Space continues to not be the place
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Gasoline Alley, 12/16/24
So the whole point of these uncanny children going to space in the first place was so that they could write a school report about the solar system, and despite the fact that they almost died out there and had to be rescued by their evil talking doll, they didn’t even bother applying the awesome knowledge they acquired first hand to their assignment and just had an AI write it. And it did a shitty job! Which they should’ve known it would do, because it was the thing that almost got them killed in space in the first place, due to its incompetence! And yeah, sure, writing a report for elementary school is a lot easier than navigating an interplanetary craft, but I’m sorry, if a machine comes close to killing me, I stop using that machine, even for lower-stakes stuff. I’m not going to say these kids deserved to die on the cold surface of Mars, but they definitely deserve bad grades on those papers.
Family Circus, 12/16/24
The joke here, I guess, is that Daddy has forced Jeffy to say this to a hapless mall Santa because he wants to set Jeffy’s own expectations correctly, but look at that face. That’s a guy who still Believes. “C’mon, Santa,” he’s thinking, “don’t fuck this up for me this year.”
Alice, 12/16/24
Uh, gee, Alice, do you think there’s an alien base on the moon? Alice’s boyfriend (?)’s attitude towards Alice (the character) really represents the reader’s position vis-a-vis Alice (the comic strip) here: Asking neutral questions, not making direct eye contact, sitting very still, hoping for the best.
Pluggers, 12/16/24
“Pluggers don’t wear gloves outside in Minnesota in December” is I think the point where we start doing wellness checks on the pluggers in our lives. Don’t wait until they end up in the hospital getting their fingers amputated!
94 replies to “Space continues to not be the place”
Mary Worth Mashups: Which missing final panel really completes the strip?
The writer of “Gasoline Alley” is not doing a great job in opposing AI when he clearly demonstrates that an AI could write a better strip
GA:
“Now, no hackneyed jokes about how you’re going to show your teacher ‘Uranus’ on account of your disappointment over your grades, okay, girls?”
MW-Mary is going to regret inviting Dawn over.
FC-And three men who refuse to acknowledge they are the fathers.
“Who knows,” Alice’s bow-tièd couchmate? Who knows? We do. That’s who knows. We know, definitely, because we can and do observe the moon. The answer is no, there are no alien bases on the moon. There’s nothing wrong with Alice (the person) that a brisk regimen of the history of space exploration won’t fix.
(However, there are quite a few things wrong with Alice, the strip, that are not so easily fixed.)
“Alice” is not very funny or good or competent but it was able to produce in advance a strip that would match the mood of the recent UFO/Drone sightings in New Jersey, so that’s something
FC:
“I liked you better as Kris Kringle in the 1947 original than I did Richard Attenborough in the 1994 remake, Mr. Gwenn!”
Purple Stripeybutt: “….three inches…. four inches…. three and a half…. four…. five…. three…. okay, this one stays clear of Diana….”
“Daddy says no toys that have to be put together, cause we have four kids and only one father”
“Ho ho ho! Then my Christmas gift for him is the information that there are four kids but more than one father!”
If that’s supposed to be the moon, we’d damn well know there is a base- that Alien is huge!
A mall Santa with a real beard — color me impessed.
There is a consensus that Plugger should just die: we want it and clearly they subconsciously want it. But a cruel universe spites us and them by keeping them alive
Blondie: Yeah, I guess the cook might enjoy a cookbook as a gift. Maybe for recipes, maybe for culinary theory; I mean, everyone eats food, so pretty much anyone could get use out of- oh. This is supposed to be a joke about how the cook is bad at cooking. Because only people who are terrible at food preparation would use a cookbook, right?
DT: Two
weeksdays later, we return to our regularly scheduled programming where boomer extraordinaire Sam Catchem has finally learned how to use his computer to do something other than reading terrible comics from the mid-20th century. Is the pace finally going to be speeding up now after that Minit Mystery interlude? Well, the detectives of the MCU are just now starting to piece together the Nazi connection that has been obvious since frigging October, so don’t get your hopes up.JP: Ann wants to leave while it’s “still dark?” Randy’s family came over for Thanksgiving dinner! Did Alan and Katherine serve it at two in the morning? It doesn’t help that every strip of this story, including today’s, has been drawn as though it’s early afternoon.
