Somewhere in time
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Andy Capp, 7/14/25
The question of “When does Andy Capp take place” is increasingly fascinating to me — characters are on modern dating apps but also they dress … like that? … which seems pretty old-timey to me. Today’s strip in particular feels like it belongs to an age before the UK Parliament passed the Licensing Act 1988, back when alcohol could only be served at pubs from 11:30 am to 3 pm and 6:30 pm to 11 pm. This explains the reference to Andy’s “afternoon nap”; presumably he routinely stumbles home at 3 o’clock pretty soused and passes out on the couch for hours. Normally he’d be up and around to go back for the evening session, but I guess he overslept today and has missed out on hours of the precious “aimless drunkenness in the presence of non-wife people who he likes or at least whose names he knows” time that makes his life worthwhile bearable.
Hagar the Horrible, 7/14/25
Ha ha, that got a little dark! Anyway, speaking of placing comics in context, you know I’ve long been fascinated by when exactly Hagar the Horrible takes place over the evolution of Viking culture and society, but the where matters as well. I’m reasonably sure it’s been made explicit in-strip that Hagar lives in Norway, which means that his world faces out to the North Atlantic. His Swedish cousins have established extensive trading routes through the Russian river systems with the Byzantines and Abbasids, so they have access to the delicious spices of the east, but Hagar’s Norse compatriots haven’t gone far enough south of Greenland to discover genus Capsicum, which means that in his mind “hot wings” are just wings that are currently or recently on fire. Sad!
Hi and Lois, 7/14/25
When Hi referred to “your honey-do list,” I briefly thought that we were turning a traditional sexist cliché on its head here, but nope! It’s just a joke about Hi feeling wounded and unappreciated — or in other words, “classic late-era Hi and Lois,” which around here we do respect.
96 replies to “Somewhere in time”
H and L:
Shouldn’t Hi’s cowlick be behind his speech bubble in the first panel, instead of invading it?
RMMD:
“You got the results?”
“Yeah — back away from the door, stranger!”
@Bob Tice: It’s crazy how comics art gets less and less realistic. When will these artists learn how to mimic real life instead of cartoony nonsense.
AC I see your ‘when?’ and raise you a ‘where’?. I always assumed London, but that sky blue background seems to suggest otherwise. Unless Andy is enjoying one of the East End’s famous rooftop pubs? Is that a thing?
HtH I know that the fork instead of a sword is supposed to be silly, but if I were a medieval briton, i would find that twice as terrifying.
H&L “…keep my neck retracted into my torso like a snapping turtle.. “
H and L:
” ‘Pick up a copy of Carl Perkins’ “Honey Don’t” and the Beatles’ cover version of it’ ?”
“Well, I wanted to experience cognitive dissonance.”
MW: Dr Jeff eats a single round cheerio with a shrimp fork. Mary silences her critics who complain she only serves rectangular food.
RMMD:
“Now, ‘son,’ have you become a polydactyl, or have you somehow managed to bend your pinkie finger so that it forms a perfect right angle?”
MW: Dr. Jeff handles his banana fork with the delicacy of a brain surgeon about to perform a lobotomy, thinking, “I could get away with it. I know I could…!”
H&L: Hi is skirting around the fact that he really wants a paternity test on the kids.
MW: Look at how ecstatic Jeff is about the mention of Mary leaving. That’s more emotion on his face than when he was talking about how much Mary meant to him. Now he’s free to go back to Southeast Asia and
visit his favorite male prostitutework at the children’s hospital.Andy C – Life on the dole in the UK is just as rewarding as meth addiction in the USA. Don’t let anybody tell you anything different….
HtH – Who needs rape and pillage – buffalo wings rule….
H&L – Don’t forget those regular bowel movements….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
H&L: Hi needs to stop getting Ditto to write his material.
RMMD: This has been the longest metaphorical drum roll in the history of metaphorical drum rolls.
DtM: “Oh, Dennis, you’re so precious! Here, slip this ice cube down his back. It could be just the jolt we need.”
MW: So, when you get close to NYC, just follow the signs that say, “This Way To Olive, The Girl Who Was Saved By Mary Worth.”
