Monday, December 31, 2007

Happy New Year


So has Alley Oop stumbled into this alternative universe before? This Earlie Oop character's immediate recognition of our hero would seem to indicate so. If so, how did he get out of it last time? What will the alternate universe Oola be like?
Or could it be that Alley is actually in his proper universe and Earlie is the interloper trespassing in their dimension?
Such riveting question that I'm sure will be explained as this new story unfolds for the next five or six weeks. Hold on to your hats everyone!

Saturday, October 06, 2007

Could they be related?



Check out the new bad guy in this strip. Doesn't he look familiar? Hmmmm?
The dark eyes, the black hair, the hooked nose. Why I'd say he looks almost like this guy. Maybe it's one of his descendants. Heh!

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

He never met a neanderthal he didn't like...


Now Will Rogers is going to get the Bender treatment just like Richard Feynman. I just hope they don't make him come across as stupid as the rest of the Alley Oop cast these days. At least they've done their homework up to this point and have Rogers in the proper time and context. I wonder what his special ability is that Oop will need to use. Trick roping?
So is this going to be like the Star Trek Next Generation episode where Mark Twain helps the time traveling Data to stop a bunch of soul-stealing aliens?
What I don't understand is that if Doc Wonmug already traveled back in time to find Will Rogers and update him on everything, then why does he need Alley Oop? And then, of course, there is the conundrum of how Doc could have known in advance that the timeline was going to be messed up in the first place. But if we just ignore these logical inconsistencies, maybe the Benders will surprise us with a half-way decent story this time. As Monroe would say, "Let's all hope for the best!!!!"

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Is it over yet?


Wow. Time for some fresh thread. Sorry about that.
What an awful story. There is not much that I can add beyond the thrashing that this story has received from the comments in the previous thread. This story, I assume, was supposed to help King Guz redeem himself with his people. They will probably return him to the throne after hearing of his heroic efforts to destroy the bizarre space plague which conveniently effected everyone in Moo except for Guz.
It will now probably be several weeks before the Benders finally drag out the next noxious storyline. In the meantime, I'm guessing we will be treated to lots of filler. Enjoy!

Friday, July 27, 2007

That’s using your head, Oscar!


I can’t tell you how creeped out this comic makes me feel. Here we had Oscar Boom practically begging not to be sucked back into that freaky tube thing only to be dismissed offhandedly by his former partner Doc Wonmug. We’ve already seen that Dave Wowee doesn’t really understand how or why it works, and now today we have him ominously warning them not to leave Oscar in there too long. Is there something else you haven’t told us about the tube, Dave? What happens if they stay in the tube too long? Do their vaporized molecules dissipate, never to be reassembled? The whole thing seems like a form of torture.
And now we have Ava saying they are going to take Oscar directly to the authorities. Ummm. What authorities might that be? The time cops? The police in Wonmug’s time aren’t going to believe their fantastic time travel story. What exactly are they going to charge Oscar with and how will they prove it? No prosecutor is going to be able to make those charges stick. At best Oscar would be out on bail in a matter of hours if the “authorities” choose to arrest him at all. Maybe they will arrest Doc and Ava instead and charge them with kidnapping.

Friday, July 13, 2007

Wasted opportunity/wasted time


Hmmmm... Oop is holding the wand backwards. Maybe he'll accidently suck himself up into it this time.
How disappointing that the authors passed on a chance to salvage Oscar Boom's character. Why they felt the need to turn him from a good guy into a crazed lunatic is beyond me. So this means the whole Oscar and Dinny mixed up in the tube at the same time meme was just one long time waster with no consequences for the storyline. Very disappointing, but very typical for these authors.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Why, I oughta.....


Come on, Oop! Bust Dave upside the head with your ax! He deserves it, the moron! That’s what he should get for entrusting a bunch of clueless people from the distant past with such a powerful, futuristic gadget. Why didn’t Dave go with them to make sure that the device was used properly? What? He didn’t have “time”? They have a TIME MACHINE for crying out loud! Arghhhhh!!!
After being so snotty to them when they first got back, now we see Dave starting to sweat it out in the face of Oop’s wrath. I think they should just take the bulb and bash it against a wall and see what comes out. Maybe we’ll get a weird Oscar Boom/Dinny mix like in that creepy 1970s remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” where a pod gets busted and ends up creating a dog with a man’s head on it. Yuck!
I have to agree with Jeff that this has proved to be an unusually entertaining storyline so far, all things considered.

