If I wanted to think this much about the 6-7 meme, I would’ve had children
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Herb and Jamaal, 12/3/25
As I noted a couple of weeks ago, Pluggers was insanely on the cutting edge of doing a 6-7 meme joke in the syndicated newspaper comics, the joke being that a child-plugger says “6-7” and an adult plugger says “How did you know?” and the caption says “For many pluggers, 6-7 is the year they graduated high school.” Which is, you know, fine, although it continues to center boomer pluggers and not the vibrant, rising Gen X plugger community. Anyway, I guess we should be taking bets on the order in which other comics will tackle this important cultural phenomenon and in what fashion they handle it. I’m not sure if any of us would’ve answered the first question for Herb and Jamaal with “right after Pluggers,” but for the second one many of us would’ve correctly guessed “incomprehensibly.”
Alice, 12/3/25
I’ve spent literally decades angrily telling comics artists that you can’t just have your characters look directly at the readers and make complaints that you personally have about the world with no other joke or wordplay, but you know what? It happens all the time so clearly I’m wrong and they’re right. Anyway, cars are just too expensive! The manufacturers forgot that the purpose of a car is to get you from point A to point B. Does every new car need all that stuff?
Dick Tracy, 12/3/25
Oh, yeah, remember how Silver Nitrate is having a hard time in prison? You might think it’s because America’s carceral system is inherently dehumanizing, but maybe it’s because he’s being kept away from his true passion: driving around town in a souped-up funny car with his barefoot sister spraying machine gun fire at random.
Mother Goose and Grimm, 12/3/25
It’s easy to forget when you read it every day for years, but the title of Mother Goose and Grimm reminds you that the strip was originally situated as being at least kind of a spoof of fairy tale/nursery rhyme stuff, sometimes it makes a half-hearted attempt to go back to its roots. I like how the cow knows in advance how bad this joke is going to be and clearly doesn’t want to be there. Hey, buddy, none of us want to be here, OK?
The Wizard of Id, 12/3/25
Hey, everyone, they did a My Chemical Romance joke in the Wizard of Id, right here in the year 2025! I guess we don’t have to worry about a 6-7 joke from this crew for several decades.
153 replies to “If I wanted to think this much about the 6-7 meme, I would’ve had children”
Alice/DT: When Alice asks “Does every new car need all that stuff?”, she’s referring to things like machine guns and turbochargers and vampire fangs. Alice and Dick Tracy actually take place in the same universe – you can tell because like any classic Dick Tracy character, Alice is a grotesque mutant in a weird romance with moon aliens.
Wizard of Id: [single haunting piano note]
When I was/
a young boy/
my father/
took me into the city/
to read one of the worst comics ever written.
H&L: She’s AI.
MG&G I know it’s easy to forget your initial premise as you write complicated prose, but if you’re making a three panel cartoon, you really should be able to remember that you said “jumped” in panel one, so you can’t act as if you were referring to an airplane flight in panel three.
MG&G – “No, all they had were crappy comics like this one.”
DT: Wait, why does Ozob have a “way bigger budget” than Silver? I don’t know how well being a classic movie-themed villain really pays, but it’s got be more lucrative than putting on cockroach-themed clown shows at county fairs.
I really hate it when Josh reminds me that our age group is becoming Pluggers.
MW: Oh, this has been even better than I hoped it would be. The parrot and Ian glowering at each other, ol’ chinbeard actually harrumphing, Toby desperately trying to make peace… My favorite arc since Also Kelrast!
I enjoy DT helpfully providing a balloon labeled “machine gun.” They need to go the full nine here, though! “Dick Tracy’s Hand!” “Cigarette!” “Thinking Cop’s Chin!” Oh, the possibilities!
Blondie: Dagwood, maybe working for an owner who loses money running a vending machine isn’t the horse to hitch your wagon to.
FC:
“Miss McElfresh didn’t get her gift.”
“Uh, porch…buccaneers?”
Crankshaft: Nothing says “esprit de corps” like a bowling team dressed in a random assortment of mismatched tops.
MW: “You mean pheasant under glass? Sure, honey!”
Zits: Connie and Walt officially become Gen-X.
The despair on that cow’s face, ye gods. “No, Grimm. I was trying to end it all, okay? Why I jumped, the Moon just happened to be there. Thank God I lived, so I could set up the crappiest joke today this side of Intelligent Life. I’m gonna take a bath. You got a toaster around here?”
Bizarro: Steals a joke from History of the World: Part I
I expect Blondie will have Elmo make a 6-7 quip about 48 years from now.
@Batiuk’s Attic: Are you of the mindset that Pluggerism is determined by age and age alone? That a newspaper comic or a newspaper comic blog host (by your own admission ) determines your inclusion in this made up genre?