HtH – Gotta respect a Viking who brings his own cutlery and napkin to a castle raid.
Hi & Lois : I interpreted it the other way : I thought it was sweet that Hi was giving Lois a list of tasks to do for the day, only to reveal it was him complimenting her for being a great wife and mother to his kids, only to realise it was just Hi’s fragile ego fishing for compliments.
And I think most of my confusion stems from the fact that Lois HAS A DAYJOB, which I think the strip forgot?
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Luann : “Here we are, doing a rerun week for artist vacation purposes! We DEFINITELY didn’t have to pull a bunch of strips at the last second because what we initially thought would be hilarious, Luann going to summer camp only only for her dream job to turn into a nightmare because of TERRIBLE weather where rain floods all the cabins, kinda wouldn’t be anymore due to… ‘changing circumstances’…”
…Too far?…Also, tsk tsk, Gunther and Knute, if you want to impress Luann with a comic book you made, you should have done the exact same thing Mini-Elvis did and wrote a story about a scantily-clad superheroine that’s a very thinly veiled version of her.
H&L: I think I’ve finally figured out why Hi’s nose is a bridge-less ovoid that protrudes from his upper lip. When you imply to your wife that she’s ungrateful whilst wearing a classic comic strip “smug face”, you’re going to get a few broken noses.
H&L: I think I’ve finally figured out why Hi’s nose is a bridge-less ovoid that protrudes from his upper lip. When you imply to your wife that she’s ungrateful whilst wearing a classic comic strip “smug face”, you’re going to get a few broken noses.
Sorry for the double post.
H&L: The fact that Lois keeps turning her back on Hi shows it’s ‘dutch courage’ that’s got us here.
“If you’re gonna drink this early, try some mouthwash.”
MW: So we’re just going with “Mary saved her from drowning” as Pimento’s Defining Characteristic. No mention of dream angels, tummy brains, Dr. Kapuht, none of that weird-ass stuff. But, “Mary saved her from drowning” serves as proper hagiography for Mary, so that’s how we are to remember things.
AC: You can tell when Andy Capp takes place: 1946, immediately after the end of the War, when all the cities are still smoking craters. He’s lucky the pub is still standing – it seems to be the only building left on the street.
HH: ACTUALLY medieval Europeans had plentiful hot spices. While pepper and ginger were luxuries for the rich, garlic and horseradish were plentiful and widely used to make the staples of salted meat and brown sour bread more edible. I don’t know how often they ate wings specifically – without refrigeration, it would make more sense to slaughter and eat one animal at a time, rather than killing and butchering hundreds of birds at once for their wings and leaving the rest to rot – but I can imagine *a horde of starving Vikings burst through the wall and eat me*.
Andy Capp – Pubs must have had a seniority system based on hours spent in the establishment, which entitled the most frequent customers to benefits. In the strict class structure of the UK, it’s the only status Andy is eligible to have over the other mere-drunks who spend most of their days on other fruitless pursuits like productive, but low-paid, labor.
Hagar the Horrible – Somewhere, in the Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC archives, is an unpublished strip where the Swedish Vikings, having acclimated to spice and seasoned food, prank Hagar and crew with extremely spicy hot wings to test their manliness.
Hi and Lois – Hi is holding the line on the 1950s-era expectations for men’s participation in household labor against a recent jump in men pulling their weight at home. The syndicate has read the current socio-political climate and this strip is pivoting. Perhaps they will introduce a trad-wife neighbor, whose husband will start talking about the dangers of seed oil, and hawking a snake-oil supplement for low-T.
Rex Morgan, MILF Diver: In the We Can Dream category, I’d love an interlude in the DNA drama with Mud – a la Richard Dreyfuss to Danny DeVito in Tin Men – calling Truck and saying, “This is the ultimate fuck you. I just porked your fiancé.”
Actually, the Vikings did travel south landing in Newfoundland and Labrador (Canada) quite possibly the first people to set foot on North American soil before the Pilgrims roughly around a thousand years ago.
