Remember when I said that once I start really keeping track of the tons of Death comics, they’ll inevitably stop?

I was dead wrong.

But for the record, Charon steers the boat down the Styx, not Death.

B.A.: The 11/11 11 question

“Since this was addressed in a comic, I feel justified asking a question that’s always bothered me: was there a practical reason the war ended on 11/11 at precisely 11, or were the diplomats just being cute? And if it was the latter, did they really not understand it could end badly?”

Didn’t we go here last month?

Does anybody really care?

Or… is this purely a “changing back from DST confuses everybody” gag and not a Geezer reference at all?

Arlo Standard Time

I suppose we’ll have to add another Arlo Award to Jimmy’s list…

BOO!

This kind of thing might be rare, but does it really cross over to “mean”? When my kids were young — probably the ages of the kids here — I was taking them around on Halloween and the scarecrow on one of the porches (actually the homeowner in disguise) came to life and shouted “Boo!” as the kids rang the doorbell.

Shrieks ensued.

(And this was a whole lot more startling that somebody already dressed as a skeleton removing his fake head)

But once regular heartbeats resumed, everybody thought it was awesome.

A commenter at the GoComics site wrote “there’d be more than one parent calling the police.”

Seriously?

A Bum’s Tale [OT-ish]

If I could draw, I’d do my own version of this story:

When I was in elementary school, “bum” was the go-to Halloween costume for most of the boys.

Then came Halloween, 1964: our parents were away and our grandparents were staying with us. From the Old Country. And old, though in hindsight about the same age I am now.

And my grandmother did not get the whole “dress up like a bum” concept.

And that meant it wasn’t happening.

So on the day of the school’s Halloween parade, my brother and I dressed in the oldest clothing we could get away with, and detoured through a sort of alley filled with dirt and fallen leaves…

… and messed ourselves up the best we could.

(When I was back in town last weekend for my high school reunion, I took photos of the old neighborhood — which hasn’t changed at all, other than more foreign cars and fewer tail-fins — never suspecting I’d be using one of them on the CIDU page a week later)

Geezerbury

These two are more accessible than most, but they got me wondering: does anybody read Doonesbury Classics other than people who followed it during its initial run? Some of the references were impossibly esoteric even when they were current.

Great Pumpkin

Is it plausible that neither Hammie nor Mama Blues knows who the Great Pumpkin is?

 

Weren’t we just discussing this?