Comics I Don’t Understand

Archive for the 'Arlo Page' Category

Cyanide and Unhappiness (Arlo)

Cidu Bill on Mar 6th 2013

Filed in Arlo Page, Bill Bickel, CIDU, Cyanide and Happiness, comic strips, comics, humor | 27 responses so far

Saturday Morning ArlEwww

Cidu Bill on Jan 26th 2013

Why yes, in fact, it is a Cyanide and Happiness strip… Continue Reading »

Filed in Arl-ewww, Arlo Page, Bill Bickel, Cyanide and Happiness, Ewww, comic strips, comics, humor | 26 responses so far

Vintage LOL-Ewww

Cidu Bill on Jan 5th 2013

Chak sent me this back in October, and I’m going to add an Arlo Page tag as well.

And yeah, I’m still finding comics scattered all over my hard drive: 2012 was not a year in which I would have impressed anybody with my organizational skills.

Filed in Arlo Page, Bill Bickel, Comics That Made Us Laugh Out Loud, Cyanide and Happiness, Ewww, comic strips, comics, humor, lol | 10 responses so far

CIDU’s and Don’ts: The FAQ

Cidu Bill on Jan 1st 2013

We mostly discuss individual daily comics here. Comments such as “I hate this comic strip and its artist should never be allowed to work in this business again” are not welcome. The CIDU page is a place for people who love comics, and the artists deserve respect.

Whether a particular person understands a particular comic can sometimes be incredibly subjective. People send me between 10 and 20 comics a week, and most of them I can easily explain. Then I might come across a comic I don’t get (and I’ll put on the page), which will be glaringly obvious to everybody else. Sometimes (rarely) when this happens, I’ll get a comment along the lines of “Hey, are you stupid or something?” My response is generally along the lines of “No, I just didn’t understand this particular comic. Leave and don’t come back.”

I really hate to ban anybody, but I have no use for anybody who will come into my (virtual) home to insult me. I’m not keen on my houseguests insulting one another either.Thread drift is fine — in fact it seems to be fairly routine — but personal attacks are not.

If you post a message that contains more than one link, it won’t appear until after I’ve okayed it — which generally happens very quickly, since I pretty much live online. The purpose of this, of course, is to keep spam from taking over the site.

For those of you who are new here, we’ve moved a bit beyond just explaining comics: We also have special sections for the Arlo Page (comics you don’t want to explain to the kids) and the related Arlo Award (comics that appeared in mainstream newspapers which somehow slipped by the syndicate’s censors — this being one of the more blatant examples).

By the way, the Arlo Page is named after Arlo Guthrie. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.Other special categories we have here include the Ewww Files (fairly self-explanatory), Comics That Made Us Laugh Out Loud (a Sunday morning hall of fame for comics we really, really got a kick out of) , and the ChadWatch. ChadWatch are comics that attempt to mine humor from the 2000 presidential elections, usually by making references to hanging chads. I began this section back in December of 2000 in order to try to pinpoint the very last chad-related gag (because seriously, the joke was well past played out by the time Bush took office). I never suspected that more than 12 years later, we’d still be collecting them.

Sometimes we’ll notice two comic strips using a nearly-identical gag on the same day for no apparent reason. When that happens I’ll post them both, noting the synchronicity. Just because. These rarely call out for explanation.

The site is updated with a new CIDU every weekday at 12:02am Eastern Time — except for the two weeks or so following both “spring forward” and “fall back,” when WordPress is still trying to figure out the time change. Then the comic could go live either an hour earlier or an hour later, pretty much randomly. Don’t ask.

Saturday morning is reserved for the Ewww Files, and Sunday is the aforementioned LOL collection. Other posts might be scattered throughout the day, but the 12:02am update is a constant.

I run the website for Crime, Justice & America magazine, and I link to any articles I think might appeal to the people visiting CIDU. These always include “CJA” in the subject line (except when I forget).

We don’t encourage artists to explain their own comics, because they’ve already had their chance to make us understand. Also, it’s more fun this way.