“…back when alcohol could only be served at pubs from 11:30 am to 3 pm and 6:30 pm to 11 pm.”
As my fellow WNY ex-pat Josh can attest, this just sounds so alien. People in Buffalo don’t even *go out* until 11:00 pm. And the bars are open till the wee hours of the morning. It’s a holdover from the old heavy manufacturing days, for the second shift workers, who tended to be younger and more single, and it’s lingered on as a tradition.
@The Rambling Otter: Can you qualify that statement a bit? Do you mean the first European people?
@Guillermo el Chiclero (yesterday) “Bela Lugosi’s lawyer son successfully sued Universal Studios for selling his father’s likeness to use for the Dracula model. Apparently a clause in Lugosi’s old contract from the 1930s gave him perpetual control over use of his likeness for commercial purposes other than promoting his movies and the studio execs didn’t know. After settling they used a generic vampire face for the model.”
I thought making action figures “was” to promote movies.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Sure, I mean, I’m 1/4 Native American so I can’t leave them out.
But yeah. Vikings were the first recorded Europeans to reach North America.
FC: An angry Billy starts to pull down his trunks. “Hump my leg, will ya.”
Hi and Lois-Got to love these comic strips where the wife also works but the household is depended completely upon the husband’s paycheck.
Slylock Fox-Slylock fired a Max at Cassandra.
RMMD-“What is this? This is an ancestry DNA results.”
MW-And cue the unnecessary flashback.
Luann: So last week *wasn’t* the ‘I’m on vacation, so we’re keeping things as simple as possible’ arc? Coulda fooled me.
JP: ‘Your’ business? Last I checked, we didn’t even know you existed before now, milk mustache. Pavel was the one who built the criminal empire and his storyline involved car crashes, explosions and a freakin’ BEAR. You’re enjoying a cappuccino in Norway with a woman who is clearly about gouge out your eyeballs with the sugar spoon. Can the attempt at Bondian menace. You can’t pull it off.
JP: I’d say the artists learned everything they know about spies from bad movies, but I’m pretty sure even those would put the “talk openly about nefarious plans” scene in a secluded corner of a cafe, not with their chairs abutting multiple witnesses
Hi and Lois – Hi, don’t bother Lois with your pathetic nonsense right now. The black turtleneck means she’s on her way out the door to read beatnik poetry at some bohemian nightclub. She has a life outside this family, you know!
@CanuckDownSouth: Yeah, when I watch J.A.G, one character Clayton Webb is a Agent/Spy for the C.I.A
One episode had the J.A.G crew go to Australia and Bud sees Webb with some unknown woman walking and talking.
Bud yells out “Hey! Mr. Webb!!” (Who understandably ignores him)
I always cringe at that scene, because even though nothing comes of it, it is very very STUPID because he could have blown his cover.
@Guts Dozier: We can always use more Guts.
Don Abundio, translated:
“I’ve been rehearsing for a new gig that I’m uniquely suited for”
“A really good movie role?”
“No.”
“A mannequin in a department store window!”
[Signs: JUAN S. PERFIL; EXCLUSIVE LINE OF SUITS, COATS, CRAVATS]
Opening the “when do we get the payoff in RMMD” pool. Tomorrow pays best because it seems highly unlikely, and working out how they’ll drag out opening the envelope, the surprised expressions, the meaningless exclamations…. I have “Friday” and “sometime in October as my spots. (Mud is definitely the dad, right?}
Ha ha! It’s funny because he’s got debilitating alcoholism!
MW – “Yes, she is the girl whom I saved…hold on. I should use ‘who’ since ‘the girl’ is the predicate nominative in the sentence…I think. Damn you, Jeff! Why couldn’t you have just said ‘that girl you saved’ like normal people!
@Bob Tice:
No, because they have ears on both sides of their heads.
How tall is Hi? I’m trying to decide if he’s slouching to fit into the frame with his much shorter wife, or slumped over to make him look like a loser.
Eh, why not both?
MW: Mary and Dr. Jeff’s relationship has all the intimacy and emotion of a stranger asking for the time.
@Anonymous: Good observation on Luann. Seems likely.
