CSotD: Comics Relief
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A door panel blew out on a Boeing jet the other day. Perhaps you heard.
Matt Pritchett came up with a funny cartoon about it. Many other people also drew cartoons about it.
The most interesting part of the whole thing, as far as I was concerned, was how much of a non-event it turned into. Someone had an interview with a scared passenger who said she was in a middle seat and the people on each side of her helped calm her down, and I wonder if that turned out to be the ratio of terrified versus non-terrified people.
Apparently, the flight attendants did a good job of keeping everybody focused and sensible, and I’d say that, unless another door panel blows out tomorrow, that’s probably the thing passengers need to worry about least. The airlines will be watching for it.
Also, as a cancer survivor, I’m pleased that so many procedures are considered necessary-but-routine, though, yeah, Lloyd Austin should have told someone so that, when it turned into a major health crisis, his people knew more or less what was going on.
He screwed up and might have to resign, but I’m not sure it was worth all the ink that’s been spilled over it.
There have been some things worth commenting on, but this Edison Lee (KFS) sums up a lot of it. I’m hoping that political cartoonists come up with some worthy commentary on the bizarre happenings in the House Screwball Committee hearings yesterday and that we get a ruling soon on His Majesty’s quest for invulnerability, but, while we wait, here’s some nonsensical gibberish, so grab a donut and sit back.
I was glad to see Gary McCoy address this issue in the Flying McCoys (AMS). I think it’s good that people are getting under their cars like in the olden days, though it’s harder to actually get under cars today given how close to the ground they make them.
But in past years, a lot of towns enacted sound ordinances, and glasspack mufflers kind of disappeared.
They do somewhat enhance performance of a car, but unless you’re racing, it seems mostly a “Look at me!” addition, in case your bass speakers aren’t loud enough.
If I were King of the World, we’d bring back noise ordinances, but we’d also require people to take a reaction-time test for license renewal, which would handle a more dangerous issue at the other end of the demographic scale.
In the meantime, if you are going to soup up a Datsun, at least try to make it look manly. Paint some flames on your wheel wells, or maybe a woodpecker with a cigar. Make an effort!
And if I’m surprised to be in agreement with Gary McCoy, I’m equally shocked to differ from Jeremy Banx, because I don’t find Gen Zs annoying at all.
It may be a generational thing; back in the day, we found a surprising amount of solidarity between the freaks and their Depression-era grandparents, mostly based on the idea that nobody cares about you except you.
Not that X’s and Millennials don’t feel the weight of the world, but the Z’s appear to be strategizing instead of complaining, by which I mean a lot of them are skipping college and they’re also registering to vote.
At least the ones I know are. When they aren’t souping up Datsuns.
Speaking of the Generation Gap, I’m not sure if this Lola (AMS) is accurate or not, because, when I took algebra, calculators were expensive and not very sophisticated or useful, except for adding and subtracting. But by the time my kids were in high school, scientific calculators were on the list of things we were supposed to buy them at the start of the year.
Then again, I never heard of pre-algebra. Sounds like arithmetic to me. A little help from the audience?
Like a lot of grown-ups, Betty (AMS) goes back and forth between really enjoying technology and being completely puzzled and frustrated by it. She’s in Old Folks mode with this one, and I agree with her.
When the Internet first burst upon the scene, it seemed to promise connections around the world, but what happened was not a widening of experience but a narrowing. And Junior is right to tie in TV with that factor.
The standard speech I gave to Rotary, Lions and other social groups in the 90s pointed out the variety of acts on the Ed Sullivan Show besides the Beatles, the point being that the whole family watched because there was one television set and three or four channels.
With the expansion of both Internet and TV, and the proliferation of cheap ways to access them, people have the opportunity to explore new worlds, but they don’t. The kids are up in their rooms listening to their own music, chatting with their own friends, cocooning in their own world.
The result is that they know more about another 15-year-old a thousand miles away than they do about the 30-year-old who lives across the street.
Even sitting in a classroom adds some real-life experience.
Now here’s that missing Radio Patrol strip that Vintage Comics Kingdom couldn’t come up with today.
I follow Radio Patrol mostly for its camp value, not for its art or, certainly, for its writing. I do not for a moment believe that police officers in 1942 brought kids along on missions and had them firing rifles at the bad guys, but Pinky and his friends are regular collaborators in Sergeant Pat’s crimefighting adventures.
It’s hardly unique: Leo Gorcy and the Dead End Kids were fighting crime in the movies at roughly the same time, Tom Sawyer played detective long before any of them, and I grew up in the 50s with Rusty and Rin Tin Tin joining Lt. Rip Masters in all sorts of Western adventures.
However, Sgt Pat is a lot more willing to let the kids participate. Most of those other stories included the adults telling the kids to stay out of it and the kids sneaking out to get in the middle of things.
Today, it seems, young people seem more consistently depicted in a state of eternal adolescence.
If you don’t see it, look at how AI interprets and adapts the culture it’s been shown.
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