Luann: “I don’t get it. Is this supposed to be funny? Do you hate me or something?”
GT: Well, Gil’s viciously evil mind games didn’t win the football game, but they did send Coach Gerads on self-destructive path of substance abuse, so that’s… good. Uh. Anyway, remember how Milford lost the game after a boneheaded Mudlark deliberately dropped the ball right before crossing the goal line? Well, it took barely a few days for this to become prophetic as Jonathan Taylor of the Indianapolis Colts cratered his team’s chances to win the game and make the NFL playoffs by doing that exact same thing. Just in case you had the crazy idea that real sports made any more sense than Gil Thorp.
Alice: “ Who knows?” says the terrified boyfriend with a side eyed glance at this alien looking creature sitting to his right.
RMMD:
“Look at the size of these hands, Officer! They’re larger than my head! — I should be an NFL wide receiver or tight end, or an NBA center!”
Josh: I’m not going to say these kids deserved to die on the cold surface of Mars
Then I will.
THESE KIDS DESERVE TO DIE ON THE COLD SURFACE OF MARS
Space continues to not be the place
[Sun Ra’s ghost has entered the chat]
“Planet 9”? Is Alice trying to imply that there aren’t nine planets? Newspaper comics readers won’t stand for that “Pluto isn’t a planet” nonsense.
(I don’t know what Alice is trying to do and I’m sure it doesn’t succeed at it but I love it anyway. In its complete refusal to make sense, t’s like Garbage Ape-era Heathcliff before it became self-aware.)
FC: “Tell your Dad he can forget about that component stereo system he was going to get.”
Pluggers: Sure, it’s hard to find a glove that fits those three pudgy fingers, but have you considered mittens?
TFC: Santa should be more concerned with the man with the strange mustache, who appears to be half cowboy and half Prohibition-era gangster, and the woman with the deformed right hand. They’re looming in the background and neither looks very happy with ole’ Saint Nick.
MW: The vegans I know don’t actually say the word “vegan” in every sentence they utter. They’re also not usually “starting a vegan diet”. They’re just eating plant-based stuff.
Pluggers: My reaction on reading was “pluggers can’t afford gloves”, but I guess “pluggers are senile and don’t remember what gloves are” works too.
Alice: Is the joke that while she’s worried about aliens on the moon there’s a giant alien standing on the sun…or giant space pizza…or rabies cell? Do colors mean anything anymore?
Alice: Yeah, there’s an alien base on the moon. Look at that guy! He’s almost as big as the moon! You’d clearly be able to see him with the naked eye!
GA: “We got a bad grade on our solar system reports, ’cause we let an AI write them! A weird robot with a tiny body and a huge head with frazzled wires coming out. Kept talking about an alien base on the moon. We’re know it was an AI, ’cause no human could hallucinate that weird stuff.”
You’re a plugger if you live in the sort of aging blue collar suburb where the Chuck E. Cheese’s shut down because the residents would rather have their birthdays at the Harbor Freight Tools!
GA: SO wait, is the ‘AI doll’ not the robot that took them to space? It would be pretty funny if it turned out that the whole thing was just some kind of chatbot illusion and they didn’t learn shit.
FC: Big Daddy Keane is not happy about being outed as these kids’ father. There was at least some plausible deniability before — he could have been their uncle, or handler of some kind.
Alice: I spent about 45 seconds wondering if ‘Planet 9’ was a reference to ‘Plan 9 from Outer Space’ or some other Sci-Fi story before remembering that any time spent trying to figure out this blight of a comic is a waste.
Pluggers: Is there some kind of horseshoe theory on age that brings together teenagers and pluggers? Let’s review the evidence: (1) they both hate wearing mitts even in cold weather, (2) both frequently tired and surly (3) confused about the world around them, albeit for different reasons. Hmm, we may have something here…
@Ettorre: Actual lol on this one.
RMMD: I was wondering how Beatty was going to drag this story out after fairly zipping through the hospital meetup/arrest. Now I know. This cop is going door-to-door asking people in the most oblivious neighborhood in the world whether they saw the violent confrontation, only to be met with a chorus of ‘I dunno’s, ‘Sorry, can’t help you’s, and ‘Get off my property you #!@##$)!’s
JP: Welp, that was easy! Now winter can come to Cavelton. Maybe we can check in on Toni?
