Doin’ That Crazy Hand Jive
Cidu Bill on May 24th 2010
So apparently Edna’s hands had sex
almost precisely the same way granddaughter Edda’s hands would have sex 55 years later:
Brooke McEldowney further attempts to retire the Arlo Award the following day with this:
Though what disconcerts me about the whole storyline is this: I have several relatives who are pushing 90, and they basically look like they did when they were 30-something except, you know, a whole lot older. But still the same species. So how exactly did the hottie Edna turn into the scary gnome “Gran”?
Filed in 9 Chickweed Lane, Arlo Award, Arlo Page, Bill Bickel, Brooke McEldowney, comic strips, comics, humor, sex | 25 responses so far
Elyrest May 25th 2010 at 12:09 am 1
Back on December 7th I said that this strip was ” part of a (most likely many months long) flashback showing what Gran did (or who Gran did) during the war.” It’s almost seven months later and it’s still going on. I don’t really care much anymore who or how Edna gets laid. And your right about people they don’t change that much. My grandmother was a hottie back in the 1930’s and 40 years later she still was cute. Old, but cute.
CIDU Bill May 25th 2010 at 12:13 am 2
Elyrest, I kind of like Chickweed Flashback, and I guess after all this time I’ve come to think of Edna’s as the strip’s primary storyline. And the most recent strips might be confirming the suspicion I had some months ago that Edna’s telling Juliette the story to let her know that although she married Bill, Juliette’s biological father was actually the German guy.
Arthur May 25th 2010 at 12:18 am 3
What disturbs me more is that this is a tale being told by a woman
to her own daughter. These people are quite open about sex, but this
seems extreme even for them. (Are we about to find out something new
regarding Juliette’s biological father?)
Rebecca May 25th 2010 at 12:23 am 4
The guy looks really bored in the “Again” strip.
Elyrest May 25th 2010 at 12:23 am 5
I don’t mind the storyline. It is actually more interesting than many other story arcs, but at times it feels like a long extended foreplay and that can drive a person crazy - and not in a good way. I never thought that the German guy would be the father, but maybe that explains why Gran ended up so cranky. What is confusing to me is that Juliette is ending up younger than I thought she was.
DanV May 25th 2010 at 01:59 am 6
I have really enjoyed this storyline - and besides, anything that keeps Thorax out for so long is a major winner in my book.
Cidu Bill May 25th 2010 at 02:27 am 7
Amen to that, Dan!
Kamino Neko May 25th 2010 at 02:48 am 8
Elyrest - Younger? This story suggests she was conceived very shortly after the war - ‘47, I believe the timing elsewhere in the arc makes it, now, and we can assume Juliette’s going to be conceived soon (at least within the strip’s timeline). Meaning she’s in her late 50s, or early 60s.
Given that prior to now the main touchstone for Juliette’s age was Edda’s - and she’s now in her early 20s - that makes Juliette significantly older than I’d have guessed, before this arc. I’d have put her in her late 40s, maybe early 50s, at the outside.
SusanS May 25th 2010 at 04:00 am 9
Kamino — That’s IF she gets conceived now. It looked like Edna accepted a ring from Kiesel but we know she married Bill. What happens to thwart this marriage? Another thought is that like most comics, 9CL progresses but not necessarily in real time. So perhaps Juliette was born in 1946 but in the strip is magically forever 45 (you know, kinda like me….).
Tom T. May 25th 2010 at 06:42 am 10
“So how exactly did the hottie Edna turn into the scary gnome “Gran”?”
Maybe she does marry the Nazi.
Also, in the second set of hand pictures, is the figure at the top right of the left panel meant to show Amos performing an oral act on Edda? I don’t need that kind of detail in my hand-jive.
Bill A May 25th 2010 at 06:57 am 11
@CIDU Bill (2) - I just had the biggest “oh my gosh” this week after reading your comment, because it makes perfect sense. Like Lois Lane looking at Clark Kent for years and then being told he’s Superman, I’m wondering how I could have missed this (now) obvious possibility.
Blinky The Wonder Wombat May 25th 2010 at 08:06 am 12
The storyline did a jump of ten years, so Edna and Kissel are hooking up sometime in the mid 1950’s, so Juliette is probably in her mid ’50s, which seems about right.
I think we were previously told that Edna had few good things to say about her husband but admitte that Juliette’s father was “a good kisser.” Looks like O’Malley will be her husband (maybe she marries him out of a sense of duty?) while Kissel is the father.