FC: Did Thel give the gift to some random passerby or are school kids delivering packages to supplement their lunch monies now that paper routes are a thing of the past because that certainly isn’t Billy.
“I can’t worry about that now, Wizard, the Falkland Islands have been invaded!”
RMMD-Autumn is also a Mary Sue.
FC-Miss Mcelfresh needs to open that in private. It’s a special gift from Mommy.
@Will: Every now and then I see a bird in a pose that makes me think “why did it take so long to realize they’re dinosaurs?” Kudos to Brigman for that second panel with Sunny in the classic T-Rex stance, and an extra shout-out for Ian’s resemblance to an orangutan.
Yes, I killed the yesterthread! (triumphant war cry)
BCN: Pretty accurate adaptation so far, all things considered…
C’shaft: Tom Batiuk is really, really proud of that “Margo Lanes” thing, isn’t he? He’s this close to having a character say, “Hey, did anyone realize the name of this bowling alley, ‘Margo Lanes,’ is almost identical to ‘Margo Lane,’ friend and confidant to the classic pulp fiction character The Shadow? Boy, I’ll bet the guy who came up with that must have a deep knowledge of popular culture and a sharp sense of humor!”
DT: “Criminals all have the same mindset.” Do they, though? I mean, practically every hood in Neo-Chicago has their own gimmick or personality quirk or vocabulary tic. Do you honestly think, say, Double-Up and Rikki Mortis are coming from the exact same headspace?
Dustin: And now we se why Dustdad was so eager to have some quality time with his son: he’s certain it will end in a blood sacrifice.
GT: Wow, sounds like a great game! Wish we could have seen it, instead of watching Gil’s steadfast refusal to jump on the AI bandwagon again.
JP: “…But then I realized that making Charlotte happy would require a lot of time and attention I’m prepared to give, so can you move in with her?”
Luann: Why would an exam be scheduled for early January in the first place? It’s the top of the semester; even assuming this is a year-long course it’s very likely they’d be starting a new unit rather than doing any kind of cumulative review. Forget not knowing how colleges work, does Clan Evans know how any kind of school works?
MW: “We’d better be having poultry tonight, is all I’m saying.”
Phantom: The Ghost Who Knows the Importance of Word-of-Mouth Publicity
RMMD: Really? “She has a different hair color and job and that makes her completely different”? And somehow that makes everything OKAY? I was expecting this to be stupid, but sweet baby Jesus…
Today’s Alice reminds me of a recent joke. “Cars have too many new features. All I wanted to do was back up, and it showed me a movie of someone being run over.”
H&J: The “6-7” meme is itself incomprehensible by design; is Herb and Jamal ironically missing the point by complaining about its incomprehensibility? Or, by making an incomprehensible joke about it, have they reached the apotheosis of its absurdism?
Alice: I struggle to believe that cars in the Alice-verse are that expensive. I mean, they’d just be made out of vague abstract shapes like everything else in this comic.
H&J – So…this is the hand I eat with, and this is the one I use for wiping my ass….
Alice – Consumers forgot that capitalism is about getting the money from out of their pockets….
DT – Ah, yes – all criminals are the same – and clearly identifiable by the shape and bumps on their skull….
WoI – If you want a friend in Id, get a pocket pal…preferably a Lisa Ann Fleshlight (TM)….
Adios Amigos, DJ
BF: So far the position seems to be “liquor taster.” No wonder Blonde Friend thinks she’s found her dream job. With any luck she’ll be able to branch out to pastry, candy, and fancy coffees.
Alice : Oh, I get it! This is why she gets “abducted” by aliens all the time; they’re not kidnapping her, they’re giving her a lift!
*********
Herb & Jamall : so, this is assuming the “6-7” thing is equivalent to the “Love-Hate” thing from Night of the Hunter?
*********
Sally Forth : is chiding her daughter for getting every reader’s hopes up.
**********
Wizard of Id : I wonder how likely it is that the Wizard was initially singing “CRAWLING IN MY SKIN, THESE WOUNDS, THEY WILL NOT HEAL” before the editor nixed it. A non-zero chance, I assume.
Mary Worth Proposed Future Panel: Thanks to commenter Ken for the idea. I hope we see this panel in a real strip, real soon.
Juggs Parker is back! Keep it going, Manley.
MW “Charming avian ways”? Which one — squawking at 6 a.m. or crapping on your blazer?
FC Assuming this present intended as a holiday gift for his teacher, it’s either a really heavy floral arrangement or a really big “World’s Best Teacher” mug.