GA – AH – Artificial Humor…sometimes a/k/a Actual Horseshit….
FC – Fuck him over, Santa – 20,000 piece LEGO sculptures for everyone….
Alice – What BS! Like the Nazis on the dark side would ever allow that….
Pluggers – This one has got me thinking of my own submission: You know what really chaps a Pluggers plumber’s ass….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Pluggers lose body parts to frostbite as well as diabetes.
MW: For crying out loud, Mary; dinner, advice, a lent ear- just write it on her hand!
Alice: Are we supposed to believe it’s a coincidence that Alice is wondering if there are aliens on the moon at the same time an alien on an extremely small planetoid has decided to celebrate Clyde Tombaugh’s birthday just under two months early? Because these events have no relationship to each other I’m gonna say yeah, it’s a coincidence, and not a very good one.
The Family Circus: I feel like we’re sleeping on the background characters here. There’s the store detective, who’s been alerted that there’s a cartoonist in the building, and the social worker from Child Protective Services, who’s picked up a sweater for her husband while she’s here, but who is monitoring the little melonhead very, very carefully nonetheless. A tense game of cat-and-mouse begins!
The only “Plugger wellness check” I will ever do is making sure their will is current, and that my name is spelled correctly in it.
They adhere very strictly to traditional gender roles at the Keene compound and if Ma Keene didn’t find such a thing laughable, she’d be driven off and shunned for even suggesting she could help assemble the toys.
***
You know who else doesn’t dress for the weather for stupid reasons, pluggers? Teenagers. Remember that the next time you disparage them. Which will be sometime today, so you have no excuse.
RMMD: Merle personally delivers the malpractice lawsuit summons to Rex’ office after he loses everything he owns to the crook who claims he only stabbed Merle in selfdefense after he sic’ed his dog on him. June points to a stack of similar papers and says; “Put it on the pile.”
@1 Baja Gaijin:
Number three made the most sense and number one made no sense but finding Crankshaft in one’s shower is what makes pure comedy horror!
MW- Us: How long is this inane conversation going to continue? Nine days until Christmas?
Moy: Hold my beer……
MW: Mary’s repeated offers to be the “someone to talk to” are high on the Creepy Scale. Next thing you know, she’ll be spying on Dawn from Wilbur’s blind in the bushes.
Alice: One of the classic tests for Alzheimer’s Disease is whether a patient can use six or more consecutive, sensical words. With ten words in her line of dialogue, Alice squeaks by, and yet somehow the strip as a whole fails.
@Liam: Yeah. I’d be a little concerned if 3 dudes showed up at my house with gifts for my pregnant wife whom I’ve never slept with too.
Gasoline Alley – Judging by the weird hands and perspective in the second panel, I assume the AI bot drew this strip as well. D- grade from me.
Family Circus – Daddy Keane needs Jeffy to say this to provide corroborating witnesses for when he leaves small parts out for the kids to choke on. He’ll argue it’s not neglect on his part!
Alice – No form on intelligent life in the universe has been able to parse the meaning of Alice strips.
Pluggers – No gloves, no hat, no scarf, no winter coat. Pluggers are just overgrown children who hate being told what to do or to take responsibility for their own health and safety.
In Alice’s defense, if you got the same dose of high voltage she appears to have received, you might say some wacky things too.
Blondie – They should have brought in Lloyd Bochner to deliver that line in the final panel.
Frazz: Take that, you lazy, noisy, air-polluting scum.
Pluggers: Their amputated fingers will go with their amputated feet, so it all works out.
GA: Why has no one heeded the warnings of Demon Seed and Deadly Friend?
Alice vs. GA: Now that I’m seeing these two strips together, I feel like they deserve some comparison. For some reason, I don’t find the art in the former strip to be off-putting as I do the latter. Also, Alice‘s absurdity seems more wholesome than Gasoline Alley‘s absurdity.
FC: “So, you or one of your elves better get to putting that model B-52 Stratofortress together, STAT!”
Pluggers: as a native of Minnesota—that famously represents teenagers not pluggers. Clearly, he’s spiraling back to his youth. Probably not long for this world.