H&L: “What I’m say
Come on, Andy Capp, red rose, white rose, or Tudor rose? Does Andy exist in our timeline of Henry Tudor, or a world in which Edward of Westminster conquered at Tewkesbury or, perhaps most intriguingly, a world in which Richard III found a horse as Bosworth and went on to found a dynasty? I mean, I know Andy doesn’t care who’s king if the beer keeps flowing, but the rest of us have questions.
JP: so if it doesn’t matter – just kill her already! Sheesh- this is just one more reason why cartoon bad guys are cartoonish.
MW: Jeff is so happy that MW is leaving him for a while he is eating and drinking rapidly in celebration l.
DT: first the morgue team is calling and now the IBEW are calling DT directly. They should just install a phone or a giant light signal.
Bizarro: Will kids get this joke?
@Little Blue Bicycle: “What I’m saying is that I get no respect in this house at all and it needs to change or I’m leaving with Thel Keane for Mexico.”
@The Rambling Otter: @CanuckDownSouth:
Also, ironically I just remembered which ties into what you had said.
In that same episode, while in Australia, the lawyers were at a outdoor cafe discussing the case with each-other, THEN it turns out the waitress who was serving them, through sheer coincidence was the wife of the man who was on trial. So yeah, oops!
H&L: Lois pulls up her shirt and asks Hi if he wants continued access. He meekly erases what he wrote.
Sly lock fox: (1) landing the sub on top of the jewelry is possible. But then Cassandra goes medieval on the sub and a mini Oceangate later she has the jewelry. (2) why did Slylock pick a sub that can’t pick up anything and he can’t exit during the dive when it is suit was
GT: “Swoon” in a speech bubble is what we get for grousing about “Catch” sound effects on the baseball diamond.
Beetle Bailey is to be given some credit for knowing these equations, considering the median studiousness of Camp Swampy’s enlisted.
BG&SS Snuffy Smith won second place in a beauty contest fair and square,, and there’s no way he’s wasting that, or the $10, on a bribe.
HtH: Hagar is a little too excited about cannibalizing cooks and scullery maids.
HnL: Why does Hi need to be reminded about those things? Oh…
An angry Billy is the best Billy.
Hagär the Horrible: Well, one clue to Hagar’s location is his shield. He’ll need that less for defense against clubs and arrows than pushing the peasant rabble out of his way. That castle has a Buffalo Wild Wings all-you-can-eat wings bar, is what I’m saying.
Luann: To be fair to the Evanses, if they’re pivoting to Luann at a summer camp, they’re going to have to
work hardfigure out how to repurpose existing art to generate their clip art collection.CS: “Also, for some reason, they give it to me by throwing it through my studio window. It was very whimsical.”
9CL: Or estate planning. It’s difficult to tell with these two.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Just realizing, after 57 years on God’s splendid earth, that it was the Vikings who built the castles, rather than attack them. Are Hagar and his crew opponents of Norse expansion into France, Italy and Sicily, and all their delicious, delicious Chicken recipes?
Pluggers are boring jackasses. Who knew?
@pugfuggly: Apparently Andy Capp lives in northeast England. He would be closer to the Scottish border than to London.
MW: Jeff needs to get to know that busty, recently divorced head nurse in Mary’s absence.
Luann: Luann’s summer camp adventure will be happening off screen.
MW: “By the way, this hex nut ravioli is great.”
FC: “OK, you grab one end, and I’ll grab the other. Let’s see if we can stretch him out even more!”
Dustin: The twist is that Dustin’s candor will get him the job. I just can’t quite figure out what job would synergize with that particular trait.
Hagar The Horrible: The only way this joke really makes sense is if you presume that Hagar is a cannibal and “hot wings” is his slang for people burned alive by fire.
MW: As a graduate of the Miss Manners School of Etiquette, Mary knows you always pair the wine with your guest’s attire, in case of spills.
Pluggers: Apparently, you’re a Plugger if others want to interact with you as little as possible.
