A pithy comic strip about life, love, lust and puthy cats.

Est. 1985

Extra, Extra!

When Shadows Crawl

By Jimmy Johnson


Wasn’t the beach fun? Don’t you miss the beach? Lying in the sun with a cold beverage, working on a sexy tan, taking the occasional briny dip, clinging to that special someone as you float weightlessly together. Then, the dermatologist is saying, “We’d better remove that and have it looked at.” And it’s a lot hotter than it used to be. And the sand! Where was all this sand before!? And cool sheets are so much more enticing than sticky salt water. Things change. Of course, I’m talking about Arlo and Janis!

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100 responses to “When Shadows Crawl”

  1. JACKQULINE MONIES Avatar
    JACKQULINE MONIES

    Don’t we always?

  2. Trapper Jean Avatar
    Trapper Jean

    My eldest daughter is on the beach in San Diego this week. She worked at Comic Con for a friend of hers and is taking a few days of well earned vacation now. She is loving it!

    And now that we have the officers of the Ghost Sweetie Fan Club set, when and where are we having our first official meeting?

  3. Ghost Avatar
    Ghost

    Janis looks quite P&P in the third panel, doesn’t she? I’d made an appointment with P&PHS for Tuesday but had to cancel it to return to OK Land. So now I have one next Tuesday with Adorable Andrea. Who knew getting a haircut could be so complicated? Of course, as my Pappy used to say, anything involving good-looking women has the potential for getting complicated.

  4. Rusty Avatar
    Rusty

    Not too old for the beach yet…use lots of sunscreen though! Here in OZ, it’s pretty tough to find any less than spf50… ????

    Helps that I can see it from my house…

    Rusty

  5. Rusty Avatar
    Rusty

    Hmm…forgot that emojis don’t tranlate… how about just 🙂

  6. Steve from Royal Oak, MI Avatar

    When I watched the movie Cast Away, I remember them serving Crab Legs at his coming home party. I would think that if I were on a deserted island for four years (with or without Wilson) I probably would not want to hang out at the beach anymore.

  7. Rick in Shermantown, Ohio Avatar
    Rick in Shermantown, Ohio

    I recently had a “that” removed from my face.

    The report was that I caught it just in time.

    Now, we are watching another spot on my face.

  8. TruckerRon Avatar

    Mark, you nailed the problem. People are becoming so afraid to offend that they no longer dare to identify evil people as evil, or mentally ill people as mentally ill. If evil is not confronted, it wins. If mentally ill people are not treated, they end up harming themselves and others. Shying away from problems, sweeping them under a carpet, does no one any good.

  9. Ruth Anne in Winter Park Avatar
    Ruth Anne in Winter Park

    About people being “afraid to offend” – you obviously don’t know my former sister-in-law 🙂

  10. David in Austin Avatar
    David in Austin

    Ghost,

    Posted this for you a bit ago, but on yesterday’s comic…

    Ghost, if you like aliens you should read Footfall. Similar plot device as Lucifer’s Hammer with herd-beast aliens added. Same authors, so some of the same astronomy & physic applies.

    I’m rereading all the Known Space and Puppeteer novels from Nivens now. If you know that universe, from what I know of you from this blog, I’ve thought of you as someone like Gil the ARM. Hopefully you are busier chasing organleggers and not caught on mother hunts!

    If you like Niven, read the “World out of Time” series which includes Integral Trees and Smoke Ring if you haven’t. It’s a different universe than Known Space and doesn’t have FTL space travel.

    Jackie, hope the biopsy goes well and the result is easily treatable!

  11. TruckerRon Avatar

    Ruth Anne: Do you mean she’s very afraid to offend, or is she one that no one dares to offend?

  12. David in Austin Avatar
    David in Austin

    Steve,

    If I’d spent four years alone on the beach, I might not be able to get comfortable anywhere else. Like Brooks in Shawshank, after a certain amount of time one might become “institutionalized.”

