Aug 15th 2012 06:17 am The Gene Album III

Day 3, and ten more classic cartoons featuring young Gene, these from 1990. It seems most of you are enjoying this look back at the early days of Arlo & Janis, with emphasis on the family son. I’m glad of that, and I thank you for being here. If you’ve just arrived, we have been doing this since Monday, so scroll back a couple of days and catch up on the 20 old cartoons that have already been posted. For you regulars here at the Web site, Mike Peterson said some nice things about you recently in his impressive blog “Comic Strip of the Day.” 1n 1990, Gene’s appearance had stabilized, but the humor noticeably was taking on a more unique character, trending away from jokes that could be transplanted into the speech balloons of any comic strip child. If Gene wasn’t growing yet, the strip was.


Buy the new book, "Beaucoup Arlo & Janis!"Today's "Arlo & Janis!"

Posted by jimmyjohnson / Vintage A&J

29 Responses to “The Gene Album III”

  1. Margaret Rose near NO on 15 Aug 2012 at 6:21 am #

    Ah, memories. My son is 15 and heading into high school, and his 22-year-old sister just got married. These could have been quotes from my house 10 years ago.

  2. Galliglo in Ohio on 15 Aug 2012 at 7:22 am #

    I did not realize that “America’s Funniest Home Videos” has been on that long. Time flies when you are having fun! And even when you’re not…

  3. sandcastler on 15 Aug 2012 at 7:54 am #

    Love that flaming Christmas Tree, reminds me of the day I set our house on fire playing Davy Crockett.

  4. Neal in Bahstawn on 15 Aug 2012 at 8:02 am #

    Galliglo, I, too, was caught by the ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos’ being aroud for 22 years. Then again, the original may have said ‘Candid Camera’ and JJ just updated it.

  5. Brent from Waterloo, ON on 15 Aug 2012 at 8:04 am #

    @Galliglo:

    I didn’t realize it was still on.

  6. Lost in A**2 on 15 Aug 2012 at 9:44 am #

    I’d always wondered why Candid Camera seemed a sometimes thing: only nine episodes were made, over seven years. According to IMDb, any way.

  7. Bryan on 15 Aug 2012 at 9:47 am #

    I seem to remember AFHV debuting in late ’80 or even in ’90, so it was the next big thing when Jimmy wrote this strip. No, my memory isn’t really that good. I remember watching it with a woman I was dating during that time frame.

    And I’m loving the flashbacks! Great stuff!

  8. Patricia McCarthy on 15 Aug 2012 at 9:59 am #

    It was shared up above —-”… For you regulars here at the Web site, Mike Peterson said some nice things about you recently in his impressive blog “Comic Strip of the Day.” …
    Well the link given takes one , well me, anyway, to the current set of comments so I looked around for a bit and found what was said — about this site
    …………….. Pasted from the site ……..
    It’s worth hanging out there and he has done a better than average job of attracting a solid online fanbase that actively comments on his strips, his ruminations and life itsownself.

    Which is to say, there are a handful of syndicated cartoonists who get a lot of comments on their blogs, but not many where those comments amount to a web-strip-like active conversation among a substantial number of people. It is a tribute to the warmth he has built through the strip.
    …………. So now my comments ……….
    It has been not only JJ but you guys in here – so I wanted to be sure you all knew thus I copied the comment. To you all – thank you for the friendship, info on how to bake with blueberries, and all the smiles
    – redagainpatti from northern MS

  9. Carole in Wesley Chapel on 15 Aug 2012 at 10:04 am #

    I am really enjoying these Gene flashbacks. Hard to believe JJ’s window peeking goes all the way back to when my kids were kids. Starting to see some of these same thoughts and concepts in the grandchildren. And I love it that my son is so amazed that his kids are saying the same things he said and he is saying the same things to them that we said to him. I vote for the next book being all Gene all the time.

    Very nice comments from Mike Peterson on Comic Strip of the Day. If I had not been here all these years I would be now, and if I did not have my (autographed) copy of The Book I would be hunting it down frantically by now.

  10. Symply Fargone on 15 Aug 2012 at 10:37 am #

    JJ, I still need to know when you are coming to Massachusetts, I really need to be around when you do(for my own sake :) Please let it be a day when I am not Symply Fargone.

    Relative to others observance that we are a rather stellar crew for JJ’s sloop, well that was an easy thing to see, after all we are all out there(or here) though sometimes the answers take a little longer to come out, eh Mindy?

    Let everyone have a great day, even if it is rainy here in Maine in Bryant Pond at Lake Christopher….

  11. Mindy on 15 Aug 2012 at 11:06 am #

    Carol in Wesley Chapel, Jimmy’s peeking goes all the way back to when I was a kid, apparently. But, I swear, I was wrongly blamed for the Christmas tree joke in the last panel! Honest! It was some other kid who looked just like me almost!

