Brevity is one of those strips that seems to try a pun every time. But if we get too used to it, we may not notice when a pretty good one slips by.
We were about to cavil that the “k” was the same thing in both cases … but it really isn’t.
Therapeutic notes from Andréa!
This time Junk Drawer is about a junk drawer!
BUT that doesn’t mean only the namesake can discuss the junk drawer!
Okay, okay, not really a LOL. And certainly not an Ewwww. Just more like …. an Awwww?
From Dave Berg, who sent it in as CIDU. There is potentially a fairly direct explanation, however (reserved for now — we’ll see if you’all agree). But it still leaves this a good, ironic, chuckle.
And a LOL-Eww as a fitting end:
This Mutts is from a series introducing “King”. Not the deepest of puns, but has its little charms.
Another not-so-deep Oy, but considering how much grousing and joking has attached to the Zoom software, there has been surprisingly little using this older generic sense.
From Andréa, who asks “How many even know what a CARE package was?”.
After seeing this cartoon for a few weeks now, this character is the one who most pointedly clarifies for us the intent of the title Adult Children.
And yielding to the impulse to be a language complainer, we are happy to note that here the writer has stuck to the traditional term and called this an invitation, not the ugly newer form an invite. Good on ya, Maritsa Patrinos!
And zbicyclist kicks off a little debate by saying: Since Bliss has many cartoons in the New Yorker, he’s probably frequently asked to explain OTHER obscure New Yorker cartoons — which would make the sitting, bearded guy some sort of stand-in for the cartoonist. But to our eyes, the standing guy with the red sweater looks like the figure who appears again and again in Bliss cartoons.
But then zbicyclist rebuts with this example of an apparent Bliss stand-in (or a comic artist at any rate) with a beard:
But we have to ask: OK, there’s a beard, but which of the guys in the upper cartoon does this guy most resemble, to you?
Back in last November, in this “OY collection” post, we discussed a Baldo strip and the matching Baldo en Español where an element of the joke doesn’t come thru in the Spanish version, and combined this observation with other instances, as well as “About” tab type info and external sources, to agree that the strip seems usually to have been first written in English, then translated for the Spanish version.
(In that November post, if you feel like scrolling back, there was also a fun digression stemming from a different comic, on a style of word-play puzzle called by some “Dingbats”, a sort of text-layout rebus.)
In March, Arnold Zwicky’s Blog discussed a related example, with the same conclusion, where the English Baldo was about English language spelling and pronunciation (just pointing out that tough, cough, and dough give different sounds to the -ough sequence of letters) and the Baldo en Español just used the Spanish translations of those words, which really don’t resemble each other in any special way, certainly not rhyming. Zwicky also brought up some possibilities on how the Spanish version could have been handled. (And yes, that’s me popping into the comments.)
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Now lookit what just showed up on GoComics!
All the Spanish that you really need to know here is that pecado indeed means sin, and pescado means fish (as food).
In the English version, Tía Carmen’s jest is to turn the saying “Hate the sin but love the sinner” into “… love the dinner”. In Spanish she says “… love the fish [we are eating]” which is basically the same idea, but manages to preserve the word-play element because of the resemblance of pecado and pescado.
From Andréa:
Not a CIDU, but the pun is left visual here so recovering the words may serve as a little puzzle for those who don’t see it right off:
Since the main CIDU for today was laid to rest early, here is a bonus post (though not a CIDU). This synchronicity was noted and submitted by both Andréa and Powers. (Also noted by Georgia Dunn! See below.)
In the comments section of GoComics, Georgia Dunn (the artist who does Breaking Cat News) posted the following:
So, I kind of fan-girled-out when I read my GoComics comic list last night and realized “Cathy Commiserations” also had a chocolate egg strip today!!
I like to hope Cathy and the Woman would be friends, if they ever had the chance to meet on the pages, lol!! I always loved the strip “Cathy” so much, and “Cathy Commiserations” has been SUCH a comfort the past twelve months!! Check it out today, if you’re feeling like binging some laughs!
(For those not familiar with BCN, the cats refer to the humans they live with as “the People” and separately “the Woman”, “the Man”, and different terms for the children as they have aged.)
The Covid inconsistency last-year collection was a one-time thing, but I thought this was worth a mention:
This is sort of weird. Panel one doesn’t say why the wedding were postponed, but it’s a clear reference to the pandemic. But then in panel 2 there’s a packed line where no one is wearing masks.
So in the Blondie universe, there was a pandemic in 2020, but it’s already over?
There’s hurricanes in Florida and Texas needs rain …
From Andréa.
