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sweeperbravo
May 18, 2012

AUNT GWEN'S COLD SHAPE (!)

Johnny Walker posted:


"I met an old lady, and made banana bread!"


i laughed

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The Bloop
Jul 5, 2004

by Fluffdaddy

Kadia's face seems.... off model

null_user01013
Nov 13, 2000

Drink up comrades

Only registered members can see post attachments!

EBB
Feb 15, 2005

Professor Wayne
Aug 27, 2008

So, Harvey, what became of the giant penny?

They actually let him keep it.


Pickles


Zits

Somebody fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Jul 26, 2022

Darthemed
Oct 28, 2007

"A data unit?
For me?
"


College Slice
Docks




Retail




Dick

gleebster
Dec 16, 2006

Only a howler
Pillbug
Eh, it's probably the actual doctor, waylaid and forced to trade coats again.


https://vimeo.com/7093133

riderchop
Aug 10, 2010

av by @daikonquest!
Garfield



Heathcliff



a nicely drawn seal



Monty



Rae the Doe



Rae the Doe's web archives

Forgot One Last Thing


Zombie Movies

EBB
Feb 15, 2005


Enjoy your wet socks I guess

JethroMcB
Jan 23, 2004

We're normal now.
We love your family.

Johnny Walker posted:

Mary Worth



"I met an old lady, and made banana bread!"

Hey, that's selling it short

There was also a pool!

fondue
Jul 14, 2002

B Kliban




One of my favorites

davidspackage
May 16, 2007

Nap Ghost

The Bloop posted:

Kadia's face seems.... off model

She looks like she's eating, but there's nothing on the table :magemage:


riderchop posted:

Rae the Doe's web archives

Forgot One Last Thing


Don't forget about the occasional anxious dream for the rest of your life!

Hempuli
Nov 15, 2011



B. Virtanen

For reasons I don't remember atm, a lot of Finnish buildings have had mold problems, especially larger buildings like schools. Over the years there's been a lot of publicity for cases where a school is evacuated once it has turned out that it has moldy structures that cause various problems for teachers and students alike. I went with "rotten" here because it felt like it'd convey the second part of the strip better.

ANSU

FrumpleOrz
Feb 12, 2014

Perhaps you have not been to the *Playground*.
The *Playground* is for Taalo and for Orz, but *Campers* can go.
It more fun than several.
You can go there for too much fun.
The Lockhorns


Brewster Rockit Space Guy


On The Fastrack


Safe Havens


Kevin & Kell


Mother Goose & Grimm


Hagar The Horrible


Sherman's Lagoon


Ella Cinders


Zorro

Kennel
May 1, 2008

BAWWW-UNH!

Hempuli posted:

For reasons I don't remember atm, a lot of Finnish buildings have had mold problems, especially larger buildings like schools. Over the years there's been a lot of publicity for cases where a school is evacuated once it has turned out that it has moldy structures that cause various problems for teachers and students alike. I went with "rotten" here because it felt like it'd convey the second part of the strip better.

And for some reason the emerging media narrative has lately (or at least 1-2 years ago) been that the symptoms are partly/largely psychosomatic because all Europeans live and work in moldy houses and the Finns are the only ones who get sick.

I have no idea if there's any truth about it.

Kennel fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Aug 20, 2020

Shaman Tank Spec
Dec 26, 2003

*blep*



Hempuli posted:

For reasons I don't remember atm, a lot of Finnish buildings have had mold problems, especially larger buildings like schools. Over the years there's been a lot of publicity for cases where a school is evacuated once it has turned out that it has moldy structures that cause various problems for teachers and students alike. I went with "rotten" here because it felt like it'd convey the second part of the strip better.

Back in the day I served my mandatory military service in the Artillery Brigade (II/03 represent) and back in those days the batteries lived in the beautiful "lamella barracks", designed by some hotshot designer back in the 1930s.

On our first day as we were arriving in our bunk room, one of the privates commented that the air sure was dusty, and indeed the place looked like someone had blown a large bag of dust into the air. A passing sergeant remarked "that ain't dust, private". A few years later the lamella barracks were declared unfit even for military living because they were lousy with mold and were condemned for a few years for a complete stripdown. I have no idea if that stripdown and refit was ever completed.



Beautiful building though.

catlord
Mar 22, 2009

What's on your mind, Axa?

Why is this one so good. ANSU's been nice, but this one just really gets me.

Conan the Barbarian Aug. 18th- 24th, 1980







Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

The Dinette Set is from loving 2009.


Working Daze who could possibly care.


