Aragorn, surely?
I’m under the impression Aragorn is taller than most humans, let alone hobbits.
Isn’t it just Merry and Pippin there anyway when Treebeard is talking about entwives?
It’s clearly at Isengard after Gandalf and Pippin have ridden off to Minas Tirith. It’s not discussed much, but Frodo and Sam took a brief detour to Isengard between seeing Faramir and Shelob. Gollum stayed back.
I assume the joke/comment here is how LOTR is almost completely focused on the male characters? Or am I missing some deeper (or perhaps less deep…) joke here.
Right, that’s the joke. We’re nitpicking that there were only two hobbits (Merry and Pippin) who ever talked to Treebeard.
“…this is my brother Pippin and my other brother Pippin”
It’s a trick of perspective and the angle the drawing is made at.
But Strider was not originally that tall, in early drafts he was known as Trotter the hobbit.
TMBG had explored the same concept as the “Family Reunion” comic years ago:
I assume that Aragorn is the tall one with the manly stubble, Gimli is the short one with the dwarfly beard, and Legolas is the tall-ish one with the elfly long hair. Which leaves three more short, clean-shaven ones.
One of which wasn’t there, according to reports. I can’t believe Randall messed up the story like that, but I can’t figure what head game he’s playing. Called Fishing for Geeks, maybe.
smack I meant Legolas, of course!
But neither were legolas, gimli, or aragorn, so why are we focusing on frodo?
Well, yeah, good question. The only thing to say is that at least Gimli, Legolas and Aragorn had some chance to meet Treebeard at Isengard – they were in tow with Gandalf at the time, I think. The others never had that chance. And hey, the comic panel cuts off, so we can’t say who all was there when Treebeard might have asked, um, just where are your women since we’re asking personal questions. But, um, it’s a comic, and it’s a joke. So it’s best not to get too worked up about it, I think.
It’s a female Hobbit. That’s why the reduced Fellowship is so confused. Treebeard’s eyesight isn’t so great. She only shows up in the ultra-wide-screen edition of the movies, so most people don’t know about her.
Wait, wait–no, it’s actually Gandalf the White as a child. Most people don’t know this, but when Maiar are reincarnated, they are literally reborn. They grow at an accelerated rate, and he is shown here at the age equivalent of about 8 human years. His beard won’t start growing for a few hours. The movie cut this part for budgetary reasons.
Since this one is pretty obscure: Gödel’s key realization was that he could encode various mathematical symbols as numbers, and therefore encode complicated mathematics as simple arithmetic, and thus do math about math. This, in turn, enabled him to rigorously construct statements analogous to the Cretinous “This statement is a lie”, in a strict mathematical way, and to thus prove some very deep and interesting things about the boundaries of math itself. Specifically, he rigorously proved that in any “interesting” system of mathematics (i.e., any system capable of encompassing basic arithmetic on integers), there exist some statements that can neither be proven nor disproven. You can extend your mathematical structure to deal with those statements, but then, your new, extended mathematics will have some other statements that it can’t deal with.
Re: the non-Tom Swifties:
I was skeptical about traffic circles, but then I came around.
ETA: maybe we should call them But-thens, since they all seem to have that as a conjunction.