An assortment of recent cartoons: Zits, Bizarro, Pearls Before Swine, and two Zippy cartoons on Sabina Ohio.
A Zits on family relations, with mom as a measure of loudness:
Bizarro puns:
All cute, but the second is especially nice, since in speech it’s a perfect pun.
The Pearls, with another pun, on erection, taking off on ads with warnings on erectile dysfunction drugs with warnings about long erections:
The Zippys:
This is Zippy-weird, but easily understandable. And the place is, of course, a real one, Kim’s Classic Diner in Sabina —
Kim’s Classic Diner, a 1946 Silk City Diner. Arrived in Sabina, Oh after being in New York and then Michigan.:
That was today. Two days ago, a much more inscrutable Sabina OH cartoon:
The mysteries: I haven’t identified the restaurant, with its sign having the truncated still. And the reference to fasin’ and trakfasin’. Surely some kind soul can help; very occasionally, Zippy just eludes me,
March 19, 2014 at 10:07 am |
The “r akfas” part is probably what’s left of the word “breakfast”.
March 19, 2014 at 10:31 am |
I’m not seeing the Pearls cartoon (#3) displayed here.
March 19, 2014 at 5:57 pm |
I also don’t see the Pearls cartoon here, but I did see it here:
http://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2014/03/18#.UypIQM6gk68
Oddly, the word that should (and maybe did, at one point) read “erection” (panel 3) reads “erector buildings”, which makes the joke fall flat… so to speak. I have a feeling there’s a story behind that. It appears that the Censor was partly successful in thwarting Mr. Pastis. But read the comments below the strip.
March 19, 2014 at 12:08 pm |
As Drew Smith indicates, there are letters missing from the marquee, and what’s left could be read as “fasin” or “trakfasin.” But I can’t find the restaurant; nothing listed on Google Maps in Sabina (“the Eden of Ohio”) seems plausible
March 19, 2014 at 4:06 pm |
From Jim Martin on Facebook:
March 19, 2014 at 4:19 pm |
With regard to #2: Are perfect puns really nicer? I am reminded of an example from, IIRC, Isaac Asimov’s Treasury of Humor: Three brothers started a ranch and called it Focus, because it was where the sons raise meat (sun’s rays meet). The problem is that the pun is so perfect that a listener is likely to pick up on only one of the two possible meanings.
March 20, 2014 at 7:09 am |
Another attempt at posting the Pearls:

March 22, 2014 at 8:50 pm |
The mystery restaurant is the Carlton Kitchen in Bentleyville, PA, about 175 miles from Sabina. The probable reason for Griffith’s error can be seen at
http://www.thefedoralounge.com/showthread.php?2256-The-DINER/page17
where a photo of the Carlton Kitchen is followed by a comment from a reader who says, “It’s in Sabina.” Griffith apparently missed that the comment was a reply to a question about Kim’s Classic Diner (of cartoon #4).
March 23, 2014 at 1:26 am |
Ah, thanks for the ID, Larry.