Super-Fun-Pak Comix is still just like newlyweds!


Cul De Sac is a true friend.

Kennel
May 1, 2008

BAWWW-UNH!
Fingerpori

-Next up: Covid-19 announcement.
-The stores must sterilize all the surfaces on daily basis
Pena's Bicycles
-Eek!

The plural form for both surface (pinta) and spoke (pinna) is the same (pinnat).

Sweaty IT Nerd
Jul 13, 2007

I can't prove it I suspect juniper balls might be supposed to be a largely useless intermediate wood product.

Buttons. Dice.

EasyEW
Mar 8, 2006

I've got my father's great big six-shooter with me 'n' if anybody in this woods wants to start somethin' just let 'em--but they DASSN'T.
Welcome back to HOW TO READ 9 CHICKWEED LANE.



5. Comedy Without Conflict?

“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” ― Mel Brooks

A: Context.

I've done something drastic to feed into this silly gimmick.

It's been obvious for a long time that my brain runs on a different track than most of the people around me, and it's one of those things I agonize about a lot. It feeds into a self-questioning streak, which I view as process troubleshooting and everybody else mistakes for me getting pissed off. For the purposes of (points to post title), that poses a recurring question: Was this ever worth the bother?

So I did something I might regret: I went back to the beginning. Not the beginning beginning, but the beginning of that 20 year unbroken chain that leads us to now. Just picking a day and binge reading the whole run from there. And no, we're not remembering it wrong. Even several years into the run, there's arguably the remains of a well-executed strip at the root of all this.



The hallmarks of the current troubles pop up from time to time. A smattering of over-educated, overly wordy characters. A panel which could pass as fetish material if you squint hard enough. Those compositionally awkward Dutch angle panels. That loving gradient fill instead of a full background. But in general, six months of 2001 9CL beats six months of 2020 9CL easily. The older version does what's described in the syndicate's sales pitch.

So how did we get from this...



...to this?



The easiest thing to notice when you revisit 2001 9CL today is that, besides the different settings, it also has a different set of character dynamics. Just from the early survey, there's two layers of mother-daughter combat, Edda vs. her Catholic high school, Juliette taking a dip in the dating pool after a divorce, and Amos getting decked over and over again by a hulking thug. Considering the way the strip runs now, that last one is very, very pleasing.



All of these themes pull their humor from conflict. Conflict with self, conflict with others, and sometimes conflict with the audience's expectations. If you're trying to be a humor strip, it's one of the most basic things in your tool box. I was going to compare today's installment with the one-sided romance of Lucy and Schroeder (there's a whole fanfic you could write about why he even lets her in the house, considering how things usually turn out), but considering the round hole we're trying to hammer today's square peg into, a better fit is this week's visit with Hillary Forth and her boyfriend Duncan. There are a few things working against them at the moment, at least one of them being rooted firmly in the way we're forced to live now and one of the other ones being a consequence of Hil inheriting her dad's imagination. But it gives you a rooting interest by reminding you that love (especially young love) doesn't conquer all, which casts a nice shade of anxiety over the whole week and makes their dilemma actually interesting. That we also get a good punchline for the final panel is the cherry on top.

B. Text

Yeah, that ain't happening here. Using "everything's gonna work out" as your launching pad doesn't exactly make for a compelling narrative.

Maybe that has to do with actually skipping a few gears on the stick shift of courtship, shifting from the initial parry to "drat, she's thirsty" without a clutch. As far as the execution, Bill Watterson said that when he knew he had a weak idea, he'd make up for it with the art. Thorax gets scorched overalls, and the moon is nicely rendered, but why add the caption, buddy?

Can there be something inherently funny about contentment in the moment without an incident to frame it up? If this is an example, I'm having a little trouble seeing it.

Moral: If you want to light a flame, you gotta feed it some oxygen.

Sally Forth



Pearls Before Swine



Skippy (March 1, 1933)



Peanuts (August 23, 1973...and the fanfic in question would be titled "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Musician", by the way.)



Funky Winkerbean



Crankshaft



Rip Haywire



Thimble Theater (March 22, 1937)



Out Our Way (January 21-23, 1935)







Dok's "Passion and Pie (Not In That Order)" Duck (April 3, 1913)

EasyEW fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Aug 21, 2020

Ghostlight
Sep 25, 2009

maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me



Nekonaughey

kidcoelacanth
Sep 23, 2009

i do not like nekonaughey getting Real

Haifisch
Nov 12, 2010

Objection! I object! That was... objectionable!