@Everything Is Better With Monkeys: My money’s still on Roots Country Guy somehow *not* being the dad after all this. I would love the audacity of it. I know it’s a long shot bet, but I’m lettin’ it ride.
Andy Capp-Andy’s got the DTs bad.
Luann: Earlier I speculated that the resolution of Luann’s summer camp/Weenie World dilemma would rest on whatever Greg Evans could spend less time drawing. Kudos to the old pro for out-clevering me with the clip show solution.
H&L: Hi has been spending time in the manosphere, I see.
HtH: Hagar knows that in this era of wood and thatch, the kitchen will be built separate from the main castle for this exact reason, and also that he needs to hurry if he wants to pillage the food stores before they’re consumed by flame.
GT: I know I’m at a disadvantage because I rarely look at this strip due to the herky-jerky art and incomprehensible narratives, plus I’m long past the high-school demographic the strip presumably targets, but I’ve got to know…who is the beautiful blonde Keri is enamored with??? I know it isn’t her horse therapist (i.e. a *human* therapist who specializes in equine therapy, not *a therapist that’s a horse*).
@Guts Dozier: #15
Now that you’ve mentioned it twice, I can’t stop staring at the weird bulb-like thing protruding from Hi’s face like Rudolph’s red nose. =:0
Luann-This week’s comics would have been submitted by Little Billy Age 7 but he charges too much.
love is… proposing to your AI chatbot.
C’shaft: “They must have forgot to give it to me during class, because they threw it through my living room window.”
DT: I dunno, Dick seems like the type who would side with the futuristic union busters…
Dustin: “Look, you’re offering part-time with no benefits and are already trying to figure out a way to use AI to make the position redundant. I’m just saying, you’re not offering a whole lot of incentive here.”
JP: “Sorry, I’m still trying to figure out who you are and how we know each other…”
MW: We’re on what, the second or third week of Mary getting ready for this trip? This is making the paternity test plot in Rex Morgan look like a taut thriller.
Pluggers are a bore to everyone around them.
@Daisy: I think it’s Dorothy, the former mean girl bully who was at some point assimilated into the “assorted teen protagonists” roster.
Slylick Fox and Comix For Kinx: Solution (printed upside down). Sly fired the sub’s phasers at Cassandra, entrusting Max to set them on stun. R.I.P. Cassandra Cat,now a bunch of ashes drifting around the ocean.
@TheDiva: #71
Thanks! Even knowing that, I’m sure I will still get lost in the ensuing storyline, but at least I can match a name to a face.
AC: Back in the 70s, an Australian friend told me that the government had restricted alcohol service at pubs to just a couple of hours in the late afternoon/early evening in an effort to reduce drunkeness.
It had the opposite effect.
Guys would wander in after work and power-drink. Get aggressive when service was not fast enough and start fights.
Barney Googled and Snuffed Out Smith: Oh, dear, The Michelin Man is in jail!
@taig:
He could take over the job of that woman who runs the temp employment agency, who’s always telling Dustin how worthless he is.
GT: I must have lost track of the story, but I thought that Horse Girl Britney was also a wrestler for another school? Why a yearbook signing party?
CS: This damned Batton Thomas interview is like watching a communist country build bigger and bigger monuments to itself. When a narrative is relentless enough, it eventually becomes inadequate to point out the logical flaws of it. Because it’s already answered your objections by doubling down on itself, again and again. The only question left is “how big is this going to get?” The massive scope of it is the only thing worth talking about.
HtH: “Hagar’s Norse compatriots haven’t gone far enough south of Greenland to discover genus Capsicum,”
And ten centuries later the Norwegians still haven’t discovered it.
@Give to live: @Bob Tice: It’s crazy how comics art gets less and less realistic.
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Just calm down and step away from the “Six Chix”!
Happy Bastille Day, but we all knew that.
Happy National Mac & Cheese Day, courtesy of Yahoo News.
CURTIS: Burger and fries smoothie? Your GI so stem makes one after each of your trips to Burger Barn
JP: does April know any quiet ways of killing a man who threatens her family other than the typical neck snap?
RMMD: this cheap test gives a false negative, but hope has been stirred so Truck and Corey pretend it’s positive. As in MW.
