The Reality check (AMS) raises an interesting question: do you have to play the guitar to get the joke?

I feel like you only need a very basic understanding of music to get a smile, because the G clef tells you that it is about music and you should know that there are major and minor keys that have little to do with Ray Milland and Ginger Rogers.

Then again, the days are over when every kid had some kind of music lesson at school, so Whamond is taking a risk. But hey, there’s no joke so simple that nobody won’t get the point, and guitarists will be impressed that this isn’t just a minor chord, it’s A minor.

Meanwhile at Loose parts (AMS)Dave Blazek offers a gag for people who cringe every time a cartoonist makes a gag that mixes polar bears and penguins. I hope a large portion of readers would get it, but I’m often surprised at how often the hiss flies over our heads.

And I would like to compliment Alex Hallatt, who solves the problem at Arctic Circle (KFS) with an explanation of the strip’s ongoing bear-bird conflation that is obviously ridiculous, but more polite than telling pedants to pull themselves together. And besides, when a polar bear in Sherman’s Lagoon (AMS)what are the possible limits?

However, there are worse ways to attract the attention of critics, as this shows.

Comparison of the day

Dustin — KFS — August 18

Mother Goose & Grimm — AMS — August 20th

The merging of days is generally random, but this one seems different. The 18th was a Sunday, the 20th a Tuesday, and Sunday strips generally have a longer lead time, which is something most comic fans know, so the two strips were probably not drawn as close together as they appeared.

But what you may not know is that Jeff Parker, half of Dustin’s team, also assists Mike Peters over at MGG, which adds another tssssss to the case.

In general, this is not shocking, since many cartoonists buy gags from the authors.

But it’s important to remember what you’ve already published.

Barry German offers a current reflection on comics and artificial intelligence, which I would like to use as a comparison with this Non Sequitur (AMS):

The idea that cartoonists buy gags may disillusion some readers, and there are still plenty of cartoonists who insist on doing all their own work.

On the other hand, there are plenty of cartoons whose original creators are long dead, and yet strips continue to be published, with new artists and writers every few years picking up the drawing style and jokes that made those strips so popular.

Continuing these popular comics is a business decision, not an artistic one. My local newspaper has 12 comics, including three repeats and six zombie comics drawn by replacement artists whose creators have since died.

I would say that if AI poses an immediate threat to artists, it is to the hired animators whose job it is to spit out the same gags in the same style over and over again.

Having worked with corporations in the newspaper industry for several years, I would not be in the least surprised if they noticed that copying and reproduction can now be done by machines that are far cheaper than human labor.

And I doubt most fans of these zombie flicks would notice the difference.

Since I’m in rant mode right now, let’s look at another sore point:

I play guitar, so I have Dave Whamond’s gag above, but this xkcd I shuddered rather than laughed because my college required math for freshmen, and I had skipped fourth year of math in high school to take an additional foreign language course.

So I started my first semester math course not having a clue what the hell anyone was talking about and promptly failed the first semester, repeated the course in January, and then was sent to summer school to take the course in the second semester.

I still had no idea how to figure out how to fill and empty a tank and whatever.

I admit that I often used a certain amount of sleight of hand and dexterity in my school work, but this was the only time I took a real, full-fledged primary school exam.

Luckily, the summer school course was taught by a professor and baseball coach known as “99 Klein” for his grading. He looked at my attendance record and asked me how I was doing in my other courses, admitting that I would probably only use math to figure out how much paint I would need to redo my living room.

Then he gave me a D, which surprised my friends because Jake rarely gave such low grades.

But by God, I (almost) deserved it.

This brings us to

Comparison of the day #2

Grand Avenue (AMS)

Pimples – KFS

Had I been born a few generations later, I would have been classified as neurodivergent, and when I double-checked the spelling, I came across this lovely explanation of the term:

Neurodivergence means that a person’s brain functions differently than the normal brain. It is thought to be quite common.

It seems to me that “deviation” and “fairly common” don’t really go together. But anyway, instead of ADHD, I was diagnosed as spoiled, lazy, and unable to reach my great potential.

And as a wise man once said

Back when my problem was more of a personality issue than a deviation from the norm, there was a cure for everyone. It generally involved writing things down and organizing them, or in other words, stop being like me and start being like them.

The advantage is that I learned during my childhood to see children as they are, not as I think they probably are or should be. Having worked with many of them, I believe I have more confidence in children than Steve Breen (Creator).

Will they like the cell phone ban policy? Probably not. Will they freak out? Probably not. Will they get used to it? Sure.

Will they find ways around it?

I would be a little disappointed in them if they didn’t.