Dustin Wait till you get to the rules for zones of control, kid — “Wait, what? I have to attack your legion?” [Note: I have no idea if Caesar’s Legions has zones of control. It was an Avalon Hill game so I’m just guessing it did.] [Oh, you want complain about set up? Try playing France 1940.]
“You tell me.” said the cow, jumping up towards the moon and crapping on Grimmy’s head.
JP: “I wanted bring Charlotte back because Alan needs somebody to sign for booze deliveries and bring him fresh ice seven or eight times a day, but look. Just keep her, okay?”
“No peanuts, but I can tell you the Earth is flat, the Moon landings were fake, and our reptilian overlords are hiding the truth from us all!”
“Oh, great, you’re a cowspiracy theorist.”
@Schroduck: you would think that doing classical art pays better but that’s not always true!
It turns out that I am responsible for 6,7*. Mid-semester I was looking at some old lecture notes, and I found the following text
“Point out that this stage mirrors reactions 6,7 except that what allows ATP formation to be feasible (i.e. the generation of the super-high energy phosphate can have a delta G-0 that is not too positive that jiggering rxn concentrations won’t allow it to go forward) is that water is removed in step catalyzed by enolase”
I apologize for the inconvenience my words have caused.
* I am responsible for many trends. I was carrying around a water bottle before it was cool. I wore newsboy caps backwards as a parody of the then current “wearing baseball caps backwards” trend when I was in middle school in the early 1990s.
@Anonymous: On S4th, indeed. The characters die in this obviously haunted house*, the strip blessedly comes to an end, and Ces can devote his full time to finishing running Judge Parker into the ground, and THAT strip blessedly comes to an end. It’s a win-win, so yes, Sally, YES!!!
*Which will turn out to just be Ted’s freeloading brothers, I’m sure.
Edge City (GoComics edition): Will Carly’s great-great grandmother Rose end up Queen of the Wobblies, or dead in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire?
(Also, Grandma uses vegetable oil instead of chicken fat for latkes? It’s a shonda!)
Blondie When the cartoonist is so out of touch with the real world that they’re unclear about what “vending” means.
Phantom Uh, the one running off wasn’t marked – that guy is out cold on the ground, presumably with brain damage, and will be lucky to be able to speak normally in the future let alone tell about this encounter. That mask restricting your vision so much you can’t tell apart two people with peach and milk chocolate skin tones, O Stripey-Butt?
Wizard of Id: I’d point out that there was a decidedly non-emo cover of “I’m Not OK,” released in 2020 by Not Ur Girlfrenz, but I’ve no doubt that the original by My Chemical Romance is right on the edge of the newest music the Parker/Hart Legacy Comics factory is aware of.
MW: Sunny eyes Ian and adopts a vulture pose, and using his ventriloquist skills, imitates Toby with a promise for a GREAT DINNER. Sounds to me like IAN is on the menu.
The Wizard of Id:
–“I’m not okay, you wear me out!”
–“*Sigh… He’s discovered emo!”
–“A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kickboxing.”
–“*Sigh… He’s discovered 1980s alternative comedian Emo Philips!”
–“In my town, there is a raincoat under a tree. In the sky, there is a cloud containing the sea.”
–“*Sigh… He’s discovered 1970s electronica artist Brian Eno!”
–“Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss me, love, I’m bleeding inside.”
–“Uh, oh, this one’s really serious… He’s discovered weirdly famous art-singer and band destroyer Yoko Ono… and he’s got her on vinyl!!!”
Dustin: Appreciate the commitment of the creators to Caesar’s Legion on the table – the map, counters (red for Romans, tan for the Germanic tribes) and tactical cards (used as modifiers in combat) are dead-on!
DT: Criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot but they do like their machine guns and souped up cars. It does suggest that Ozob must truly LOVE clowning since his auto work is on the top end of customization and must pay well. Yet he is out there nights and weekends clowning it up.
MW: Sunny and Ian have the same set jaw look – silently growling at each other.
JP: Yes, seeing how happy Charlotte is with Neddy, Alan and his wife just can’t have that. How will Charlotte develop the anguished soul to be an artist or driven striver without an awful childhood.
RMMD: As Augie spells it out, he realizes he does love Autumn and not Summer!
MW: I am loving Sunny; from the classic vulture vibe in P1 to his, “Come at me, MF!” for the finish.
MG&G: Never attempt a punchline when you’re suffering the worst constipation of your doggy life.
RMMD: After hours of trying to explain “book,” it finally dawns on Augie: “This woman is a complete MORON.”
@Schroduck:
Rojo Ozob really loves clowning. When not gimmicking brake lines and building sweet custom kill machines, he is out there every weekend at fairs (he was at the Minnesota State Fair!) carnivals and tours every weekend. He has a regular group of fans “Ozob mob” who follow him on his annual summer and fall tour of 20 dates. He makes bank.