  13. Ruth Anne in Winter Park Avatar
    Ruth Anne in Winter Park

    TR: She has no fear of offending because she firmly believes that anyone who disagrees with her is clearly wrong. She’s one of those “my mind is made up, don’t confuse me with the facts” types. Sadly, it has lead to often strained relationships with her sons, my nephews.

  14. Mark from TTown Avatar
    Mark from TTown

    Ruth Anne, a mind like concrete huh? Thoroughly mixed and permanently set.

    good night all.

  15. Ghost Avatar
    Ghost

    Thanks, David, but I’ve read all of those. In fact, as far as I’m aware, I’ve read everything that Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle have written, either solo or in collaboration. I guess you could say I’m a fan.

  16. Ghost Avatar
    Ghost

    Jackie Update: She has an appointment in Tulsa Tuesday morning for a needle biopsy. The board certified surgical oncologist who will be handling her case seems both well qualified and much beloved by the patients who have rated her on-line. Her undergrad degree is from Ole Miss and her MD is from University of Mississippi Medical Center; her advanced training was with the Baptist Medical System in Alabama: and her fellowship was at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. We visited with Jackie’s attorney in Tulsa today (who is one of those relatively rare MD/JDs), and she will check out the doc for us locally merely as a double-check, although Jackie is happy with what we know about the surgeon already.

  17. Ghost Avatar
    Ghost

    Re 7-28-17 cartoon: It would be a little hard for me to prove which of Jackie’s cats was responsible for the tracks on Bullet. The last headcount I made, one evening when the Endless Kitty Buffet was in full swing, was sixteen.

  18. JACKQULINE MONIES Avatar
    JACKQULINE MONIES

    A LOT of those cats came from Alabama from Marks mama before she passed away! The remainder were all throw away cats sent here by various people. Several were inherited from my deceased pet sitter.

    Honestly if they had all stayed or lived it would be far worse but they’d all be fixed. That’s first thing I do, get all donations operated on. My vet counts on me for several truck payments a year.

  19. Old Bear Avatar
    Old Bear

    Ghost you still have 13 to go to reach our high point.
    But then they got cracked eggs MIL cooked up & all the mice & rats they
    could catch. It dwindled down after chickens went. Now no outside cats.

    GM Debbe – kinda missed you.

  20. Old Bear Avatar
    Old Bear

    Visit the WW&F Face Book – no need to join just click on “Not Now”

    See what a dedicated bunch of guys can do. They are trying to raise the number
    of viewers so please visit.

    https://www.facebook.com/147279126870/photos/pb.147279126870.-2207520000.1501221090./1015500530

    Go left from here.

  21. DJJG Avatar
    DJJG

    I wonder what kind of voice June Foray would have given Janice.

  22. Steve from Royal Oak, MI Avatar

    At my last place, I noticed paw prints on my vehicles that I parked in the garage. We did have a lot of feral cats in the area and I had suspected they had found an opening and were rummaging through my garbage. They I heard the noise in the attic. Realized that it was a family of raccoons.

    I recently saw a meme on Facebook where the person announces “Tomorrow I will pick my sweet corn!” and a group of raccoons are nearby with smiles on their faces. That literally happened to me the first year that I moved to my large lot in Royal Oak. When the company came out to trap the raccoons in my attic, they used cookies and honey, with little success. I went to my freezer and pulled out a bag of corn that I had frozen and we trapped the family within days. That explained the raccoons attraction to my garage as I would freeze corn on weekends and the disposed of ears would sit in my garbage cans all week.

  23. emb Avatar
    emb

    OB: No ‘not now’ to click. They must know a skinflint when one contacts them.

    Ghost: ‘Her undergrad degree is from Ole Miss.’ She may have had Dr. Paul Lago [one of our prize graduates] for a course. Don’t know if he taught the undergrad intro course, though he had a role model at BSU who insisted on doing that for all 36 years. Paul retired recently; we still exchange emails. Cannot break him, and some others, from addressing me as ‘Dr’. Some do it at Sanford Health Bemidji, where I’d rather they didn’t.

    Peace,