CS: I’ll wager that autographed Bruce Timm cel on his wall is worth more than Batton Thomas’s entire studio.
So does “late-era” mean that the Hi and Lois strip will someday crumble into dust right off the
newspaper pageelectronic screen, instead of limping along for decades more with other creative teams?@Hibbleton: MW: Dr Jeff eats a single round cheerio with a shrimp fork.
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Its an ad for new Mary Worth Meddle-Os™ cereal! Free Willburp Weston mayo pack in specially marked boxes!
Mary Worth – Oh, good grief. At least a week of Mary talking about visiting Tummy Brain. When did Terry Beatty start writing this?
Rex Morgan – How long can Beatty drag out hearing the results of a DNA test that only Truck and his maybe or maybe not son care about? This suspense could be marketed as a sleep aid.
Crankshaft – Gaaah! No! Not this again!
So much to hate. I loathe Skip on general principles, but his pinned up sleeve just adds points. I guess that’s in case anyone has forgotten that he is missing an arm. And then there’s Batiuk’s smarmy avatar. He looks so self satisfied with his WTF story about the rock that I know that Batty just basked in self regard when he wrote this. He’s still patting himself on the back.
Frazz – No smug superiority today, so Frazz will have to double up on it tomorrow if he hopes to meet his quota.
@Weaselboy: Mary and Jeff could spend the next week diagramming that sentence to figure out whether to use the subjective or objective pronoun. It’s either that or talking about what a wonderful person Mary is.
@Treetown: Re Bizarro – I was disappointed that they were wearing sweaters with their initials. The Chipmunks movie wasn’t that long ago, so I would think that kids would recognize Simon. However, you’re right that kids won’t get it.
I’m ancient, so I got a chuckle out of it.
@Somebody Somewhere All At Once: That’s what pluggers do, too.
@Peanut Gallery: Excellent choice!
@I speak Jive: RMMD: The test can come back inconclusive, thus requiring Rex’s dubious involvement in his own strip.
The Familliar Mucus: “Have you ever truly appreciated the classic design of the canine butt,Jeffy? If you’re gonna take over for Daddy, you have to learn how to find beauty in all things, even Dolly.”
@The Rambling Otter: #25: In the case of the Universal classic monsters the films were long past any box office potential. The plastic models were just icing on the cake for the studio. After WW2 horror movies had gone away from the classic monsters based on old European superstitions (vampires, werewolves, etc) to menaces more befitting the Atomic Age (radioactive mutants, invading space aliens, etc). In the late 50s Universal released all of their classic monster films for television. It touched off a monster craze fad that lasted well into the 60s. Kind of like how the James Bond films set off the 60s spy craze. Suddenly traditional Gothic horror themes became popular again, with Hammer Studios in England remaking all the Universal classics and Roger Corman of AIP going away from teenage drive-in flicks to his Edgar Allen Poe based films with Vincent Price. Selling the rights to use their classic monsters in model kits was just Universal’s way of cashing in on a fad.
@The Rambling Otter: #26:
“Vikings were the first recorded Europeans to reach North America”
Don’t got to an Irish pub and say that. They’ll quickly pull St. Brendan out of their asses and beat you over the head with it.
Crankshaft-“I keep the rock as a reminder of how my students tried to stone me.”
Crankshaft-“This is the second stone. I threw the first one.”
CS: But where’s Crankshaft?
DT: Gee, I always thought DEA stood for Drug Enforcement Agency.
@taig:
Biz lady: “You must think we’re so desperate we’ll hire anyone.”
Dustin: “You will apparently interview anyone. I’m just drawing a logical conclusion.”
Luann: I would love to see next Monday’s strip have Luann reading an e-mail that says, “Dear Ms. DeGroot: Thank you for applying to be a counselor at our camp. We will keep your application on file for the summer 2026 sessions, for which we will conduct interviews in April. I assume that your request to be a counselor in 2025 was a typo, since we didn’t receive your e-mail until two weeks after camp began this year.”
Between Friends: Wow.
Blonde Friend should do more silhouette scenes.