@The Quiet Man: And the brothers would have gotten away with it if weren’t for some meddling kids.
9CL: Granny cheesecake pix in the morning newspaper! Goes great with coffee and a muffin.
LUANN: Professor of Whatever Class This Is: “A Syllabus? What’s that?” (Just saying that I’m entirely sure that a college lecturer would change their whole carefully-planned schedule on the whims of a 12 year-old Uh-huh.)
@Schroduck: like any classic Dick Tracy character, Alice is a grotesque mutant in a weird romance with moon aliens.
____________________________________________
Picasso Puss!
I’m not claiming that I could come up with enough original jokes to run a daily syndicated comic, but I like to think if I wrote a “joke” that was just “nonsensical set-up in order to get to the punchline of… the wizard mentioning a band I guess?” I’d just go back to the drawing board on that one.
MG&G: “How do your get Peanuts on the flight?” “When the World War I Flying Ace is your Command Module Pilot.”
@TheDiva: Re: RMMD: I’d copy and paste those comments because you’re going to need them the first time you read Archie comics. (Indeed, given the looks of our two protagonist at the moment, you’d be forgiven if you thought this was just middle-aged Riverdale.
WoI – Before we call this joke dated, we must ask the question “how long has the King known about emo?” Because the King seems quite jaded about all this emo stuff and now has to brace himself for the day that the Wiz discovers Mr. Brightside!
Hey, Baja! Baja Gaijin! Have Ian dealing with this.
(Not a clown.)
WIZARD OF ID: Sigh…Wizard of Id discovered the 90’s.
Panel One: ——>Machine Gun
Panel Two: ——>Machine Gun
Panel Three: —->Machine Gun (not pictured)
Mother Goose and Grimm-“What was it like working with Stanley Kubrick?”
You might think this is anachronistic, but actually melancholia and things associated with rumination and depression were first diagnosed in monks, the intellectuals of the day, during the Middle Ages. Unfortunately for Wiz, it will be centuries before Sertraline is discovered, so he should try praying, dark magic or just booze
How dare car manufacturers add features that make my travel more comfortable and much safer than in the old days! I want a car to go from point A to point B, with point B being the graveyard!
“Herb and Jamaal” rarely uses Herb’s son (or Jamaal’s son? I don’t care) to deliver a joke, which today proves was a good call
“Criminals all have the same mindset! It used to be you could say they all had the same cranial structure, but we prefer being more abstract these days”
That cow does look like she was starved of oxygen for an extended period of time, so that part of the strip checks out. I don’t know why Grimm looks like he’s currently unable to breathe though.
***
A cop with a more relaxed baseball-style cap? Not in MY Dick Tracy, dadgummit!
***
Why is it just 6-7? Because 7 8 9.
Alice: The manufacturers of those two-legged chairs have also apparently lost sight of what they’re supposed to be doing.
“He’s discovered Emo”, things a late medieval king would say after that damned humanist court poet has found in the monastery library a codex of Propertius!
In the Dickverse, does giving a criminal a larger budget increase proportionally their criminal effectiveness or there are diminishing returns? In this essay…
Dirk Twacy Hollistic Defective: Dick’s saying, “Big deal! I have a machine gun two/way wrist radio!”
“Herb and Jamaal” and “Wizard of ID” mock what they think is youth culture, “Dick Tracy” goes into panic about criminals, “Alice” complains about technology, “Mother Goose and Grimm” shows signs of senility. Everyone wants to be “Pluggers”!
“Tickle me!, King, Tickle me!” “Oh no, he’s discovered Elmo!”
Today’s anachronism: the presence of “My chemical romance” shows that Id is a medieval country but it already had 9/11
GT: “That was one for the record books! Unlike every other Milford Mudlarks tilt I’ve broadcast, which was an exhibition game.”
@Ettorre: “Your majesty, a second dragon has hit the castle.”
GA: Every day, they find a new way to show that they’re all morons.
9CL: Were even the early strips always just in service to a Catholic-schoolgirl fetish?
I rarely comment, but given the current MW arc I thought y’all might appreciate this window into Toby’s past.
https://outofcontextmaryworthpanels.tumblr.com/post/801933815986667520
DT: Wasn’t Silver Nitrate a con artist originally and not a blazing gun armed robber? That’s why his cellmates, who are violent criminals, think he’s a wuss and don’t want him in on their escape plan.
GT: Why is Gil’s girlfriend so pissed off looking about her man’s team winning the game? Did she have big money riding on Valley Tech?
Probably about 6-7 of them, eh Josh? ;-)
@Tabby Lavalamp: Pourquoi six avail-il peur de sept?