    Galliglo, I think “America’s Funniest Videos” went on the air seven days after the first home movie video cam was sold. Is it still on? I thought it had been replaced by Youtube or something…

    Jimmy, the write-up on the blog was great, a real tribute to you as an artist. Next week we take over Washington, a month after that, the world…

  12. David in Austin on 15 Aug 2012 at 12:21 pm #

    So- without reference to age, Mindy is nominated as the mischievous, frequently-in-trouble, but never a true trouble-maker, kid-sister for the group. Sort of our feminine Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver. J.J. is undoubtedly our Ward Cleaver, somehow responsible for our supervision and all those fatherly pearls of wisdom that come through A & J.

    I’ll leave nominations for Eddie Haskell open….

  13. sideburns on 15 Aug 2012 at 1:18 pm #

    Lost, IMDB is wrong. Dead wrong: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candid_Camera shows that it’s been aired on and off since the late ’40s, with the longest run being 1960-1967. Maybe IMDB is talking about theatrical shorts, not the classic TV show.

  14. Jerry in Fl on 15 Aug 2012 at 4:11 pm #

    JJ, thanks for the link. I read all of it, not just the part about us, and found it interesting. Judging from the thoughtful nature of today’s comments I probably wasn’t the only one.

  15. Mindy on 15 Aug 2012 at 5:34 pm #

    David in Austin, I very rarely make trouble. Ask John, who knows how to tell the truth when coerced. Hey! I just re-read the May 22, 2012 A&J, the one with the line, “…The Beard discreetly withdraws.” I knew what a “beard” was/is when we had that discussion. But the humor of the line just hit me. That was one of those head-scratchers where I wondered if perhaps Janis had put some of the “other” Devil Weed in the brownies. Not that I’m slow. I’m just sayin’…Oh, forget it, and don’t ask John, either.

  16. Ghost Rider 6 on 15 Aug 2012 at 5:49 pm #

    Mindy: Être bon. Nous avons des invités.

    David: We have an Eddie Haskell here?

  17. Neal in Bahstawn on 15 Aug 2012 at 6:38 pm #

    GR, Eddie Haskell is/was the only reason for watching LITB. What fastastic act of insincerity would he perpetrate on Ward and June Cleaver, and why did they never see through his oozing charm? The floor is open for nominees.

  18. Mike Peterson on 15 Aug 2012 at 6:54 pm #

    The Cleavers saw right through Eddie. You need to watch the reruns again! Right from the beginning, they knew he was a major phony, but he was also their son’s friend. So they rolled their eyes, they pitied him his own homelife, and they put up with the kid.

    Boy, can I relate to that!

  19. Mike from Hartland on 15 Aug 2012 at 7:53 pm #

    I know these are Gene’s flashback, but it’s like a boy and his father. Janis is hardly in them. They are really like buddies Kinda like a modern day Opie and Andy.

  20. Ghost Rider 6 on 15 Aug 2012 at 8:35 pm #

    Wait a minute. Didn’t Haskell get elected to Congress?

  21. sandcastler on 15 Aug 2012 at 9:35 pm #

    GR6, Eddie served 18 years on the LAPD before being retired after getting hit three times in a shoot out.

  22. TruckerRon on 15 Aug 2012 at 9:47 pm #

    So, which former TV stars ended up in Congress? I can only think of one without cheating:

    Fred Grandy, who played Gopher on The Love Boat.

    Then there was Nancy Kulp (she played Jane Hathaway in The Beverly Hillbillies) who ran for Congress but lost.

  23. Ghost Rider 6 on 15 Aug 2012 at 10:11 pm #

    Yeah, I knew about the actor who played Eddie.

    Does Sonny Bono count?

  24. TruckerRon on 16 Aug 2012 at 1:14 am #

    GR6, I’d say Bono does since he played characters other than himself on numerous TV shows.

  25. Bob in Central FL on 16 Aug 2012 at 3:27 am #

    Sonny Bono was elected to congress.

  26. Bob, near Mark on 16 Aug 2012 at 5:02 am #

    Senator Fred Thompson was in several movies and on “Law & Order”, but he was a former lawyer and politician who became an actor, not an actor who became a politician. He got into acting by playing himself in the 1985 Sissy Spacek movie “Marie”.

  27. Jerry in Fl on 16 Aug 2012 at 7:29 am #

    Gandy-declined to run for reelection
    Bono-dead
    Thompson-currently doing tv commercials
    Apparently it’s easier to convince people that you are a leader than to be one. That list could be a lot longer.

  28. Mark in Boston on 16 Aug 2012 at 7:22 pm #

    I think there was a TV actor who was elected President of the United States, if that counts.

  29. Lost in A**2 on 17 Aug 2012 at 7:49 pm #

    /lt;snarky comment about movie vs TV acting deleted./gt;