Quik weekend picture only update

Only two this Saturday:

Brewster Rockit: Space Guy! by Tim Rickard
Get Fuzzy by Darby Conley

That's it. I'll see you tomorrow.

Ons and offs

We'll call it three today:

Cow and Boy by Mark Leiknes
Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau
Red and Rover by Brian Basset

Overboard and Foxtrot are off.

Either the second or third panel could be left out, but the passing time is essential to the gag. For what it's worth.



Here, the absence of the second cookie in the penultimate panel is necessary. This whole what-if-the-Foxtrot-kids-were-cookies thing has got to end. I have a feeling this is what made Bill Amend decide to retire as a daily cartoonist. He looked up from his drawing board one morning and realized, holy crap, I've done a week's worth of gags about cookies.

Doonesbury counts, but I think this is a very necessary SPP.

If you look through the archives here it turns out that when Trudeau uses an SPP, it is most often a dramatic one. The SPP is necessary here for the tone to change as well as it does from dramatic to comic.

Really shut out

Well, it's happened again. No silent penultimate panels today.

The closest was Rose is Rose, and it doesn't quite count.


On Monday, I missed Sherman's Lagoon. So here it is:


But today, we are shut out. Good job, cartoonists.

So here we go, from the L.A Times Kids page, submitted by Adan of Claremont:
How does a farmer count his cows? With a cow-culator.

Okay, children, that's two cow jokes in three days. Isn't there anything else you think is funny? I just don't get kids sometimes.

Christmas standards

Only two silent penultimate panels this Wednesday:

The Born Loser by Chip Sansom
Nancy by Guy and Brad Gilchrist

Has there ever been a duller pair of panels on the watch?

Bo-Nanas and La Cucaracha:



Last week everyone was making Christmas card jokes, this week it's unionized elves. That's two of the twelve gags of Christmas.

Love letters

The monsoon after the dry season:

Barkeater Lake by Corey Pandolph
Bob the Squirrel by Frank Page
Drabble by Kevin Fagan
Garfield by Paws, Inc.
Sherman's Lagoon by Jim Toomey

Here's the original Garfield:


And my improvement: (for what its worth.)


The Drabble gag (again for what its worh) actually does work better with the SPP.


And then there's good ol' Barkeater Lake:

Yes, I am a sucker for any sort of attention. Thank you, Corey, I love it. I hope confounding ninety-nine percent of your readers was worth it.

Shut out?

Surely this can't be happening. I have not found a silent penultimate panel anywhere. Admittedly, it is late, I am tired, and I just got back from my wife's work's Christmas party (with plenty of free-flowing holiday cheer. There's nothing like being the spouse at one of these things--I won't be seeing these people again for a whole 'nother year. Sign me up for karaoke!)) so the watch may not be as astute as normal. But, wow, there's nothing. Nothing in Garfield, nothing in Overboard, nothing in The Born Loser. I am at a loss.

On these rare occasions, I like to re-type a joke from the L.A. Times kids page. So, here it is, from Sammy in Santa Monica: What goes "oom, oom, oom"? A cow walking backward.

Ha!

That adorable Lio

A relatively quiet Sunday:

The Wizard of Id by Brant Parker and Johnny Hart
Adam@Home by Brian Basset
Zits by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman

Lio: adored by me, my mother-in-law, and hookers.


Lio is always surprising. Keep it up, Mr. Tatulli.