@taig: Demon Seed & Feed!
CS: “Oh, I get it! Like Spotify Wrapped!”…{Vacant stare}
Luann: The t-shirt is definitely worth everything Les paid for it. Too bad Les didn’t wrap it in some baroque fashion so that Brad could really appreciate the thought once he got to the gift.
WtB: I love this comic strip so much. Today is another fine example of why.
9CL: Maybe it’s the Stockholm Syndrome, or the lack of any of the “human” characters, but I actually found myself amused by today’s installment.
DtM: Today’s terrific artist is Glenda, age 4.
Today’s terrific writer is Hank, age 52. “I feed ‘em beans! Har, har!”
MW: When will this story get to the part where Mary kidnaps Dawn?!?
Looking at today’s Family Circus, I wondered: “Does Big Daddy Keane always have a clenched fist on the verge of a raised middle finger that he tries incompetently to hide with a scarf?” The obvious answer is, “Probably!”
@jroggs: As someone with Taylor on my fantasy football team, let’s say I was thrilled with his antics. Fortunately, I started the Broncos defense which offset the lost points, because the Colts have been pretty good at Keystone Copping on the football field this year.
@Dennis Jimenez: Chickens are 15% off!
JP: As Ann slowly sinks in the western sky, we bid her a fond farewell and rub our hands in anticipation of tomorrow’s New Adventure.
GT: By “My boys” and “Darby,” Coach clearly refers to Darby’s Rangers, which means a special guest appearance from the late James Garner!
MW: “Thanks Mary! Uh, you can let me go now. Mary? What are you…oh, sweet mystery of life at last I’ve found you!”
@Ettorre: The strip written by AI is “Alice” so I’m not really sure that holds up
Alice: I know very little about Alice, and yet she strikes me as exactly the sort of person who would believe the moon landing was faked and the government was hiding the truth about extraterrestrials.
Pluggers have about as much sense as my teenage boys. (Either that or like my boys they will freeze to death before admitting they should have put on warmer clothes when you suggested it earlier.)
GA: As opposed to “We spent time playing with a doll and made believe that could take us into outer space and back, and then made shit up.”
GT: It’s one thing for Gil to point and laugh at Marty falling off the wagon. It’s another for this asshat to push and kick him off.
Real pluggers play pocket pool to keep their hands warm.
Pluggers: I would think that plugger’s “winter gloves” would be the thick fur over his paws, but I guess an XXXL shirt has to be good for something.
GT: If Beth hadn’t quit her job to be Gil’s stay-at-home arm candy, she might have been able to introduce some conflict into this scene. But then we wouldn’t get to see Coach Permawave undone by his own hubris (or whatever is going to end up humiliating him without Gil actually getting involved).
Luann: Points for accuracy.
MT: Can we skip to the part where we learn Peach’s ex is also the manatee-hunting weather-control conspiracy theorist?
MW: That’s it, Dawn, keep it coming. Worship at the shrine of the Blessed Meddling Mary!
Phantom: I’m sure that somewhere, there’s someone who would get their kicks from seeing the Phantom grope a roomful of his former punching victims, but I don’t want to know about them.
RMMD: I don’t normally encourage police squeezing the facts to fit their preferred narrative, but if the main parties in the case are “elderly man who got mugged and stabbed while he was walking his dog, causing the dog to attack the assailant” and “thug who mugged and stabbed him, and who got bit in the process” I think nobody would complain if you just assume the dog is in the clear rather than going by the book and risking the chance of depriving the poor elderly stabbing victim of his loyal canine companion.
FC: In the Olden Days, department store Santas were there to guide young people and their parents to the toys the store was pushing that year. “Tricycles? Ho ho, you’re parents will find those on aisle 34!” Nowadays, the kids have just sent their list to Amazon, so Santa’s just there to say, “I’ll see what I can do, Whatever your name is.”
Pluggers. I call B.S. A Plugger, but especially a Minnesota Plugger, would be wearing a flannel shirt, flannel lined pants and bread bags under their boots in winter. In fact, about the only time a Plugger would NOT be wearing gloves in the winter would be when they’re pleasuring themselves to a well-loved Duluth Trading Company catalog.
