I am a big fan of Foxtrot, and this is one of the major reasons (most any math, science, or computer oriented thing in that strip is likely to be correct). I believe the artist was a physics major, which explains a lot.
Well, for instance, Liberty Meadows was apparently set in my apartment. Beltsville Agricultural Research Center was frequently mentioned, as was NASA Goddard. The first is three miles from me in one direction, the second is three miles from me in the other direction.
A number of strip collected editions have some of the April Fool’s Day gags. I.e., I have the Garfield 20th Anniversary book, and it republishes both the Blondie artist’s rendition of Garfield, and Jim Davis’ version of Blondie.
I can’t find a complete list of who did what, however.
Oooh, another fun factoid: Beetle Bailey is the brother of Lois from “Hi and Lois.” The strips had a crossover a few years ago.
The three shapes that symbolize HTML graphics–Cube, pyramid and sphere–correspond to the heads of Dilbert, Alice and Wally, the engineering team at Dilbert’s company.
Lois was also the realtor who sold Lillian McKenzie’s house recently in Crankshaft. She didn’t have a speaking part but you saw “Lois Flagston, Realtor” printed on her car. I didn’t know Hi and Lois was set in Akron.
The author of “Liberty Meadows”, Frank Cho, was a University of Maryland, College Park, alumnus. He graduated in 1996 or 1997, I believe. “Liberty Meadows” is the sequel to “University[sup]2[/sup]”, which was his college strip.
Bill Amend, creator of Foxtrot was on ‘Screen Savers’ on Tech Tv today (it was probably a repeat of an earlier viewing). I was surprised by how young he looks. He looked like a college kid. He did admit to stealing some java code from a manual at the last minute to hit a deadline. He sounded pretty smart, but I’d be surprised if he studied physics, as he had a sort of “normal guy” attitude about him. Admittedly I wasn’t paying strict attention to the interview.
Also, have you guys been paying attention to last week’s Dilbert? I kept meaning to go online and find out who the guest artists were, I guess I’ll go do that now.
There is an interesting website called Can They Do That? put out by a guy named Tim Rosenthal that collects crossover comics. It lists (and shows) about 20 of the April Fool’s strips (but from 1998, not 1997).
And, Torgo, I imagine that the “Lois Flagston, Realtor” was a tribute, a “tip of the hat” so to speak, not an implication that Hi and Lois is set in Akron (or Elyria, which is where Tom Batiuk lives). The current authors of that strip all live in Connecticut.
I’m with sjc, the comics aren’t funny anymore. Except for Doonesbury…and hardly anyone carries that anymore.
Marvin is the one that grinds my ass. The baby schtick just isn’t funny any more. I love that Lynn Johnston inFor Better or Worse resisted the urge to time capsule her characters and now they are growing up and into the next generation. YAY LYNN!
Monday: Lynn Johnson (For Better or For Worse)
Tuesday: Darby Conley (Get Fuzzy)
Wednesday: Pat Brady (Rose is Rose)
Thursday: Greg Evans (LuAnn)
Friday: Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine)
Saturday: Scott Adams (wrap-up explaining what happened to Dilbert)
Hyperelastic, I believe five gags are done each Sunday for The Lockhorns. Some papers run less.
MisterThyristor, the 1998 is an error by the site’s proprietor. If you look at the copyright dates on the strips themselves, you can see they are from 1997.
Unfortuantely, Doonesbury hasn’t been all that entertaining lately. I’ll usually check the Monday strip to get the week’s subject. I haven’t read it in about a month.
Broom Hilda has the same character dynamic as The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers:
Broom Hilda = Franklin
Gaylord the Vulture = Phineas
Irwin the Troll = Fat Freddy
You wouldn’t know it now, but there was a time when Broom Hilda was the funniest damn thing on the comics page.
Cats did prison time back in the 30s? Man, the Depression was tougher than I thought.
As for Doonesbury I kind of like the current Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now thing they got going with Duke as the Overlord of Al Amok, and all the Hollywood references.
I like it too, but, if this goes the way that so many recent Trudeau stories have, he’ll forget about it for a month.
Dilbert’s head resembles a rectangle…
The creators of Over the Hedge are fans of XTC (the band, not the drug) and occasionally sneak in a reference.
The creators of Over the Hedge are fans of XTC (the band, not the drug) and occasionally sneak in a reference.
I just paged through my copy of Einstein Simplified, and counted six cartoons with nonsensical equations, and three with sensical ones, so it isn’t always gibberish. But even most of the nonsensical ones are things which could be sensical, except that we don’t see the full context. Which is still a darn sight better than most representations of math in popular culture.
And I had always figured that Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft took place in Cleveland suburbs: Westview seems an awful lot like Lakewood, and I remember a Sunday Funky strip where they’re out on a walk in the park, and the trail markings are from the Metroparks. But then again, we don’t see much (if anything) happening on or at the lake, so maybe they are a bit further south.
And Calvin and Hobbes was also set in the Cleveland area, as is most apparent when he goes to the natural history museum. The museum has skeletons of an allosaurus and a large sauropod (haplocanthosaurus, to be specific), and every Clevelander recognizes the fiberglass stegosaurus out front.
Ah, thanks for the correction, mobo85.
Another strip set around and about Cleveland is Ziggy. I wonder if part of the reason for the number of strips started in or about Cleveland is the presence of American Greetings here (Tom Wilson, the author of Ziggy was creative head of A.G. at one point).