Taco Defender
2017 Spiderman


1978 Comics





Dick Tracy


Locher Tracy


Origins of the Sunday Comics


Footrot Flats

howe_sam
Mar 7, 2013

Creepy little garbage eaters

Wear a mask nekonaughey

Doomykins
Jun 28, 2008

Didn't you mean to ask about flowers?
It took Coney and his gang, multiple people, entire weeks to not discover the fortune hidden in the place a child would think to check within an hour.

Vox Valentine
May 30, 2013

Solving all of life's problems through enhanced casting of Occam's Razor. Reward yourself with an imaginary chalice.

Hostile V posted:

[tired sighs] is dethany going to find the missing fortune in the broken toilet in the warehouse. is that where this is going.

Haifisch posted:

Dick Tracy

Green Intern
Dec 29, 2008

Loon, Crazy and Laughable

Sweaty IT Nerd posted:

I can't prove it I suspect juniper balls might be supposed to be a largely useless intermediate wood product.

Buttons. Dice.

I think they are literally just decorative balls of wood that smell nice. The kind of thing your grandma might have a few of sitting in a little dish on a side table next to the root beer barrels. Completely perfect objects for a shell company to churn out to prove it’s a real business.

coronatae
Oct 14, 2012

The snow angel thing Les is talking about...was that when St Lisa decided to enter hospice care?

BigDave
Jul 14, 2009

Taste the High Country

coronatae posted:

The snow angel thing Les is talking about...was that when St Lisa decided to enter hospice care?

NO IT WAS ABOUT SURVIVING CANCER WILDFIRES

PAY ATTENTION

Slammy
Mar 30, 2011

Great speech.
PPHPFT!!

Haifisch posted:

Locher Tracy


And He Did. (May 21, 1917)


Outbursts of Everett True (August 9, 1917)


Hitz and Mrs. (April 26, 1923)


They'll Do It Every Time (February 6, 1941)


Feiffer (1976)


Wee Pals (June, 1972)

Julet Esqu
May 6, 2007




EasyEW posted:

Was this ever worth the bother?

I can't possibly tell you if it's worth it, but I can tell you I've been reading these things.


MariusLecter
Sep 5, 2009

NI MUERTE NI MIEDO

Seconded.

I'm just can't get over the order of events, 1) find your kidnapped BF tied to a chair 2) embrace them and then say "Oh." when you notice the bathroom 3) go wash your hands??? 4) Notice the olde timey toilet and pull the loving flush cord for shits and giggles 5) loving falls apart revealing bundles of cash.

StrixNebulosa
Feb 14, 2012

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Those old 9 Chickweed Lane comics were... actually.......good??? I like the freezing ice/rain thing one. I'm down for seeing more, but I also know I'm opening pandora's box.

readingatwork
Jan 8, 2009

Hello Fatty!


Fun Shoe

Slammy posted:

Outbursts of Everett True (August 9, 1917)


Apparently $5 was about $100 at the time so I'm on the side of the cashier here.

Strontium
Aug 28, 2009

Dexter didn't much care for the party.
Intelligent Life







Daddy Daze


Take It From the Tinkersons


Dark Side of the Horse


Angry Birds

curtadams
Mar 24, 2019

StrixNebulosa posted:

Those old 9 Chickweed Lane comics were... actually.......good??? I like the freezing ice/rain thing one. I'm down for seeing more, but I also know I'm opening pandora's box.
Helpfully McEldowney put in a scene shift, from Juliette and Edda's hometown to Juilliard, to let you know when it starts to go downhill.

BigglesSWE
Dec 2, 2014

MariusLecter posted:

Seconded.

I'm just can't get over the order of events, 1) find your kidnapped BF tied to a chair 2) embrace them and then say "Oh." when you notice the bathroom 3) go wash your hands??? 4) Notice the olde timey toilet and pull the loving flush cord for shits and giggles 5) loving falls apart revealing bundles of cash.

Couldn’t put it better myself. It’s so hilariously poorly thought out.

The villain was totally useless as well. Obsessed with ice cream because...he looks like ice cream? And ice cream does not come into his plans in any way shape or form? He even had a prolonged introduction where he was getting ice cream at a new shop! What was the point of that?

Hahah this comic loving sucks in all the best ways.

Raskolnikov38
Mar 3, 2007

We were somewhere around Manila when the drugs began to take hold
Jeez ted give the man the buffalo wings already

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How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

Raskolnikov38 posted:

Jeez ted give the man the buffalo wings already

Ted knows his rights:

The U.S. Constitution posted:

No cop shall, in time of peace be entitled to any buffalo wing, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

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