George P May 25th 2010 at 08:39 am 13
He’s Austrian, not German. He made a big point of that in the prison camp.
As for Lois not figuring out Clark is Superman, there’s this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIzHgv5Pj48
Heather D May 25th 2010 at 09:15 am 14
Blinky’s got it. Bill and his entourage were talking about how it’s “been 10 years, is she still waiting for him” yada yada yada. Or was it Edna and Kiesel saying it’s been 10 years? Anyway. Whoever said it, it’s been 10 years.
Which makes it 1955 or later, making Juliette just slightly younger than my mom. And I’m 36, more than a decade older than Edda. So Edda was a late baby for Juliette?
Kamino Neko May 25th 2010 at 09:32 am 15
Huhn…it WAS ten years. I was SURE they’d said two when I read it originally. (Probably because it makes a hell of a lot more sense that NONE of them would have moved on significantly after 2 years than after a decade.)
Kamino Neko May 25th 2010 at 09:38 am 16
And, yeah, Edda’s definitely a late kid, either way - which allowed the gag in the last 9CL strip posted.
Cidu Bill May 25th 2010 at 10:18 am 17
True, George. And considering my father was Austrian — but came to this country with a German passport thanks to Anschluss — I certainly should have remembered that.
amo May 25th 2010 at 11:01 am 18
@ George P thanks for the link
Elyrest May 25th 2010 at 12:02 pm 19
Kamino Neko (8) Someone has already brought it to your attention that it was a ten year jump in time o that puts it at 1955 and Juliette isn’t born yet. My opinion on Juliette’s age was sort of set when the series started in the early 1990’s and Edda was a teenager. I though Juliette was much older than me then. Obviously what we are dealing with here is comic strip time that has no correlation with reality (not that this strip has any touch with reality).
Dyfsunctional May 25th 2010 at 12:33 pm 20
I’m pretty sure I remember reading somewhere that time progresses in 9CL at about half the tempo it does in our own universe. (That means they celebrate Christmas in July, but whatever.) The math works out for Edda (bratty teen in the 90s, self-aware urban adult in the present), but I’m not sure if the formula works elsewhere.
Kamino Neko May 25th 2010 at 12:52 pm 21
OK, I think I’m getting that you instinctively expect the characters to have aged 17 years, along with the real world (although they haven’t, as Edda’s graduating more than a decade after the strip started tells us).
Am I reading you correctly, in that?
Even if so, I’m not sure how this arc establishes her as younger than would be expected - 1955-1956 makes her about the same age as my mother. If they aged in real time, Edda would be about the same age as me. Which puts their relative ages at about average for first children, in my experience.
Kamino Neko May 25th 2010 at 01:05 pm 22
I don’t think that lines up even for Edda, Dysfunctional - that would mean she’d spent at least 5 years in high school (I stopped getting the paper I read 9CL in in 2003, and she was still in high school, then), before graduating early.
Elyrest May 25th 2010 at 01:06 pm 23
Kamino Neko - My assumptions on age were made because none of my friends or relatives of around my age had any children as old as Edda was portrayed when the comic started (average ages for first child not pertinant). Juliette seemed older than me. Edna was much older than my mother. Now Juliette is younger than me. That just surprises me because in my head she was always older.
fromm May 26th 2010 at 08:35 pm 24
They’re in Argentina, just like the old joke.
David L. Jun 23rd 2010 at 09:24 pm 25
Well, I’m late to the party, but perhaps someone will see this note on Edda’s age. There is a panel dated April 7, 2008 in which Edda says that it’s her 20th birthday. So, if we assume that Juliette was born in 1955, she would have been 33 at the time of Edda’s birth. That’s a bit late for a mother of the late boomer generation, but not improbably so. Mr. McEldowney recently mentioned on his blog, Chickweed Cafe, that having set the beginning of the current story arc in 1944-1945, he felt obliged to drop the characters into 1:1 time rather than continue the previous practice of having about one year of strip time pass for every two years of real time. That would make Juliette a well cared-for woman of 54-55.
For the rest of it, I can only echo Elyrest’s comment that the current story arc has become like extended foreplay that makes one crazy; not in a good way. The Great Big Secret has been reasonably obvious for months: almost certainly, Kiesl is Juliette’s biological father; Bill’s injuries have probably left him incapable of fathering a child. In truth, I have become so irritated with the pacing of the current story arc that I have stopped reading the strip as of 6/17, except for the Sunday panel. I’ll pick it up again in 2-3 weeks, by which time, I hope, the arc will be over and Mr. McEldowney will have moved on.