CSotD: When ghosts and goblins come to your door
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We’ll start the Halloween rundown with Sunday’s Pajama Diaries, which raises the question, “What’s with all the ‘Sexy-whatever’ costumes?”
I suppose one interpretation could be that Moms don’t get a lot of opportunities to be sexy, though, as suggested here, they’re too busy in the first place.
For my part, I’m less fascinated by the “if you’ve got it, flaunt it” factor than by the bizarre “sexy” costume options, which aren’t a lot less far-fetched than what Terri Libenson suggests here.
Goldurn it, when we were middleaged insecure people, our wimminfolk just dressed as harem girls and showgirls and street walkers and sechlike. And we liked it!
Well, their fathers didn’t like it. This Andertoons is not, strictly speaking, a Halloween comic, because the Invisible Man’s daughter dresses like that all the time. It’s a disgrace.
Meanwhile, today’s Pajama Diaries continues the theme of real-life comparisons and is funny in and of itself, but that final example points out why I love this strip so much: I’ve had GFs grumble and shut cupboards, but never gave it all that much thought.
Which I guess is why they kept being open.
But it’s one of those odd little irritants like the over-or-under toilet paper thing, except that, unlike that, it makes at least some sense and, more to the point, hasn’t been done to death.
She’s picked up on something universal but as of yet unexploited.
Fresh comedy is a delightful thing.
(Oh, and, while I’m on the topic, enough with the “stepping on Lego” gags. Yes, they hurt. We got it the first time. By now, I’d rather step on the damn Lego than see another gag about it.)
One of the established factors in Big Nate is that he is a conman, or thinks he is, and the ongoing tension in reading the strip is trying to anticipate whether it’s going to work wonderfully or fail utterly.
Went pretty well this time.
And while most cartoonists put their kids in the usual clumsy sheets and so forth, Lincoln Peirce used his artistic skills to outfit the gang in some pretty fancy duds. All it takes is a pen, after all.
In real life, you’ve got to have an NFL superstar’s budget to pull off such finery, as DeAndre Hopkins showed at the Houston Texans’ Halloween party. Helps to have an NFL superstar’s body, too. Hop is one of the league’s premiere fashion plates and apparently not averse to playing the “sexy genii.”
Now I’ve got to come up with something else to wear.
And Maria Scrivan does a fun mashup, combining a fall cliche with a gone-but-not-forgotten media sensation. We often see cartoonists offering pop culture references for the Old Folks, but here’s one for the not old yet folks.
Though if you were 15 when they were a thing, that would make you 40 today.
Girls playing varsity soccer today don’t know who David Beckham was, much less who he married.
So that’s kinda scary.
And Harry Bliss plays to an even younger audience, or maybe he doesn’t, given that his little ghost doesn’t know he’s holding the key to life in his hands. But their folks do.
I snuck down to Massachusetts so I could try both the edibles and the smokeables and they cured me of being straight but they didn’t do a damn thing for my arthritic hip. Pardon me if I’m a little reluctant to invest in something that will do all that nothing plus not getting me high.
Though I realize it’s a miracle, and that it’s both cholesterol- and gluten-free.
Meanwhile, over in politics …
David Rowe makes a joke about Dear Leader’s penchant for extortion, and, while he’s not the only cartoonist to do this, he shows the full bowl right there and that Trump isn’t offering any candy until he secures the promise.
Meanwhile, we’ve got a three-part
Juxtaposition of the Day
I would expect a progressive like Matt Davies to criticize our current “Spend But Don’t Tax” fiscal policy, but I was surprised to see both Benson and Ramirez chime in.
A critical difference between those two conservative commentaries is the trunk protruding from under the cloak in Ramirez’s take.
With great power comes great responsibility, and this didn’t “just happen.”
Ward Sutton shows us the Halloween monsters he’s discovered on his front porch.
Sutton is one of the few political cartoonists who can take a concept like this and extend it for a half-dozen examples without becoming progressively more lame and off-target. It’s not that any one of these could stand alone — they do work together — but each of them is solid.
You don’t see that very often.
And here’s a frightening cartoon, in which Mike Lester — with a transphobic or homophobic or some kind of phobic swipe at the way liberals raise their boys — takes a broader swipe at the idea that young kids study science and are interested in the environment.
It’s a cartoon, and, certainly, if children young enough to go trick-or-treating were spouting sophisticated knowledge of climate science, it might seem odd.
But to assume the kids who actually are speaking up can’t possibly understand the issues shows a lack of knowledge of these kids.
Granted, the 8-to-14s I work with are a brighter-and-average crew, but, then again, so are the ones who are leading the Children’s Crusade against climate change.
Do their parents provide information? Sure. That’s part of parenting.
At least, it’s part of good, positive, competent parenting.
Some parents take their kids to museums and read them books and talk to them about current events and encourage them to think.
Others hand them the TV remote and a box of cookies and hope to be left alone.
And Pearls closes this Halloween with something truly frightening, which is not unconnected to that choice of how we raise the coming generation, or, more accurately, how we raised the current one.
But that doesn’t completely close the day.
Halloween isn’t Halloween without this:
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