RMMD: “The CROOKS were gone before I opened the door.” Something fishy going on here – Merle did not tell the reluctant neighbor that there had been more than one person involved! He only told him he’d been stabbed and to go get his wife. Maybe some of you who’ve suggested this is really Rene Belluso are right! He saw more than he is telling the cops.
“Hey, did you hear about how kids now are using AI to write their school papers? you should do a comic about that.”
The Writer/Artist of Gasoline Alley who, out of professional dedication to his work on one of the oldest legacy strips still going, has made himself only dimly aware of any developments after 1937: “Sure thing!”
Don Abundio, translated:
“I’ve truly reached the pinnacle of the acting profession!”
“Oh, I know one actor better than you…”
“She acts like she likes me!”
DT: To be a member of the Nazi inner circle Totten Sr. would have to be at least 120 years old. Did Mr. Staton borrow Tom Batiuk’s time-warping, paint thinner huffing space helmet, that enables WW2 vets and stars of 1940s movie serials to be hale seventy year olds, or seventy year old baby boomers to be the parents of teenaged children?
@Banana Jr. 6000: $35: The joke’s on you. The only things a plugger has of value to leave you in his will are a pile of hoarded scrap metal in his back yard and the rusted out, oil burning pickup truck he collected it in.
Alice: My assessment of this comic is that Andrea Beizer suffers from some kind of chronic mental health disorder. I looked her up and according to the biography on her website “Andrea Beizer is a Syndicated Cartoonist at King Features Syndicate, an artist, an architect and college professor. The one informs the other, each part being an important facet of her life.”
Her education includes Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art (Majored in Painting) Carnegie-Mellon University; 1978
Also Master of Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign; 1982
@Guillermo el chiclero: You forgot the closet full of stock-piled toilet paper. That has to be worth something.
JP: “NICE GOING, RANDY!!! NOW GET OUT OF MY HOUSE, YOU SON OF A BITCH!”
GT: What’s Coach Gerads doing in a bar? You’d think he’d be out on Gil’s front lawn setting off firecrackers.
MW: “I used my regular cooking skills on vegan cuisine. I’m not wasting my superior cooking skills on this crap.”
RMMD: “Sorry, Merle, we had to kill your dog. We thought about letting you say good-bye first, but figured that might get messy. Okay, gotta run. There’s a report of a jaywalker in the neighborhood.”
CS: “What is it?”
“It’s fucking Christmas music, what the hell do you think it is? I’m not sure I should trust you with scissors.”
Slylock Fox: There is clearly something very shady going on with that hotdog cart, probably similar to the story of Sweeney Todd where that dog is a serial killer turning his victims into the food he is serving. Max Mouse is about to find part of a finger.
Alice – A better question would be “Do you think there’s a planet where this is considered funny?”
Alice: Is there some reason the moon based alien is holding a dog dildo?
Alice: Of course making eye contact in Alice would be…I mean, I just don’t see how you’d go about it.
GA: See, the girls should have written their report on “The Venomously Idiotic AI Toy That Nearly Stranded Us in Space, to Die, and Why It, the Toy’s Prototype, and All Extant Editions Must Be Destroyed.”
@Midtown: #73: You’re right. I found one of those in my parents house after they passed, along with a stockpile of instant coffee.
Zits Spanish to English.
@Anonymous: “Also Master of Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign; 1982”
Would YOU let Andrea Beizer design you a house? Somehow I feel that all the hot and cold water taps would be reversed, and there would not be any roof.
@TheDiva: Seeing as I don’t read Mark Trail unless Josh covers it (and even then)
Until someone corrects me, I am going to assume that Peach is related to Cherry in some say.
If so, I can’t wait for the comic to introduce Cherry’s very flaming gay brother “Banana”
@Sequitur: #38: I believe that’s old Funky and not Crankshaft.
Fifty years ago today, Gen. Haig was in charge as supreme allied commander in Europe. He said Watergate had nothing to do with his leaving the country. A UFO expert says US has spacemen on ice. The expert, Robert Spencer Carr taught creative writing at the Florida Gulf Coast Arts Center. A woman wrote to Dear Abby that her husband did not want her to go to his office’s Christmas party. Abby told her to go.
Meanwhile, the Phantom looked into a new job in sales, Duke was concerned about speed limits in outer space in the Kelly strip, and an expert’s presentation on the Easter Island statutes in the Rip Kirby strip faced potential problems involving a Patty Hearst look-alike.