Parce que sept en a mange neuf!
Haw haw haw! (a la French Canadian Bandit)
@Ettorre: I’ve been hanging around this joint for over 15 years and I do believe that is the first Augustan Age Latin Elegist Poet/Umberto Eco snark I’ve seen. Congratulations.
Alice: Whenever I see a car commercial talking about the millions of “comfort features” I notice that they never say how well the cars actually run.
@Tabby Lavalamp: And using new-fangled slang like “On point”? I demand that Dick Tracy clap him in irons!
The Wizard of Id: It’d help if the artist could draw a stick of eyeliner that didn’t look like a tiny magic wand.
What is with Alice showing two human beings talking to each other, saying things that aren’t complete non sequiturs? Have you sold out your brand?
I have no idea what I’m not OK, you wear me out references, so I’m just going to assume that the wizard rick-rolled the King.
Silver Nitrate should be glad, he got the Nose genes. I mean literally all of them.
@TheDiva:Forget not knowing how colleges work, does Clan Evans know how any kind of school works?
I thought Karen had a degree in School Management and everything!
MARY WORTH (CLASSIC): @Sparrow: I love how Mary is getting the decade started off right by sharping her knives for the Passive -Aggressive Combat that brutally fought by the divas of 80’s soaps like Dynasty or Falcon Crest. “You must have been very young at the time, Toby. At an age ripe for the plucking from gross predatory older men.”
I’m not saying that William Shakespeare was Emo, but seriously, you have a scene where Hamlet is holding and talking to the skull of a dead clown while questioning his own mortality, as well as the many many tragic deaths presented in his plays.
@DAS: Now you’ve done it! You’ve made us all Krebby. I hope you’re proud!
Herb and Jamaal – I assume Blondie might hit it next, with Dagwood using it as an excuse to order the #6 and #7 combos at a burger restaurant.
Alice – Alice should put up do shut up! I want to see her driving a $500 model T with no safety, navigation, or climate control equipment.
Dick Tracy – Somewhere in the bowels of the dark web knockoff of YouTube, there is an illegal car modification influencer ready to use this as inspiration for his next murder car build.
Mother Goose and Grimm – A lot of athletes struggle when their careers end, and this cow is no different. Since stunts like his are rare, he cannot make a living as a commentator or coach like an NFL/NBA/NHL/MLB player can. He has to make appearances at motivation speeches, occasional TV appearances, and now a sub-Crankshaft level joke in the newspaper comics.
The Wizard of Id – Despite being the titular character, the Wizard is not the focus as much as the King. With his free time he went to the When We Were Young concert in Las Vegas and now has become a Millennial teen in spirit.
@Ukulele Ike: Also, Grandma uses vegetable oil instead of chicken fat for latkes? It’s a shonda!
No, it’s parve. She clearly falls on the dairy side of the “Apple Sauce vs. Sour Cream” debate.
Crank: Look, I’m a firm believer in everyone living their life however they see fit. But if you get kind of hurt when your friends suggest they might be embarassed to be seen in public with a guy dressed in pizza boxes, maybe don’t be the guy dressed in pizza boxes?
Curtis: “Online dating is last year, you gotta meet someone the old fashioned way!” And the Dustin creative team yell “See?! We need 500 more panels of Dustin and a random lady at a bar, stat!”
EC: “Our previous Robert Plant and John Paul Jones just quit. Plant’s started up a folk group called Saving Space, and Jones joined up with the frontmen of the tribute bands Fooled Fighters and Stand-Ins of the Stone Age to form Them Rebooked Vultures!”
H&J: As the kids in Britain all stop saying 6-7 in embarassment because Keir Starmer joined in (I assume), we can expect no such correlation with American kids and it appearing in Herb & Jamaal, because how would anyone under 40 even know?
JP: Option one from my comment yesterthread it is, then. Goodness, my powers of prediction are astounding, because it can’t possibly be that this strip is just incredibly predictable!
MW: I love Toby’s “After all these years I am an expert in managing my husband” smile. Especially since she really, really isn’t.
Phantom: “I fell in with evil men, and we were taken down by the Ghost Who Walks. I tried to flee, but it was no use, he caught up with me anyway!”
“So, you’re saying I should give up my life of crime before this ‘Ghost’ gets me?”
“Nah, weren’t you paying attention? If he goes after you, quitting won’t help! You might as well stick with it and at least have a chance of reaping the rewards!”
@Schroduck: Alice and Dick Tracy actually take place in the same universe
Wouldn’t even be the weirdest crossover Curtis-era Dick Tracy has done.
