The Lockhorns

The Lockhorns, by Bunny Hoest and John Reiner, is one of those married-couple-fighting comics that has infested the funny pages for decades.  Here their marital discord has something to do with maps.  

Beautiful Akron!

Here's another item from Amanda.  This one is very like these others on the same theme that we posted last Fall. 

Mapping Summer Solstice

I know we're a day early for a First Day of Summer post, but this pair from Jim Meddick's Monty. works better for a Tuesday Two-fer. The second one is deeply geeky with projections:

There is no geography in summer

Today we have a One Big Happy by Rick Detorie.  These precocious kids get up to more mischief than Dennis the Menace.... although that's partly because Dennis hasn't been very menacing in ages.

Circus in Chitown

Let's do tame with a Family Circus from 2006 by Jeff and Bill Keane. Of course we now know that neither Mrs. O'Leary nor her cow had anything at all to do with starting that fire.Way to perpetuate discriminatory stereotypes you ovoid-headed kids!

The thing that bugs me about this is the copyright laws which obligated the Keanes to have PJ there with the generic "Cubbies" pennant instead of "Cubs" which would have made some kind of sense.  MLB might want to consider laying off the fan art. 

The Buckets plan

This one might still be from the same story arc from last summer from The Buckets by Greg Cravens.This one was from the end of September, while the others were from the end of August/Beginning of September. My wife just finished a big long road trip last week so this hits very close to home.

Buckets story arc

These are from a story arc last summer from The Buckets by Greg Cravens.  The story arc actually ran for a couple weeks.  These three are the ones that were map related:

I can't count how many road trip both in my youth and as an adult that have gone this way.... but only when children were involved.  

Fortunately it's not too far to go to the end of this story arc, at least the map-related parts.

"You just missed your turn" is a common enough gag in comics.

Civil War GPS help

This is Jef Mallet again with another brilliant map-related Frazz strip.  Want Civil War GPS data? here's some: http://www.poi-factory.com/node/1883

Same old map problem

The titular character in Brian Basset's Adam@Home is still not using a GPS device, despite having spent a week discovering Google Earth and being impressed by a neighbor's GPS-enabled stroller.  This road trip story arc from the summer of 2010 isn't the same road trip this family undertook earlier. But it does still have the family on old folding maps instead of new electronic devices.

Saskatchewan you to sleep

So this is part two of the Betty (by Gary Delainey and Gerry Rasmussen) that so improbably involved the story lone about Saskatchewan from March of 2010. The rest of that week of Betty shifted to a storyline about Betty taking strategic naps in order avoid interacting with her family.  So not even these cartoonists could stick with a "riveting" Saskatchewan story line for very long, resorting instead to a story arc they hoped was less sleep-inducing.

To be fair, I'm going to include a link to the official Saskatchewan tourism website: http://www.sasktourism.com/.  I don't know if it will help. Saskatchewan is like a gigantic, less populated, somewhat colder Kansas... or Nebraska... or Dakotas... or any of those Midwestern states.

I'm just gonna say here and now: I do not expect to see another Saskatchewan map-themes comic as long as I run this blog.  Please try to prove me wrong.

Saskatchewan again?

Let's finish off the week with some Betty, by Gary Delainey and Gerry Rasmussen.  This will be a two-day portion of a story arc that ran in March of 2010.  The most odd thing about this I think is that it's the second post that involves a map of Saskatchewan.  Go figure.

Suburban vacation

In July of 2007  Michael Fry & T. Lewis did this Summer-Vacation-themed Over the Hedge episode.

Famous drive

In the upper right-hand corner of this print ad from 1948 is a stylized map of the "Niagara Parkway" which is the "Famous Drive" referred to at the top of the ad.  This is from the AdClassix site which had hundreds of old print ads available for sale. This is from the post-War era when touring these United States in mammoth new cars was rapidly becoming a new American pastime. And this was even before the Interstate system was born. I gotta say that Oldsmobile sedan looks HUGE!

Left turn at Albuquerque

This is a wonderful collection of clips of Bugs Bunny's iconic "I knew I shoulda taken that left toin in Albuquerque" gag.  Maps in cartoons doesn't get much better than this.

One more tomorrow.

New York travel

A print ad, archived at AdClassix, from 1954 for tourism in New York State. This pre-dates the iconic "I *heart* NY" ad campaign by some 20 years.  

Disneyland, 'twas always so

Here's an oldie that still carries a punch today. Published in The New Yorker in September of 1955, this cartoon by Richard Decker ran just a month after Disneyland's opening, a testament to its instant popularity (and/or the aggressiveness of the Disney marketing machine).

Crowded Cape

This was one of The New Yorker's "Caption Contest" winners from July of 2008 where the readers submit captions for cartoons regular cartoonists submit.  This one was particularly appropriate for this blog's theme. The artist is Mick Stevens.

You are paranoid

In the background is a map directory for the zoo the Bucket family here is visiting. And, yes, it even has a "you are here" identifier. But this is a rare comic in that it includes a "you are here" feature which doesn't happen to be the center of the joke. And thus I've introduced y'all to The Buckets, the hilarious strip by Greg Cravens. narcissism

Family Circus

I used to like Family Circus. And I really do need to get some of those "pun island" geography comics they used to do every year when I was little. Those might be hard to find 'cause I'm not sure if any were published in the digital age.