The world's stupidest comic strip analyzed on a semi-regular basis.

 

Can the Benders make Alley Oop sink any lower in character?
Oop has just poisoned an innocent and unsuspecting Wooley (and inadvertenly poisoned his would-be fiance) in a fit of jealous rage. And now, the same Wiz who instructed him on how to mix up his little potion is advising him to duck out and shun responsibility - like a kid who just hit his baseball through a neighbor's window and then runs for cover.
What a FINE example Alley is setting for all his young fans!
Perhaps now Doc will save the day by zapping Alley Oop back to the future for the start of a new "adventure". Maybe he can then send Oop back into his own recent past where he could slap some sense into himself before he ever concocts his poisonous plant scheme.
posted by Mike Thomas at Friday, October 02, 2009

 


This is sooooooo awful!!! I can't believe that the Benders are such idiots! They just CAN'T be this stooopid! It has to be that they are simply thumbing their noses at the readers in pure disdain.
In the strip above, we have Ooola hiding behind a rock that magically materialized behind the poor, unsuspecting musician who we assume is about to suffer the wrath of the insanely jealous Alley Oop.
The first frame gives us the perspective from behind Ooola as she peers around the RIGHT side of the rock and watches the musician direct the singers with his RIGHT hand. Then in the very next frame, we get the same scene from Alley Oop's perspective, but now Ooola is peering out from the LEFT side of the rock (from her perspective) and the musician is now directing the singers with his LEFT hand.
There is no consistency whatsoever. Simple details are carelessly overlooked or ignored. It is enough to drive anyone mad. Perhaps that is what has already happened to the Benders.
posted by Mike Thomas at Thursday, October 01, 2009

 

I think we have all seen this story line before from the Benders. Alley Oop comes home from another long bout of time travel to discover his long-neglected flame Ooola (Gasp!) TALKING to another man!!!
So naturally our overly jealous and presumptive hero Alley Oop throws a big hissy fit and then walks away in a huff. No effort to fight for and reclaim the love of his life, just complete indifference and self pity.
Remind me again why we are supposed to be rooting for such a despicable character as the Bender's version of Alley Oop? If their point is to disgust old fans and drive them away from the comic strip, then they are certainly succeeding.
posted by Mike Thomas at Tuesday, August 04, 2009

 


I have to hand it to the Benders. They are stubbornly consistent in their inconsistency. Throughout the entire kidnappying ordeal of Dr. Bronson, they couldn’t make up their mind how they wanted him to be tied up. Sometimes we would seem him sitting with the ropes going just around his chest and his arms tied behind the chair. Other times we would see the rope going all the way around both arms, pinning them to his side in a way that his hands could not be tied behind his back.
Now here in the last strip of the series we see both examples once again back to back. In the first frame, the rope is around Bronson’s chest, but not around his arms or the chair. How this binds him to the chair or restricts his movement in anyway is unclear. In the second frame, the ropes are clearly around his arms again.
I just don’t see how they can miss this. Are they doing it on purpose? Don’t they have any respect for their readers, much less for their own work?
It is just baffling.
posted by Mike Thomas at Thursday, July 16, 2009

 


With Alley Oop these days the sloooow pacing and the dull storylines are just part of the problem. What really drives me crazy is the lack of consistency in perspective. Today’s strip is a perfect example. In the first frame we see the mysterious man peeking around the time machine at Oop and the lady in the red dress. The time machine, you will note, is on his left side and Oop and the lady are about to walk out a door on a side wall to their left.
In the second frame, we get the same scene from the perspective of the mystery man, but now the time machine is on his right side and Oop and the lady are walking out a door that is straight in front of them. Also, Oops ax is in his left hand in the first frame, but is missing (presumably in his right hand) in the second frame.
There is no explanation for this other than that the Benders are being careless, sloppy and lazy.
posted by Mike Thomas at Monday, April 06, 2009

 


Just in case you were dozing off during the past month's worth of Alley Oop strips, the authors haved decided to recap all the action for us this week.
This latest turn of events has earned the Benders the title of "THE laziest creators of any currently running comics strips" at The Daily Comics Review.
posted by Mike Thomas at Tuesday, February 17, 2009

 

I really don't know what to say about this. I thought they were unfair to Oscar when they turned him into a bad guy all of a sudden. Are they going to flip him again and let him return to being a good guy, or are they just setting him up for his next diabolical scheme?
posted by Mike Thomas at Friday, January 23, 2009

 


Like helpless 2-year-olds, the womenfolk have gone and gotten themselves into a big mess again. Poor Alley, can’t turn his back for a second without one of them wandering off and getting eaten by a sabertooth tiger (or is that a sabertooth sloth cosidering how slow it is?) or stupidly rapelling halfway down a cliff and getting stuck because she didn’t use a long enough rope.
Now Ooola has tripped and will no doubt end up dangling on the end of the rope with Dee where they will have to wait for Alley to come to their rescue.
posted by Mike Thomas at Friday, November 14, 2008