@TheDiva: RMMD: Really? “She has a different hair color and job and that makes her completely different”? And somehow that makes everything OKAY? I was expecting this to be stupid, but sweet baby Jesus…
I think it’s supposed to be “the book is really about how much Iggy loves Autumn, which is to say, how much Augie loves Summer” and that makes it okay. Which, to my way of thinking, is just as stupid but with extra glurge.
FC: Miss McElfesh has that “not so fresh” feeling.
Dustin the Wind: Sixteen pages of rules?! This must the first game Dustin has played that doesn’t have the rules printed on the inside of the box top. Try Advanced Squad Leader, Mr. Allsmart. Sixteen pages barely covers the index.
BF: alas, a hated job is easy to replace. But Susan is unfortunate enough to love this new experience.
6CX: as if humans and dogs alike didn’t love a light snowfall.
Sally Forth: So… Addams Family house or Munster house?
Alice/Tracy – “Do cars need all this stuff? Depends on the stuff! Clearly, they need onboard machine guns. I mean, that’s just obvious.”
@Ken: This joke is funnier than anything Alice has ever done.
I dont want to be alone in having witnessed Gil Thorp stating “6-7” last Saturday, plus “skibidi”. It’s too much.
@Sequitur: I’m not an expert, but Ronan’s place looks more Munsterish — Late Victorian. The Addams house is canonically American-style Queen Anne.
@richardf8: No Soap Radio.
There was a 6-7 joke in /The New Yorker/’s online cartoon yesterday, so H&J come in no higher than third.
https://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/daily-cartoon/tuesday-december-2nd-six-seven
@2+2=7: As a former tech school instructor, there were students that I would have altered time/space itself in order to have fellow students beat up on my behalf. Alter a syllabus? No problem.
Alice – Being fired out of a cannon will get you from Point A to Point B, Beizer. Allow me to demonstrate on you.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Polonio, isn’t television amazing?”
“Yes, sir”
“Some say there are real, little people trapped inside the box. How bizarre is that?”
“He’s gone! And I was just about to warn him!”
@Baja Gaijin (yesterthread):
Thanks! I learned something today. Apparently tavern-style pizza hasn’t made it to my part of the country yet. (Or I don’t eat out enough to have seen it.)
@Horace Broon:
The problem with this though, is that Summer’s surprised (but desperately hopeful) response suggest that Augie doesn’t really showcase this IRL, making it look like he’s actually in love with an idealized, fan-fiction version of his girlfriend, which totally sounds like the foundation for a healthy relationship!
“Once I realized how much money I can make off of exploiting this relationship, I realized that I’m totally devoted to you.” –Augie or Kim Kardashian? You decide, audience.!
@Guy Nerdlinger: #28:
“Try playing France 1940”
Is that the one that even includes the Swiss Army in case you want to add an alt-history variable?
Alice – “Point A to Point B”? I don’t think any comic strip that’s drawn like this should be emphasizing geometry.
@Peanut Gallery:
Al menos las transgresiónes de Abundio quedarán grabados en cámara.
Tomorrow on the comics page, we’ll learn that you’re a Plugger if teenagers scare the living shit out of you.
As a GenXer myself, I want a separate term that distinguishes our aging brethren and sistren from Pluggers, who read as Silent Generation or maybe older Boomers. Given how the bands of our youth were coiffed, everything from A Flock of Seagulls to Whitesnake, I propose the term HairPluggers.
@Peanut Gallery: They do it in Chicago, for some reason, but only if you ask. Maybe for parties. Or little kids.
I think it’s also a common thing in Detroit.
American local pizza weirdities are a terribly complex web. It would take full time study to keep them all straight. New York Style vs. New Haven vs. Detroit vs. Chicago vs. St. Louis* vs. Hollywood vs. Pacific Northwest vs. Hawaii and on and on and on. Luckily all of it tastes good.
* Instead of mozz St. Louis pizzaiolas use Provel…a processed mix of cheddar, Swiss, and provolone. I’ve never tasted it
Questionable Content: All right, I will stand for NO MORE complaints about Anh. Anh is simply splendid today. Go, Anh!
(NSFW, but only if the boss is close enough to read word balloons)
Okay, Herb and Jamaal has really upped* its game in the last few months, usually I don’t pay much attention to it, but it has really become one of the worst offenders in the “was that even a joke?” category of strips. Of which Alice is a leading contender, but at least today’s strip, as Josh point out, is consciously not even trying to make a joke but rather just engaging in resentful griping.
But seriously, today’s Herb and Jamaal is just incoherent.
*Lowered
@Guillermo el chiclero: Not as I recall, but maybe a later version had them. For alt-history purposes, the French had some optional counters representing bigger/better armor divisions. The sprawling GDW “War in the West” had armies for Switzerland and Sweden if I remember correctly.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Juggs Parker is back! Keep it going, Manley.
