Supreme Intelligence Judgement (Comic Strips)

D. D. Degg Published: June 5, 2025 Updated: June 5, 2025 2 minutes 6 comments

I admit that I don’t follow Brooke McEldowney’s 9 Chickweed Lane religiously due to the weird (to me) arcs. But this week’s amusement with Edda and Amos is sweet and endearing (so far).

*9 Chickweed Lane by Brooke McEldowney – June 4, 2025*

We’ll see if Brooke can keep it on course, meaning the course I want.

Though my favorite individual comic of this week (so far) came early from Dave Coverly and Speed Bump.

*Speed Bump by Dave Coverly – June 1, 2025*

For you comic book fans…

*Amber Waves by Dave T. Phipps – for the week of June 2, 2025*

So two of the three comic books Gerald is reading in this week’s Amber Waves gives me no problem.

The iconic Action Comics #1 cover is universally famous and The Beyond #1 is known, but that third comic?

The multi-dimensional Crabgrass story has reached the trial phase.

Which brought thoughts of an old Silver Age Marvel comic book.

*Captain Marvel #16 by Archie Goodwin, Don Heck, and Syd Shores – September 1969*

In one Crabgrass universe The Supreme Intelligence is encased in metal.

Guest Starring

Lola was front and center in yesterday’s The Duplex, while Maria’s Day was kind of a five-seconds-later riff.

*Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz – September 6, 1974*

Wayback When

*B.C. by Johnny Hart for December 5, 1967 from Back to B.C. of May 27, 2025*

Al Capp came into a lot of derision when he turned conservative and made fun of the young liberals during the 1960s. But as seen the past two weeks of the late 1967 Back to B.C. reruns he wasn’t the only older cartoonist to demean the “hippies” following The Summer of Love. Actually it was pretty common in the funny pages of the time and for quite a while thereafter.

Have I mentioned my appreciation for the John Hart Studio leaving the original run dates in the Back to B.C. and Wizard of Id Classics reruns

So current The Family Circus comics are older Bil Keane panels tweaked by Jeff Keane, usually bringing Thel’s hair and other things up-to-date. But there was some major reworking with yesterday’s issue, though the TV was still left on the floor at least the cartoon violence portrayed on the TV was disappeared.

The Family Circus by Jeff Keane – June 4, 2025

Do you realize how hard it is to get a 56 year old Family Circus that is round not oval?

When Christians Clash

*Mallard Fillmore by Loren Fishman – June 5, 2025*

My first thought on reading today’s Mallard Fillmore was how flabbergasted right wingers will be, when they actually read the four canonical gospels, how “woke” Jesus Christ was. Unsurpisingly Patrick J. Marrin gets it as seen in today’s The Leo Chronicles.

*The Leo Chronicles (Francis) by Patrick J. Marrin – June 5, 2025*

*Rosebuds by Deon “Supr Dee” Parson – June 2, 2025*

Did I miss the announcement that Rosebuds by Deon Parson would be changing from a thrice weekly schedule to a full daily and Sunday timetable? It happened this week.

Last Fall Rosebuds began appearing in newspapers as a Sunday only comic strip, are King Features and cartoonist Parson prepping to roll out the strip for daily syndication this Fall?

Update: Yes, I did miss the announcement of Rosebuds going daily.

From Dee Parson:

ROSEBUDS NEWS:

Starting today [June 1], Rosebuds is now a DAILY FEATURE, the pinnacle of a newspaper comic!

You’re gonna get more of Rosa, Maria, and Maricela EVERY DAY!

There’s been so much demand for more Rosebuds from readers and newspaper editors that King Features and I have worked hard to make this happen!

feature image is from Pogo by Walt Kelly

Comments ⁶

Darryl Heine

Another thing: Peanuts ran today on June 6, 2025 to honor the D-Day anniversary it’s 1996 “June 6, 1944 To Remember” D-Day related strip.

Allan Holtz

Re Amber Waves, is the third cover maybe supposed to be one of those Frazetta Famous Funnies covers?

Re Family Circus, is dad praying to the easy chair?

Re Rosebuds, do we know of a specific paper running the strip in the print edition?

Enquiring minds wanna know!

D. D. Degg (admin)

Deon’s local CNHI Indiana/Illinois newspapers picked up the comic strip for their weekend editions last year. https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2024/09/08/rosebuds-gets-into-print-this-weekend/
To be clear King Features is not (yet) syndicating the daily strips as far as I know.

Since you mentioned it – it does appear to be a supersonic rocket ship.

Bob Ingersoll

A thing that 9 CHICKWEED LANE is doing now that really bothers me is the way it’s jumping around in in its own timeline. We’ll get a week of Edda and Amos as teenagers in school followed by a week of Polly and Lolly as adults courting Alistair Godalming, then a week of Dolly and Lolly as incredibly advanced three-year-olds.

Patti Hart

You’re welcome, DD!

Unca $crooge

If you aren’t reading 9CL regularly, you would have missed the irrational and, frankly irritating time jumps. One day Amos and Edda are precocious six year-olds asking Juliette about human reproduction. And then the next day they are fifty year-olds (with Edda completely unchanged) watching their twin girls get married, one to a 19 year-old that looks exactly like their dad and the other to a 70 year-old billionaire. Or did they marry? There was a ceremony which readers assumed was a wedding but last Sunday we had one of the twins making wedding plans. Huh?

For long-term readers of the strip, there are a few things wrong with the current arc. First, is the ongoing retcon Brooke has contrived with the relationship between Edda and Amos. Originally they had a purely platonic relationship that didn’t blossom to love until they were out of high school and had moved to NYC, ten years into the strip. Now they have been in love literally since they were babies. Why this retcon was done is baffling to readers of the stip. Is there something wrong with a person loving more than one person in their lifetime? Secondly, Brooke keeps repeating himself. In fact he had had a strip within the last couple months with Edda saying the exact same thing, that Amos had been in love with Mary Rozensweig and Amos saying that was just an infatuation and that he has always been in love with Edda. Why do we have to keep going over and over and over again this same point, that these two have always been in love? The GO archive has a good chunk of the strip’s first decade that clearly show that this wasn’t true. Lastly, and most troubling, is the continued sexualization of underage children. The children in this strip are always either talking about sex (code phrase = “human reproduction”) or watching adults have sex. In today’s strip, we have twelve year-old Edda with meticulously drawn legs. Sure, it isn’t as bad as yesterday’s strip when those same, carefully drawn legs were wrapped around Amos’ groin but it just seems wrong that the only thing well-drawn is a pre-teen’s shapely legs.

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