Nothing beats a Calvin cartoon.
Baby Blues: This is one of the better Haiku’s I’ve seen. I’m curious now if different regions use different slang terms for passing gas. I always thought the word fart was universal but do some places use the word “toot”? What do they think of the phrase “toot your own horn”?
@ValdVin: Gasoline Alley is making a serious play for Twilight Zone fans. Which one will Talky Tina dispatch with first?
_______________
The bald, lollipop sucking cop,of course. “CROCKER! Get this Betsy Wetsy outta my office!”