The panel would also have accepted Jut Parker.
BTW Manley teased the big reveal yesterday. He didn’t continue playing coy today.
@Maude R. Fawker: Large Bosom Theater.
@Ukulele Ike: NSFW, but only if the boss is close enough to read word balloons
NSFW in a “calculated and self-conscious grab for the 50+ male demographic” way, maybe. Real people of the depicted age have better things to discuss.
@Lord Flatulence: Large Bosom Theater.
Motorboat Playhouse
Will this be the arc where Dick Tracy finally confronts Dick Dastardly in The Wacky Races?
@Sex-Negative Nellie: @Maude R. Fawker: You two are really the same person posting under alternate screen names, aren’t you? Devious. I LOVE devious!
Herb: What’s that ‘6 7’?
Jamal: ‘Tis a Greek invocation, to call fools into a circle.
@Ukulele Ike: Eco was known for loving newspaper comics, esoteric and erudite interests and snarkiness. He would have won COTW every week
@Sequitur: I was thinking ’63’s Hill House (“The Haunting”) I’m hoping Ted won’t make it through the night.
Late Thread Cuisine: That’s not paprika sprinkled atop this dish.
Alice: Point B is a fiery crash, right? It is if the comics are switching schticks today and Gearhead Gertie has a spaceman floating over her.
DT: Are you sure the difference isn’t that clowns are better at stuffing an improbable amount of stuff into a car than horny stepsiblings?
H&J: I am at peace with not understanding 6-7. Stephen Bentley, alas, is not.
C-Shaft: I think Batiuk is trying to make a Shadow reference by calling the bowling alley “Margo Lanes”, but I can’t be positive because the possible G looks more like a C, and more like Pac-Man than either. In Dick Tracy it’s always a reference, but it’s usually not a fumbled reference, at least.
Dustin: Sounds like something Dustin would be into, or at least the Dustin who appeared yesterday would be.
GT: Beth puts on the telecast of the high school football game her boyfriend is coaching, because there’s no better way to clear out the barflies.
H&L: If there are bumper stickers that read “Proud parent of a kid who got catfished by AI” see if Lois wants one.
Luann: Alan may be his own worst enemy, but the professor who changes the syllabus at the last minute to accommodate one precocious nerd runs a close second.
MW: If you have to ask whether that “Harrumph!” is actually pronounced out loud as “Harrumph!”, you just don’t know Ian.
Phantom: Um, didn’t that guy have two arms yesterday? Stripey is making some…questionable embellishments on his family legend.
RMMD: “The core of the character is you. And sure, her hair’s dark, but it’s still screaming out in pain from the awful ponytail she’s got it in.”
Dick Tracy: I wish that the machine gun had a sound effect going on, like “ratattattattatt”
Then I could have done a “Dude! Stop Farting!” quip.
The Familliar Mucus: New Family Circus™ brand cookies. Full of McElfin goodness!….and fudge!
@Peanut Gallery: You cant spell “Non-Euclidean” without “Alice.”
I got Alice crossed with Gearhead Gertie and thought “Side windows? Back seats? All they need is SPEED!”
Which works just fine if you add 2 Latin Words at the end : Quam Celerrime.
The Familliar Mucus: New Keebler® Family Circus™ brand cookies. Full of McElfin goodness!….and fudge!
Sorry for the repeat, spell check wouldn’t believe “Keebler” was a word.
@Guillermo el chiclero: I knew a wargamer named Moose in high school. He was so good, he could play France in the realistic scenario & win.
H&J: Dude says he has ‘that’ on the other hand, then says ‘that’ is why people wring their hands. Is he trying to wring the ‘that’ clear off his other hand? How did he get ‘that’ on there in the first place?
@Downpuppy: I got Alice crossed with Gearhead Gertie
_________________________
…..and with that “Airhead Alice” was born!
@Ettorre: I know. I audited Eco’s Semiotics class at New Haven back in 1978.
@Ukulele Ike: Cool!
MW: I can definitely see Sunny adopting the “skulking vulture” pose like Snoopy from the classic “Peanuts” as he follows Ian’s every move around the apartment – beady little eyes boring in on Ian as he gets dressed, eats breakfast, says a perfunctory “goodbye, dear” to Toby as he heads to work, then eyeing him mercilessly when Ian returns in the evening…those beady little eyes…always the eyes…and the claws skittering across the wooden perch, feathers fluffed menacingly as Sunny’s ancestral memory of his native Amazon home surfaces, envisioning Ian as a massive predatory creature – not lithe and serpentine like the python, not silent and muscular like the jaguar but more like a lumbering monitor lizard. Sunny waits to strike when his foe is at his most vulnerable – bloated and incapacitated after gorging. Ian never knew what struck him.