Finally, if you have anything to send me — a comic you don’t understand, an Arlo or ChadWatch candidate, a suggestion, whatever — please e-mail me at comicsidontunderstand at gmail.com. Even if you know my personal address, please use the CIDU address for submissions: less likely to get lost in the shuffle.

When you’re submitting a comic, please (if possible) give me a link to it, and attach it — because sometimes attachments don’t survive the trip, and sometimes links don’t work. Just for the record, if you send me a link that contains rbma.com, it will not work.

I don’t ignore anything, but I’m not as good at keeping current with my e-mail as I might be. This site is my “fourth job,” after all.

If you send me something and you don’t want your full name used, sign the e-mail with your first name, or the nickname you commonly use here. Or if you want to be absolutely sure, just add “Call me Bob.” Please don’t expect me to remember from a previous time, because I’m lucky if I remember my own kids’ names.

Thanks to Blinky the Wonder Wombat for providing a better definition for the Arlo Page than I’d been offering

Filed in Arlo Page, Bill Bickel, CIDU, ChadWatch, Ewww, FAQ, comics that made us laugh out loud, lol, synchronicity | 14 responses so far

Some Adam and Steve reference? Definitely Arlo material, though…

Cidu Bill on Dec 14th 2012

Filed in Arlo Page, Bill Bickel, CIDU, Cyanide and Happiness, comic strips, comics, humor | 22 responses so far

Is the gag here (and I mean “gag”) that the two flies are “makin’ maggot” under the mistletoe, and the female fly is giving birth (-ish) right in front of us? Which would mean a confluence of “Arlo Award,” truly bizarre, and “Ewww! Ewww! Ewww!”

Filed in 9 Chickweed Lane, Arlo Award, Arlo Page, Bill Bickel, Brooke McEldowney, CIDU, Ewww, comic strips, comics, humor | 13 responses so far

Monday Afternoon ArLOL

Cidu Bill on Dec 3rd 2012

Filed in Arlo Page, Comics That Made Us Laugh Out Loud, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, Zach Weiner, comic strips, comics, humor, lol | 21 responses so far

Fore (Arlo)

Cidu Bill on Nov 6th 2012

(Okay, I understand that WordPress is always an hour off for the first couple of weeks after DST begins and ends… but right now, Sunday evening, it seems to think today is Tuesday!) Continue Reading »

Filed in Arlo Page, Bill Bickel, CIDU, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, Zach Weiner, comic strips, comics, humor | 19 responses so far

Halloween Ewww/Arlo/CIDU

Cidu Bill on Oct 27th 2012

Filed in Arlo Page, Bill Bickel, CIDU, Ewww, Halloween, Least I Could Do, comic strips, comics, humor | 15 responses so far

An obscure New Yorker reference??

Cidu Bill on Sep 26th 2012

NSFW and offensive on several levels (well, you did see the Cyanide and Happiness tag, right?xx

I see what’s going to here, but what’s the joke?

Filed in Arlo Page, Bill Bickel, CIDU, Cyanide and Happiness, Jesus Christ, comic strips, comics, humor | 36 responses so far

How to Go Directly From Arlo to Ewww

Cidu Bill on Jul 6th 2012

Filed in Arlo Page, Ewww, Objectionable Content, comic strips, comics, humor | 10 responses so far

Better Arlo this one…

Cidu Bill on Jul 6th 2012

Filed in Arlo Page, Bill Bickel, CIDU, comic strips, comics, humor, xkcd | 12 responses so far

Customer Service (Arlo Alert)

Cidu Bill on May 23rd 2012

Filed in Arlo Award, Arlo Page, Bill Bickel, Dilbert, Scott Adams, comics strips, humor | 17 responses so far

Sponge

Cidu Bill on Apr 9th 2012

Morris Keesan: I get the Squarepants/Squarebra thing, but what does holding your breath have to do with anything (unless it’s an Arlo, but I really don’t want that image involving Spongebob in my head)?