CSotD: Beneath the Planet of the Comic Weekly Man
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I like the idea of a horse/llama hybrid, though it’s not genetically possible. But llamas have some advantages, since they are both surefooted and soft-footed, so can traverse all sorts of wilderness without tearing it up, and they can be housebroken, which horses, notably, cannot. And if you are nice to them, they don’t spit; most spitters are veterans of petting zoos who have had enough of all that thankyouverymuch.
What the horse would bring to the partnership would be capacity. Llamas can carry packs and children but most adults would be too much. The more common hybrid is the mule. A mule is an animal with long, floppy ears; he kicks up at everything he hears, or so I’m told. But his legendary stubbornness is a sign of superior intelligence, hopefully as compared to the horse, not to you.
Like the llama, he’s more surefooted, and while he’s not as fast as a horse, that’s a pretty dubious trait anyway.
If you need to get somewhere in a hurry, get a Jeep. Name it Nellybelle. And if you recognized the Comic Weekly Man, you surely recognized Nellybelle.
UPDATE: Just realized the harelip suggests a rabbit/horse mix. Oh well. Same shit, smaller pile.
Speaking of Unhousebroken Beasts of Burden
Llamas can not only be housebroken, but left to their own guidance will pick a spot or two around their paddock and create a pile, rather than scattering it whenever the mood strikes like horses. Also, it’s pellets, more like deer poop than road apples or cow flops. I suspect this past week was Cow Flop Week, and here’s my evidence:
Frazz specifies cow manure, which is the standard because, much as any large animal contributes, you need more than one to be commercially successful and success generally includes some secondary income from milk or beef.
Baldwin works a pun into the topic, just as one might work top soil into bottom soil.
And Amelia finds a way to monetize her collection. This would actually work with any kind of manure, and the trick is to keep Wallace at a distance so he doesn’t ruin your enterprise.
Juxtaposition of a Sunday morning
Earl has a problem with both omniscience and omnipresence, and apparently wasn’t listening to that thing about His eye being on the sparrow as well as on you. Which was originally said to reassure the disciples but seems to have been used more often since then to keep people in line, not just to preserve cinnamon buns for the church social but to terrify them into all sorts of unquestioning obedience.
Toro plays on the obsessions that can result, because if my grilled cheese sandwich seemed to carry a burnt image of a bearded, long-haired man, I’d probably think it looked like George Harrison.
I’m not sure whether it’s more sacrilegious to make fun of this sort of thing or to take it seriously, but if one of my sheep fell into a pit on the sabbath, I’d pull the poor thing out, which is a hint.
Speaking of omniscience and omnipresence, Carrillo points out the world we’ve built for our children.
I like not having to stop to pay tolls because a camera will see my license plate and send me a bill later, but I’m not fooling myself into thinking that that same technology is going to be employed only for convenience, to avoid paying people to staff booths at the exits or even to keep us all safe from speeders.
The joke here is the idea that they’d let us wear masks. The banks already want you to take off your ball cap when you enter the lobby, and the last time I got a driver’s license, I had to remove my glasses so they could get a good photo of my irises.
The reassurance being that, if you don’t break the law, you’ve got nothing to worry about.
Just keep your hands out of the reflecting pool, 6079 Smith W.
My original card from 60-some years ago. Four legs good, two legs bad better.
The best part of Ruben Bolling’s takeoffs on Scarry is that a half century ago we raised our kids on these books and loved looking over all the illustrations, but eventually it became obvious that the men had men jobs and the women had women jobs, and there was a sense that the stories nudged our kids into conformity.
Bolling makes use of the concept to present not-so-pleasant things in similarly bland format, and, without having to state his purpose, satirizes the Orwellian push for goodthink.
I’m not sure conformity has to be inevitable. I grew up with this Little Golden Book, published in 1953, which began “What do daddies do all day? Daddies work while children play.” And then it showed the variety of jobs that daddies might have, which was certainly true, but there were no mommies or women at all working. It’s still available today, and as you can see, the cover now calls it a “classic.”
Despite that programming, when I got married in 1971, I encouraged my wife to keep her maiden name at least for work, and when we awaited our first child, I vowed that if it were a little girl, she was by-god gonna be allowed to play sports if I had to tear down the walls myself. But by time time our eldest began soccer, he had little girls on his team.
My progeny today consists of a priest, a nurse and an elementary school teacher. The priest is my stepdaughter, the other two are my sons. Who’da thunk it?
Which lets me look at that Tom the Dancing Bug and laugh, while vowing not to let it become any more mandatory than that Little Golden Book was.
Little victories matter. You’ll find Daddies on Amazon, and the comments are highly favorable, which suggests to me that there are also people who would see no irony or satire in Ruben Bolling’s view of July 4, 2026, who see no downside to being able to drive through the tollbooth without stopping and who have never known a world in which Social Security numbers were forbidden to be used for identification.
Keep the faith. And keep it alive.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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