Check me on this, will you guys?
That’s today’s ‘Zits’ comic. I’m pretty sure that’s a condom that kid is opening in panel 2.
Is this the first time one has appeared on the (usually) paranoiacally safe-playing comics page? I think even when Doonesbury was discussing them 20 years or so ago Trudeau didn’t portray one.
I drew a Peanuts cartoon with a condom in it for my campus newspaper about 13 years ago.
So that’s what those things are for!
Yeah, that’s a condom alright. I’m very surprised not just to see one, but that it’s done in such an offhand manner. There’s no actual statement of what it is. The strip assumes that everyone already knows. I guess that’s how it made it into the paper. If the guy had done a strip specifically *about * condoms, it probably would have been controversial.
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Daniel
I saw the strip in the Atlanta paper today, but it was printed in black and white. (Most daily strips are in black and white, I suppose). Without the color shown on the website, it was extremely difficult to tell what Pierce was doing - the condom looked more like a tissue. I studied the second panel quite a while this morning to figure out what Pierce was “pulling out of his shirt.”
For those who haven’t seen the strip, in the first panel, Pierce asks to borrow a pencil, then in the second panel, he says, “Hold on…” It’s pretty clear that in the second panel, Pierce is tearing open a square packet with a circular outline inside. In the third panel, Pierce slips a condom on the pencil Jeremy is holding out. In the fourth panel, Jeremy’s thought balloon says, “This flu season has everyone on edge.”
The usual folks who get morally outraged will probably write to the editor, shocked at the idea that teenagers carry around condoms. Frankly, I’d be more offended if they didn’t carry condoms.
I’m surprised more at the depiction of it unrolled in the third panel - it seems to be, um, shaped to accomodate a mushroom cap.
Well, as long as it’s a funny condom …
It looks…ribbed.
I’m sure Pierce’s girlfriend is very happy. 