CSotD: What the audience should know
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I'm not sure what significance, if any, those "we cannot be held responsible" signs actually have, but Danae is intent on finding out in the current Non Sequitur story arc.
The most common sighting in my world is in supermarket parking lots, where the store cannot be held responsible for damage done to your car by loose shopping carts.
That's probably a fairly safe place to stake things out since most claims of damage don't likely rise to the level of clearing the deductible in the first place, so a notice that basically says "You're going to need a lawyer and several 8 x 10 colored glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one is, to be used as evidence against us" will likely discourage claims.
Other places, with potentially larger stakes, it seems more likely to trigger a debate among company attorneys, since there is an argument against acknowledging a risk in advance.
In that school of thought, posting a "Beware of Dog" sign works against you, since it is an admission that you know your dog is potentially dangerous.
Certainly, there is a level of risk such that you are not able to at once acknowlege its existence and yet disclaim your responsiblity for it.
The crossover in this case being that raising a child like Danae could be interpreted as "maintaining an attractive nuisance."
And the grand karmic revenge on an innocent world would come if Danae grew up and married fellow infant terrible Edison Lee, who is currently exploring new cars.
Big pickup trucks do have a purpose. Back in 2007, when gas prices hit an unprecedented high level, I did some stories with auto dealers in rural Maine, and discovered that, in contrast to other parts of the country, the surge in fuel costs was not affecting their sale of full-sized pickups.
The dealers explained that, given the number of loggers and construction workers in the area, pickup trucks were a necessity, and that, maximum load requirements aside, the miles of unpaved roads in the area meant that more fuel efficient small pickups would batter themselves to pieces in a relatively short time.
Which covers about five percent of truck sales nationwide.
For the rest, I think you can confidently apply the rule that height from curb to cab is inversely proportional to a particular personal measurement.
Too Smart for the House
I liked today's Bliss, but wonder if Harry Bliss isn't demanding quite a bit of his audience. I'm quite content to see jokes based on knowing who Audubon was, which falls into the general category of cultural literacy.
But knowing that he (and other naturalists up until the past century) shot their subjects may be pushing it.
In the days before fast lenses and good color, that was how you got to examine birds in detail, and, while to Theodore Roosevelt, "camping" included shooting or fishing for your meals, his first gun was given him as part of his interest in nature and taxidermy.
It was a different world. And, yes, you had to use a very light load if your intention was to collect a useable specimen.
Is this something that people know?
Honest question. But I'm not sure how many people knew what "opposable thumbs" were before Gary Larsen used the term and it promptly became an overused cliche in cartooning.
By contrast
The good folks at Wumo may, in fact, know that Adelie penguins are in some trouble because of the lack of sea ice in their breeding ground, and that Gentoo penguins, who breed in less frigid climes, have become an invasive threat there because of the climate change.
Or they may have just been making a joke.
Thing is, while the Audubon joke requires that the reader understand how 19th century naturalists collected specimens, this cartoon mostly requires them to understand slushies.
I know where I'm putting my money.
30 years of unfunny comics
Michael Cavna has an excellent article on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the publication of Maus.
The book — later two books — was the first graphic novel most people encountered, and the first awarded a Pulitzer Prize. Cavna's appreciation is sincere and worth reading.
For my part, I wonder if the book is old enough that we now have to give it to grandchildren to make sure it doesn't just fade into the background noise of things they ought to read but probably haven't.
"Bone" creator Jeff Smith told Cavna just how important Spiegelman's technique was in telling that compelling story: “By using talking animals, Spiegelman allows his readers just enough emotional-safety distance to be able to follow a story that takes place during the Holocaust. Before you know it, you are with Vladek, unmoored and slipping into the cruelest pits of hell.”
I don't know that we need an "antidote" to Anne Frank's sweet, uplifting, unfinished memoir, but we certainly need another perspective, and one of the most important things I brought away from Maus was that Vladek Spiegelman was not a very nice person, and that he lived while Anne Frank did not.
Which is not to say that you had to be an SOB to make it through, but we have to be careful not to promote virtue as, itself, a survival skill.
Life is not that simple and not every survivor was a saint.
And on a related, unfunny note, Sean Kleefeld reprints a 1966 Ebony article on minorities in the comics that thoughtfully recaptures the difficulties of that movement.
It's easy, from the distance of a half-century, to pick apart and dismiss arguments, but the article lays them out as they were at the time, and it's a valuable document for anyone who cares about this sort of thing.
Two takeaways:
One is that Morrie Turner was indeed a hero and a pioneer demanding of our respect.
The other, related thought is that, if it had been easy, everyone would have done it.
History matters. Go read this.
My own, less significant, historical research
The current Juliet Jones storyline, in which a young man must win a dangerous auto race in order to gain the hand of Eve Jones, sent me to Wikipedia.
This episode of the strip ran May 19, 1959.
This song hit the charts the next year, but any connection appears to have been coincidental.
Still, I'm pretty sure Eve isn't going to be getting married.
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