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.

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.