Pun!

Sometimes, it's the sneeze of a clown that causes the problem, not the tears...

Cool Hat

In today's reprint, Hobbes the tiger runs afoul of the mysterious and indefinable characteristics that comprise "cool." To his disappointment, "cool" does not include sombreros.

Sometimes...

The great philosophers might not have made a good cooking show, but the end result does offer some proof for a song first released by Dave Edmunds and made more popular by Huey Lewis, "Bad is Bad." So there's that.

So It Begins...

Even while readers of Berke Breathed's online edition of his Bloom County comic strip followed the quest to return Hobbes the tiger to his proper home, the Calvin and Hobbes reprint showed us the first meeting between Calvin and his nemesis, the babysitter Rosalyn. Round one, unfortunately, went to Rosalyn...but they would meet again.

Home Again

Berke Breathed and Bill Watterson made the comics pages paradise for readers during a brief decade. The creators of Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes had interesting characters, funny stories and good laughs more days than not. Both put and end to their strips well before fans were ready to let them go. With a couple of exceptions, Watterson has stayed retired, but in 2015 Breathed began drawing Bloom County again, with the strip appearing on his Facebook page.

In recent weeks, the County crew has been faced with the task of returning a certain stuffed tiger to his original owner, using all the tools at their disposal to locate the adult Calvin and mail him the lost Hobbes. In a series that surely had Watterson's blessing, Opus the penguin and Oliver Wendell Jones the computer genius teamed up on the project. Breathed has carried off the story with the poignancy and humor that characterized Bloom County in its best moments. For the poignancy, there's the sledgehammer simplicity of the strip that showed how a picture of the adult Calvin had been found:

Then, with an almost unmatched ability to synthesize disparate current events into a funny and unashamedly adolescent punchline, we see the picture the image search found:

And in today's post, the story concludes with the reunion imminent, leaving to the imagination what will happen as the pair "go exploring" as they did in the last C&H panel Watterson drew:

Speculation in the comments is that these panels have been meant to set up Watterson's return to his own strip, or some kind of collaboration between the two. I'd doubt it -- Watterson's well-known disgust with the shrinking comics page in his day would only be magnified when he confronted the shriveled-up remains of the daily newspaper that exist now. And given his immovable stand against merchandising, I can't imagine he'd want to try to produce something in the modern commercial or online environment.

That's OK. These strips have been more fun for a middle-aged guy than a comic strip ought to be and called to mind good days. That'll do nicely.

Adaptation

Many animals in the wild have adapted to thrive in environments where humans also live. Behavior, diet and, as this panel of Bizarro shows, some have even modified their appearance to blend in with H. sapiens in their natural setting.

Loneliness...

Alas, as Hawthorne the hermit crab learns in Sunday's Sherman's Lagoon strip, having a shark for a friend means running the risk of not having many other friends at all...

Expectations

Alas, as we learn in today's Sherman's Lagoon strip, sometimes even polar bears don't live up to parental expectations.

He Chose...Poorly

In the Sunday Sherman's Lagoon a snooty waiter at an upscale restaurant learns that the upside of having shark clientele is that they never complain to the manager, no matter how rude he may become.

The downside...

Not Enough Time?

The website Comic Book Resource, now known as CBR, generates a lot of content as it explores science fiction and superhero media in book, television and movie form -- it's basically a one-stop newsfeed for geek culture items. Sometimes the items are straight news releases, about a casting change, series renewal or movie development. Sometimes they're analyses of this or that character or series in light of a particular idea or cultural phenomenon. The wide range of geek culture and the hyper-speed need for new content mean that there's often a lot of scrolling to be done to avoid the 13th take on yet another anime series that I've never heard of before.

Among the standard entries are historical digs into the media to answer questions that younger readers may have about the long, long story of comic books. Superman, for one, has got more than 80 years of history that a lot of today's readers may not know. 

An entry a couple of days ago, for example, took a look at the versions Big Blue Boy Scout as he appears in other universes in the long string of DC Comics continuity to see when the first black Superman appeared. Some other universes offer more diverse groups of the heroes first developed when the concerns of minority audiences were not often considered. Kal-El is still the same baby rocketed from Krypton just before it exploded, but his appearance in these worlds matches what we would call African-American instead of Caucasian. Writer Brian Cronin describes two currently operating black Supermen from other universes and then digs back about 20 years to a one-shot title Legends of the DC Universe: Crisis on Infinite Earths. It gives us the story of one of the many universes imperiled by the Anti-Monitor during that story, originally published in the 1980s, called Earth-D. In this story, both Superman and his cousin, Supergirl, are black although their histories are the same and they are members of the Justice Alliance with counterparts to the mainstream heroes who reflect a wide range of ethnicities. This, Cronin says, is the first time we see "Black Superman."

Cronin's been writing about pop culture for a long time, so we'll just have to ascribe this lapse to a neuron misfire rather than the usual millennial cluelessness; the first Black Superman was, as Johnny Wakelin told us in 1975, Muhammed Ali.

Motivator!

In today's Sherman's Lagoon, Sherman the shark discovers that a swordfish makes a somewhat painful -- albeit ultimately successful -- motivator.

I have in mind some for whom I would if possible procure one. For both reasons: the success and the painful method.

The Lurking Menace Grows

Unfortunately the new year has not saved the unnamed midwestern town, as the snow goon discovers its horrifying power of modification...

So It Begins

On this day 20 years ago, an unknown Midwestern town began its days of terror as the first Snow Goon lurched to life. 

Mystery!

The original John Calvin developed the doctrine of predestination as a way of trying to accomodate the absolute sovereignty of God in a world which also included the total depravity of fallen humanity. The more recent holder of that name dispenses with such matters in favor of even deeper theological questions in a reprint from earlier this week:

Could tigers be happy in a heaven where they couldn't eat people? And would people be happy in a heaven where there were no tigers?

Prophetic

Today's Calvin and Hobbes reprint offers two propositions. One of them is clearly true while only time will tell for the other one. The potential one is that Calvin will be legendary.

The clearly true proposition is that "Any idiot can be famous."

Preview

In today's Sherman's Lagoon, Hawthorne the crab gives a clear picture of the way that government most often operates. It's one we'll probably have even more chance to learn about during the new administration, too.

Prophecy!

Straight from 1990, Calvin and Hobbes offer an excellent picture of the ballots that confronted us in 2016 and which we will see in a couple of weeks.

Prediction

Way back in 1990, Calvin describes pretty much the exact reason that most political coverage and discourse today is not only awful, it makes no sense.

In Their Footsteps?

Existential Comics makes the point that a lot of people who claim to follow this or that school of philosophy are more or less name-droppers without much genuine understanding of the thinking they claim to emulate. In this cartoon, Friedrich Nietzsche is forced to deal with two people explaining his thought in just such a manner.

Craft and Guile

Sherman and Filmore use the advantages that years of experience have given them to win in their nerf battle over the youngsters.