Late Again

Cidu Bill on Dec 3rd 2008

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Filed in Bill Bickel, CIDU, John Deering, Strange Brew, comic strips, comics, humor | 19 responses so far

19 Responses to “Late Again”

  1. Tkx Dec 3rd 2008 at 01:48 am 1

    Wild guess, but could it be Jonah & the whale?

  2. Bobdog Dec 3rd 2008 at 02:12 am 2

    I take that to be a time clock posted to the tree — or at least I am reminded of the warner bros. cartoon with Sam and Ralph (the wolf and sheep dog) who punched in and out at the beginning and end of the cartoon as a bookend to the wolf’s ceaselessly foiled attempts to get a hold of some of the sheep in the sheepdog’s flock. This unfortunately adds no useful insight into this cartoon at all to help explain it or make it funny.

  3. Frank Dec 3rd 2008 at 03:51 am 3

    Haven’t got a clue.

  4. Kit Dec 3rd 2008 at 04:05 am 4

    Gonna guess that’s Moby on the left . . . was Ahab ever stranded on an island?

  5. Alexandra Erin Dec 3rd 2008 at 06:14 am 5

    @Kit: No, and Ahab only had one leg. I don’t remember Jonah being stranded on an island, either. This one is just weird.

  6. Alexandra Erin Dec 3rd 2008 at 06:14 am 6

    Is that a scar by the whale’s eye? Anybody know a whale famous for that kind of mark?

  7. Lola Dec 3rd 2008 at 07:46 am 7

    I see that nobody else has a clue either. I considered somebody having “a whale of a time” or that the guy just has too much “time on his hands” (after all, he has both a wristwatch and a time clock), or that whales migrate on a schedule, but nothing makes any sense, even if isn’t funny. Also, I tried to incorporate what looks like a tuft of grass on the guy’s knee. Nothing.

  8. This guy I know Dec 3rd 2008 at 07:59 am 8

    It seems the man has been stranded on the island for long enough that he has started to lose his mind. In an attempt to maintain some sense of normalcy, he has managed to construct a facsimile of a punch-clock.

    Of course, if you have a punch-clock, you need employees so they can use it. As there are no other humans around, the role of employee must be filled by members of the animal kingdom.

    Difficult as it is to define a job-description for a whale, the man just assumes that whatever it is doing must be its job (including beaching itself). If he is to maintain his authority as manager, he needs to attempt to assert his power by criticizing any perceived fault, real or imaginary.

    OK, but what makes it funny? The humor is the simple displacement of an ordinary situation to an extraordinary setting.

    The reader may also find a bit of further humor through anthropomorphizing the whale and interpreting his expression as one of “who is this crazy person and why does he think he’s my boss?”

  9. Matthew Dec 3rd 2008 at 10:32 am 9

    It’s not funny, but it is surreal. Accept it as that.

  10. Alexandra Erin Dec 3rd 2008 at 11:44 am 10

    Matthew, I enjoy and appreciate a great deal of surreality for its own sake, but that’s not the “vibe” I get off this. I look at it and I feel like it’s supposed to be funny. Maybe if I were more familiar with the artist’s work I wouldn’t be thinking this, but I’m left feeling like there’s a “great” joke behind it that maybe doesn’t work so well outside the artist’s head.

  11. devildan Dec 3rd 2008 at 12:12 pm 11

    Don’t forget that Jonah traveled in the whale: he was dumped in the middle of the sea but was burped up onto land. This Jonah (but why is he dressed as a castaway, on the other hand?) probably commutes by whale everyday.

    But, then why does the clock look so odd, with the lever? Yup, I’m lost at sea here.

  12. Elyrest Dec 3rd 2008 at 12:28 pm 12

    When I saw this one yesterday I thought it was just another take on a guy stuck on an island comic. These have been around so long that most cartoonists have done some variation of it. My take was that the guy had been there so long that it was part of his routine that the whale swam past. In the comic world this morphs into there being a time clock for them to punch in and out. Didn’t get a laugh, but I understood where it was coming from.

  13. Dave Van Domelen Dec 3rd 2008 at 01:24 pm 13

    Devildan, it’s a timeclock. The kind people still use some places to punch in at work, although computer sign-in has largely replaced ‘em.

  14. Rusty Dec 3rd 2008 at 01:27 pm 14

    My best guess is it is a play on the idea that the guy is “beached” on an island, and is trading places with a “beached whale”

  15. Frank Dec 3rd 2008 at 01:29 pm 15

    There have been a few mass wale beachings in the news but …

  16. Yaniv Dec 4th 2008 at 12:19 am 16

    ….Maybe the whale’s pregnant?

    I don’t know.

    I have a dirty mind.:(

  17. assdad Dec 4th 2008 at 12:54 am 17

    He was a cruel demanding boss, who refused to change his lifestyle and decided to abuse the wildlife as he did his employees.

  18. J-L Dec 4th 2008 at 01:17 pm 18

    I’m thinking that this joke derives its humor from the question “What’s going on on the other side of the world?”

    In other words, when you think of a man stranded on a desert island, you normally think of a man who is sitting at the base of a tree and looking out for ships and avoiding sharks.

    But what if that wasn’t the case? What if a man managed to set up a time-clock and hire a whale as an employee? We’d experience the same kind of shock we have when we see a foreign culture first-hand and discover it is not quite as backwards or primitive as we first thought.

    So the comic could be about the culture shock of finding out what stranded men on islands REALLY do all day.

  19. J-L Dec 4th 2008 at 01:19 pm 19

    It’s also possible that the comic expects you to think that a stranded man on a desert island would do crazy things (like befriend a volleyball), but to hire his own whale?

    Now that’s crazy, but on a totally different level of crazy.

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