Monday, June 04, 2007

The destruction of Oscar Boom


One of the most wretched things about this latest storyline is how the authors have completely destroyed the character of Oscar Boom. For as long as I have been reading the Alley Oop strip - dating back to the mid-90s - Oscar Boom had been one of the good guys, regularly going on adventures with Alley Oop and Doc Wonmug. So to see his character suddenly devolve into this crazed, arch-villian is disconcerting to say the least.
Now I see from The Holloway Pages that Oscar had been a good guy dating back to at least 1965 - the year I was born! So this sudden reintroduction of Oscar as a villian comes literally after more than a generation of readers grew up knowing him as one of the good guys.
This is really a travesty in my opinion and a sharp U-turn away from the vision that had been set in place by V.T. Hamlin and Dave Graue. It’s bad enough that the current authors have turned King Guz into a cowering wimp and Doc Wonmug into an absent-minded buffoon.
I’m so baffled by this latest plot derailment that it seems pointless to criticize the other minor flaws in the strip that crop up so consistently - like the left-hand/right-hand holding the gun switcheroo just a few frames back.
I’m assuming next we will have Queen Umpa relinquish her throne to Guz in appreciation of his bold efforts to warn the villagers about an impending crisis by sheepishly telling them they are in danger without ever once mentioning the crazed gunman hiding in the bushes.

Monday, March 26, 2007

Sniff this


What the heck!?! Futureboy doesn't need to see the computer information to track down Oscar? He just needs a personal item?
So that's what that big honker of a nose is used for. I should have known. Wowee is going to track him down like a time-traveling bloodhound. Sheesh!
I can buy that the silly printout that Ava put together is useless, but a personal item? I suppose this is along the same lines as when Wowee asked for a paperclip to fix the old time machine before giving up and bringing in a brand new one from the future.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Forgetfulness


Sometime back, I speculated that Doc Wonmug may be suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease because of his forgetfulness - like forgetting how to repair his own time machine.
Now I have to wonder if it is not the Alley Oop strip’s writers who are really suffering from the disease.
The other day we had Wizer back in our time asking Doc and Ava this question:

“I don’t get it... If his lab is more advanced, why don’t you just get him to update your time lab?”
To which Ava replies: “We can’t do that, Wizer! It violates the laws of time travel.”


Really!?! Imagine that! I think I recall saying something to that effect back when they DID GET WOWEE TO UPDATE THEIR TIME LAB!!!!

If the current day time machine is broken and Wonmug can't fix it, how does he ever pass on this knowledge to future generations of his clan to build other time machines? It is not logical!!!!


Did the Benders agree with that assessment and are now trying to forget that it ever happened? Or do they figure that the tiny handful of people who still read this strip will have forgotten by now?

Monday, February 26, 2007

Random placement


One of the things that drives me nuts about Alley Oop today is how the characters are just randomly placed from frame to frame. Today’s strip gives us a perfect example.
First, why are all the characters always standing around with their backs to one another when they are talking? Is it easier for the illustrator to draw full-frontal shots of the characters each time?
Now look at the first frame in today’s strip. We have Oop standing and looking at the podium he just built, while Oola is directly to his right and Umpa is further to the right. Meanwhile, Guz is in the immediate foreground with his back turned to everyone.
Now jump to frame two and it is enough to make your head spin! Notice the podiums still in the background for perspective. Now it appears that Oop and Oola have suddenly switched places with Umpa ending up in between them and Guz has been magically teleported directly behind Umpa - still with his back to everyone but now reversed. No wonder he has a question mark above his head! He’s saying “How did I end up here?”

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Moo-vin' On Up


Sorry that I've been out of pocket for awhile. I promise to get new posts up quicker henceforth!
So, what happened to all the men of Moo? Are they still cowering behind rocks somewhere since leaving it up to Dinny and Queen Umpa to save the kingdom from the Conquistadors? All we've seen for the past few weeks are women (with the exception of Oop, Guz and Foozy). Is Moo going to evolve into Amazonia soon? And since when did it become a democracy?
This storyline has obviously been brewing for sometime as we've been forced to watch King Guz make one blunder after another. And I suspect that a certain Democratic presidential candidate had something to do with inspiring it as well. In fact, I could swear one of the women characters from last Sunday is supposed to look like Hillary.
But I can't imagine how they are going to resolve this storyline in any kind of decent fashion. I agree with Jeff that it is uncharacteristic for Oop to jettison his loyalty to Guz like this. And how can they allow Guz to remain king at this point without making some kind of sexist "women just aren't cut out for this" kind of statement? Watching these storylines unfold is like seeing a car wreck in slow motion.