@Baja Gaijin: looked up the title, so it’s cinnamon? neat – like the tasty old-school savoury use of cinnamon in tourtière.
How soon before the King of Id’s head just morphs into a ball with dots on top?
@Baja Gaijin: Mix in a little tuna or salmon, and you have the dish I’ve eaten twice a month for the last 50 years. Really, its a Plugger dish — good for either bachelors or the church social.
@Downpuppy: I guess that he didn’t have a girlfriend named Midge that he was overprotective of.
MW -part deux
Somewhere in the eternal shade of the netherworld which is the abode of the Old Gods, a dark form stirs. Its tongue twitches, its hooded eyes crack open and its massive wings slowly, painfully, unfold until the fearsome visage of the ancient winged serpent known as Quetzalcoatl looms over its moribund companions. Bastet starts to complain about the fuss and noise but a harsh glance from the serpent god silences her.
Slowly a thought forms in its stony soul. It is empty. Famished. For thousands of years it languished, unfed, unfulfilled, as the old ways vanished forever. Suddenly it remembered its feathered children, the emerald green Amazon parrots! The tiny winged avatars would rise up and serve him again! With the force of his powerful mind he sent out an appeal across time and space, beckoning one of his minions – any one – to answer.
On his perch in his cage in an unassuming apartment in a generic California town, Sunny the parrot jolts awake from his slumber. “Kill,” says the persistent thought in his bird brain…”KILL! KILL THEM ALL! Give me their BLOOD!! I must live again!”
The next morning Toby approaches Sunny’s cage to let him out. Still half-asleep, she extends her hand for Sunny to climb onto in his cute way. Ian looks up warily from his breakfast, hoping to finish his morning repast without disruption when suddenly the living room erupts in squawks and shrieks of bloodlust and terror, feathers and chunks of Toby’s scalp and hair flying everywhere.
“Damn,” thinks Ian…”there goes my morning…”
In the shadowland of the ancient gods, Quetzalcoatl sighs and licks his lips. He is satisfied. “Go wallow in catnip, you stupid feline,” he chortles to the indignant Bastet.
@102 2+2=7: Kim Kardashian
@107 Ukulele Ike: Y0u haven’t tasted Provel? Be glad. Have you ever been walking through a forest and notice a dead tree lying across your path, covered in lichens and moss? Leave it alone. Find another rotted log that has a dead rotted skunk on it. Lick it. Provel may, just may, taste slightly better. Is it a coincidence St. Louis has both pizza covered in Provel and a major brewery to keep people tipsy enough to eat pizza covered in Provel? I think not.
@134 CanuckDownSouth: Cinnamon and flavorful cheese? Bleah. That has to taste worse than a Gold Star three way.
@136 Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: Those years in the Air Force must have made you such a gourmand.
@Sparrow:
#70. MW: thank you, Sparrow. Ian was a jerk then and he hasn’t changed.
Pluggers – “I’m thinking of going for either the Jimmie ‘J.J.’ Walker plan, or the one recommended by the emotionless robot voice. America has the best health care system in the world!”
@Baja Gaijin: cinnamon and cheese are both significant parts of pastitsio and it works, so I’d at least give it the benefit of the doubt and try it
@Baja Gaijin: It’s not like there are no people in St. Louis making fresh mozzarella cheese and willing to sell it to thousands of pizzerias. The locals must…..want Provel cheese on their pizza.
I think Altoona pizza might win worst pizza. Its topped with slices of American cheese and the cheese is cold!!!
@Ukulele Ike: You two are really the same person posting under alternate screen names, aren’t you?
I always look forward to that twat’s posts so that I can purposely ignore them. If you read Nellie’s posts and think of me, then I am doing something seriously wrong, aren’t I?
@Maude R. Fawker: Absolutely not! Never change — we love you just exactly as you are.
We love Nellie, too. Platonically.
@DAS: Aaaaaand it’s 1983 and I’m walking along 110th st. in Forest Hills Queens with my chevra, and we’re suddenly talking about elephants in bathtubs.
@Peanut Gallery: Ah, you live in a civilized part of the country where you don’t have to say that you want your round pizza “pie sliced.” Bianca must live in Chicago.
@richardf8: Aaaand . . . Nailed It!
WoI: wizard of skibIDi
Mother Goose and Grimm:
“The dish ran away with the spoon. And the earthenware jar decided to tag along with them!”
“What a crock!”
Alice:
“Forget about what manufacturers forgot. I’ve been meaning to ask you this for ages: are you Rick Nielsen from Cheap Trick?”