@Giant Pondering Otter: The Pitts wouldn’t have a “Banana,” because bananas don’t have pits.
If there were indeed three Pitt Brothers, Mister and Missus Pitt would have given them manly names like Grease, Gravel, and BBQ.
So true, esp. about the eroticism in those Duluth Trading Company commercials and catalog.
Serious question: When Wilbur wanked to the floating head of Iris, he was wearing those fingerless gloves. Does that qualify him to be a Plugger?
FC: Daddy (in the background) has finally found a reason to get rid of Jeffy. Jeffy, knowing this, is now beginning to refer to “Daddy” as “father”. Stay tuned!
SFx: What animals would be in a zoo in Slylock’s world? (That’s a comment I made when this repeated strip first ran. If Bob Weber Jr can slack off, so can I.)
@taig: Wallace the Brave is the best! I’m eternally grateful to whomever recommended it here. My comics are sorted alphabetically, so it’s nice to end on a Wallace high. Well actually Zits follows it, but I can cope with that.
@Guillermo el chiclero: You obviously know your butt cracks!
Family Circus: Big Daddy Keane watches nervously and carefully to make sure that Jeffy doesn’t take this opportunity to ask for help from a non-Keane Kompound adult. And if he accidentally says something that might prompt this Mall Santa to call Child Protective Services, well… let’s just say that this jolly old elf isn’t going to be making his deliveries this year.
Alice: I honestly struggle to come up with anything to say about Alice as a comic because it’s so bizarre and abstract that I legit can’t even process what it’s trying to do half the time.
Pluggers: As someone with who was born in Minnesota (but raised in Appalachia), I feel a twinge of horror and shame every time I see a Plugger comic based on something from a Minnesotan. We’re not all dumbfucks who walk out into the freezing cold without clothes don’t ya know?
@83 Guillermo el chiclero:
To-may-to To-mah-to
Crank: Look, the idea that Amelia and Bedelia dress up as elves when they’re helping at the Village Booksmith over Christmas was insufferably twee when they were little girls. Now that Batty has decided they’re teenagers again, it’s just weird. (Although at least it’s not creepy weird, as it probably would be with the other Twins of Uncertain Age in the comics…)
DT: Two days later strip time, two weeks later real time! It’s like the opposite of “seasons pass” in Judge Parker! Have you forgotten all the details during that pointless trip down memory lane, because I’m prepared to bet Eric Costello has!
JP: CIApril, 2 days ago: “You can turn yourself in, or you can keep hiding in your dad’s house until they track your movements with CCTV and realise this is where you are, thereby dragging Randy and Alan into it.”
Ann, today: “Or… I could secretly leave under cover of darkness and the Hoodie of Disguise, so that when they track my movements with CCTV and realise this is where I was, Randy and Dad are dragged into it but I’m not! Isn’t that the best of all possible worlds?”
MW: “I used my regular cooking skills on vegan cuisine! It’s almost like it’s actual food, just without any animal products!” I still think the whole point of this is Moy walking back from her previous position that veganism is a weird cult, and it’s hilarious how bad she is at not saying that.
Phantom: Everyone here except you seems to be pretty relaxed, Stripey; it doesn’t look like a firefight is in any danger of breaking out. For that matter, most of these people seem to have learned their lesson and been on the straight and narrow ever since (because skull-punching works, apparently), so they probably entered the UK legally and without trying to smuggle firearms into the country. (Stripey, of course, will have smuggled firearms into the country, because if Bangallan law doesn’t apply to him, British law certainly doesn’t!)
@Sequitur: What do Hindus call it when everybody gets fucked over by a vapid indolent government? Congress of the Cows!
@Guillermo el chiclero #71: I’m gambling on the cheapness, laziness, and hoarding tendencies of Pluggers. So I’m expecting at least one jug full of pennies and nickels. Or a worthless property deed they randomly picked up, that became a suburb or a gentrified former warehouse district without them ever knowing.
Blondie: Yes, Lou bought a gift for the chef. For those of you wondering, Lou is not the chef. The chef is Lou’s boss, as this diner obviously uses Escoffier’s Brigade de Cuisine.