 

My Lord, this is getting downright creepy! What the hell is wrong with these people? The look in Dee’s eyes is just sick as she practically drools over this recently dead neanderthal’s remains. Doesn’t she realize that what she is doing is in essence graverobbing?
She is not at some archeological site thousands of years in the future. She got in a frickin’ time machine and traveled thousands of years into the past, just shy of when the neanderthals were living, and is now digging up gravesites under no more than a few inches of top soil (considering that she uncovered it with a little hand trowel in less than a minute).
Ooola was right to react disgusted by what Dee is doing. This IS disgusting!
Maybe Dee will next fixate on Ooola’s pristine cavewoman skull. Imagine how much she could learn from that!
“Hey Dee! What are you doing with that axe in your hand? Whoa! Watch where you’re swinging that thing. You could take someone’s head off!”
posted by Mike Thomas at Tuesday, October 14, 2008

 

Let’s see if I can get my mind around this. I don’t know what era Moo is supposed to be in, but just for grins let’s say it is 10,000 BC.
So, Dee wants to know what was going on in 15,000 B.C. and she has access to a time machine. So what does she do?
She goes back to 10,000 B.C. and then starts an archeological excavation!?!?
Does anybody else see something wrong with this picture? Did it ever occur to her to simply get back in the time machine and go back another 5,000 years or so?
Maybe if we are lucky she will get eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger before she does too much digging.
posted by Mike Thomas at Friday, September 26, 2008

 

I assume we are going to get up close and personal with each one of Alley Oop's myriad party guests which should drag this out for several weeks at least. That's OK, I suppose. It could be worse.
First up was Will Rogers who became a setup for a lariat gag with Ooola. Next was Doc Wonmug's former assistant who has now promised to stick around and upgrade the time lab with new software (and new bugs, no doubt).
Now we get Doc's daughter Dee who tells Oop today that she is leaving her job as a museum curator to do archeaology.
"I can't wait to do some digging around Moo," she says.
Ummm. Why? Can someone please explain why someone with ready access to a time machine would spend time on archeaological digs?
posted by Mike Thomas at Wednesday, August 20, 2008

 

I’ll bet nobody saw this coming! A gathering of all the characters from the recent storylines to wish Alley Oop a happy 75th birthday. I can see Fill, the barbecue guy; the bongo-playing physicist Richard Feynman; dance instructor Rudolph Valentino; Will Rogers; Dave Wowee; and the usual cast of characters including a few surprises like King Tunk and Oscar Boom. Awful nice of them to let Boom out of that bottle to celebrate Oop’s birthday.
I can’t make out everyone in the strip today. It is kind of small on the computer screen and blowing it up just makes everything fuzzy. Plus, I’m just not up on all my Oop history. So I’m requesting some of my readers to help me out and pick out who some of these other folks are.
posted by Mike Thomas at Wednesday, August 06, 2008

 

Alley Oop bursts into the Bender’s studio swinging his ax and what does Jack do? He cowers in a corner and points his finger at Carole.
“All I can do is draw whatever Carole writes,” he whimpers.
Sheesh! It reminds me of the episode a while back when Guz cowered in his cave while King Tunk took control of Moo.
And then what does Carole do? She blames the Syndicate! Brilliant! A nameless, corporate bureaucracy is ultimately to blame for all of Oop’s problems.
In fact, I think she nailed it. I too blame the syndicate - for hiring the Benders to do the Alley Oop strip in the first place!
So what is Oop going to do now? Bust down the doors at United Media? Or give up and go home in defeat just in time for his big surprise party?
It’s a shame the Benders didn’t take their cue for this storyline from Stephan Pastis who draws the “Pearls Before Swine” comic strip. He recently had a segment in which he introduced a caricature of himself which had a twist that most Alley Oop readers could appreciate...

posted by Mike Thomas at Thursday, July 31, 2008

 
On a whim I did a quick search of YouTube for anything about Alley Oop. Wading through the bazillion references to the popular basketball dunking manuever, I came across these curious clips harkening back to a 1978 cartoon show I was completely unaware of.
The first clip is the intro to the cartoon series called Fabulous Funnies featuring what I believe to be is Foozy. The short-lived show featured animated versions of comic strips such as Broom Hilda, Nancy and Sluggo, Katzenjammer Kids and Alley Oop.



The second clip is of a video review show that pans one of the Alley Oop episodes found on an old VCR tape. It is the only other clip I could find that had any pictures of the Alley Oop characters. Even the video versions of the old Alley Oop song by the Hollywood Argyles doesn’t show any of the Alley Oop characters.



Y’all can provide your own withering reviews of the Fabulous Funnies version of Alley Oop in the comments below.
posted by Mike Thomas at Wednesday, July 30, 2008