Today’s Zippy takes us us to diner of his religion, as described in its sacred text, the Book of Norman:
(#1)
As it happens, these same characters have struck these same poses in this very diner before, but they had different things to say to one another.
Wayno’s title for today/s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro, in which the world of summer scout camp for kids intersects with the complex fictional world of the animate marionette Pinocchio. To understand the cartoon, you need to recognize both of these worlds (a matter of considerable cutural knowledge); and to understand why it’s funny, you need specific detailed information about each of these worlds.
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 6 in this strip — see this Page
The key words are kindling and fibs.
Today’s Rhymes With Orange cartoon, “Tea Time”:
(#1)
You are expected to recognize, from the title and from the drawing (showing a teapot, teacups, sugar bowl, and 3-tiered tray of fingerfood) that this depicts an afternoon tea — not tea plants in the afternoon, or merely the beverage tea taken in the afternoon, but (from NOAD):
noun tea: … 3 chiefly British a light afternoon meal consisting typically of tea to drink, sandwiches, and cakes.
But that won’t help you with the text, in which one tea sandwich asks of another (identified as female) why the latter brought Joe — Joe clearly referring to the one discordant element in the drawing, who appears to be a hamburger bun overstuffed with a meat filling, some of which has spilled out onto the table. Messy, messy Joe, who “just can’t pull himself together”.
Clearly, that one line, in conjunction with Joe’s appearance, is somehow the crux of the joke. But how?
For this, you have to know a bit about vernacular American foodstuffs, in particular the sandwich known as a sloppy joe. So it’s a pun on the name — and also, it turns out, a gender joke.
By JAK (Jason Adam Katzenstein), the New Yorker daily cartoon from yesterday:
“Personally, I worry that, with everyone wearing masks, readers won’t be able to tell who in the cartoon is speaking.”
The masks are part of daily life in plague time, and they conceal the wearers’ mouths. So in a cartoon you can’t tell who’s speaking. (In real life, there might be other clues, like vocal timbre.)
In the world of annually recurring dates, Wednesday was Earth Day, Thursday was St. George’s Day, and tomorrow is World Penguin Day. Into this olla podrida of holidays walk a pastor, a priest, a rabbi, and a pie-throwing clown working as an erotic masseur.
Colby Jones, cartooning as Sir Colby, with a meta Walk Into Bar joke; and Bob Eckstein, offering the comic amalgam of clown and masseur.
The following cartoon, in French and unattributed, has been making its way around Facebook in the last few days:
(#1) “How do you [polite] feel this week?” – “Much better.”
Therapist and patient, both cowering in the anxiety of persecution. But this week is better. Much better.
Presumably, it’s being passed around as a pointed commentary on the fix we are all in currently. Even better is appalling.
It doesn’t take a keen eye to see that #1 is a rip-off of a Bizarro cartoon: the drawing style, the content (the Psychiatrist meme is a Bizarro evergreen favorite), the two odd Dan Piraro symbols. And so it is, from 2/15/11, almost a decade ago.
It’s about diners. It’s about cartoons. It’s about San Francisco. Obviously, it’s about Zippy the Pinhead (from 4/15):
(#1) Yes, some of us left our hearts in San Francisco, but Zippy left his pants
This being a Zippy strip, you are guaranteed that this is a real place; in fact, it’s a pretty famous one (though now closed down, of course). And not only is Zippy returning to 2801 24th St. in SF, we as cartoon readers are returning to this very scene, but with different dialogue.
Yesterday’s Weekly Humorist cartoon “Missing Something?” by Bob Eckstein:
(#1) In the Godzilla cartoon meme, saurian movie monsters exhibit their famous appetite for pieces of the urban landscape, especially mass transit vehicles
But a bus or train with no passengers inside is like the hollow shell of a chocolate candy, with no nuts, no buttercream, no nougat, no candied cherry, nothing whatsoever in it. Or like the two chocolate biscuits of an Oreo cookie just rubbing together, with no creme filling.
The 4/13 Rhymes With Orange brings us the Grim Reaper and his cats (we know from Terry Pratchett that Death is fond of cats):
(#1)
We don’t know if this Grim Reaper is a general operator, reaping souls of many creatures, including mice; or whether this one is a specialist in mice — perhaps of a tribe, or race, of Grim Mousers; or of a professional guild of them. (See below, on the Death of Rats.)
Bob Eckstein today in Wired:
(#1) The Sísyphùs of the corónavìrus, always at his labors
A natural cartoon idea, which many have latched onto.
