I was really digging this art arc back in 2002. All four panels, I think, work particularly well, especially the fourth panel. And, yes, even in 2002, most kids would have used an online dictionary if they bothered at all, but that wouldn’t be nearly so funny as Gene desperately thumbing through the Oxford English Dictionary, would it? This is called “artistic license,” class.
27 responses to “The Struggle for Meaning”
I still had a dictionary on my desk until just a few years ago when I was asked to declutter. I even had the Yellow pages until about 12 years ago when it was pointed out that all I had to do was “google” it.
I love google, especially when watching TV when we can look up a character and find who the actor is. I often will watch movies or shows from the 80’s when the actor was so young and see how well that they have aged. Cartoon characters age well!
Glad to see Gene using the definitive OED, and not the work of that old mountebank Noah Webster!
(Although I admit that, as a Brit, I may be a little biased!)
https://scontent-dfw5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/31956349_2879860138722744_5352356787934724096_n.jpg?_nc_cat=0&_nc_eui2=v1%3AAeHvZ7phzoe2oWeK3Bg8_3IyXUe6Ny_RJY-zs_YdyXnbRkfbfww0kVTbs52MoRVBbfjMA7sATuqkijFxDdGKnfa8q5YzKbeyKm_YZ4AkSgdG4Q&oh=14702ca419dc8ad8fce82d9b4a80ae18&oe=5B5202C1
this is great work, Jimmy!
I still have my Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary that I got when I was in college in the early 80’s. It sits on my shelf with my CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics and my CRC Standard Math Tables. I usually google things but sometimes it’s easier to use the books than google it.
It’s harder to get distracted into reading unconnected things with a printed dictionary/encyclopedia. I can’t add up how much time I’ve spent chasing down something that caught my attention while doing online research.
Love the paint-flinging!!
Is Gene really a nude male model, such as recently appeared – pun intended – in “Luann”?
CeP:
Well he is a cartoon character. Some parts are left out….
All my life I have enjoyed mulling over various reference books, from encyclopedias to atlases to dictionaries to (like Ruth, above) the Handbook of Chemistry & Physics and my copy of the corresponding mathematical tables volume. (It had my name in gold, too! ‘Twas the freshman math prize at college.).
Picked up all kinds of tidbits of trivia – once in a rare while, useful.
Jimmy mentioned Wallace the Brave a while ago. If you’d like to see an amazing demonstration of the comic artist’s art, try this YouTube clip. Be sure to click for full-screen. The background music isn’t as fantastic as the art, so you may want to lower the volume.
https://youtu.be/ILS9CoxB4ts
With a book you can read the word before and after – and also a word from a previous page.
Not so on Interweb search.
Though Google is great.
Jimmy, I agree that the last panel is a masterpiece. Besides the thought and humor, the motion in the panel just leaps off!
Agreed. JJ IS a modern master of comics. Is there a Pulitzer for comics?
No, but there are the Reuben awards.
Oh, and–agreed–the way each word is slightly different in horizontal straightness–good, grief, takes longer to type that than to look at it and notice it.
I was very pleased when Pat Brady (“Rose Is Rose”) won a Reuben—he had so much deserved it for years, I thought. Now I miss his artwork. But he was inimitable.
Sorry, I typed two hyphens in a row and got single hyphens in my post just above. Looks confusing. I forgot that one has to type three hyphens in a row here to get a dash.
David from Austin,
Wow! What a beautiful Wallace the Brave picture he made! Thank you!
Curious how he holds the pen—thumb extended. But his thumb is the normal way when he has a brush. I just started reading Wallace a few weeks ago.
And it is so funny; I never thought to search YouTube for Arlo and Janis before. But now I have.
People have not been taught how to hold a pen/pencil or penmanship in 50 years.
How can teachers teach what they have not been taught.
When my father signed a document (such as a Report Card), he practiced on a
scratch paper first. Each is legible and almost exact copy.
MIL & Mom had beautiful flowing handwriting. How will people in the future
be able to read and interpret the Written word?
OB: Easily, if written words are printed legibly. Palmer [right?] method was attractive, but when I learned what teacher called “manuscript” in 7th grade, I switched. It was faster, more legible, and apparently legible enough for teaching. Students successfully took notes from it on the blackboard and later overhead projector for 36 yr. Still love OHPs, but they’re hard to find.
Peace,
And Jimmy does all his own lettering! That’s one of the very hardest parts!
Well—I actually don’t know, I confess. I suppose he has no assistants, just as Sparky didn’t. It has always seemed to me that way. No-assistant cartoonists, I hear, are rare.
Jimmy?
Whoopee!
Mark:
You just win the lottery?
Whatever, today [9 May comic] JJ seems to have access not only to our windows, but also to our memories. Though the details varied, it’s good to be reminded that often it was not I who took the initiative.
Peace,
emb, my comment on today’s strip.
Sorry – I forgot the 1 Link rule – Thanks JJ for moderating it through.