What a tango-ed web we weave ...

Hey, it's not Richard Feynman, but it's close! While Saturday's episode left us somewhat in the dark as to the identity of Oop and Ooola's dance instructor, the Sunday episode lets the cat fully out of the bag. Nope, it's not Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, or even Isidora Duncan. It is ... drumroll please ... the Great Lover himself, silent screen icon Rudolph Valentino! That's my best guess, and I don't think I'm wrong, if you judge by the photo here.

Ever prone to make the quirkiest of choices, our creative team has brought into Oop's troubled life one of the people responsible for popularizing the tango. According to his Wikipedia entry, Valentino worked as a "taxi dancer" (a kind of paid dance date) and a dance instructor prior to being discovered by Hollywood. So this ought to place Oop's adventure here sometime around 1915 or so, though the Argentinian tango costume Rudy's wearing is from his 1921 film, "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse."

In our comic-strip world, Oop is sure to learn "the ways of love" from Rudy here, as well as a few slick dance moves. In real life, Valentino married a lesbian, was jailed for bigamy, and one of his lovers shot her husband dead to be with Rudy.

Anyway, we have gone from Santa Claus to Rudolph Valentino in the course of about two weeks. Are you dizzy yet?

And by the way, what's Oop sweating and spouting exclamation marks for? I'm afraid of Rudy's pants, but that's just me.

Oh, my.... indeed!

Alley and Ooola have arrived for their dance lessons and the dance instructor is shocked to see that... Ooola has turned into an axe!!! Oh, my....

Well, maybe not. But it certainly looks that way from the illustration. Here we see in Frame 2, as Miss Emma walks up, Oop is standing with his right arm around Ooola. Suddenly, in Frame 3, Ooola is gone and Alley is holding his axe in his right hand and that is when we get the Oh, my... reaction from Miss Emma. What else could she be reacting to?

Of course, she is probably reacting to the WMD in Oop’s hand and wondering how he expects to dance with it. But she could also be wondering why he is showing up for dance lessons dressed in nothing but his bear-skin skivvies. You would think that Doc might have been courteous enough to have at least set Alley and Oola up with some period clothes before shipping them off into time somewhere.

Dance your cares away

Ooola is back in fine form today. After a brief flirtation with reality, where as Michael noted she nearly jumped off the page with new realistically-drawn features, she is now back to her cartoonish self and her embrace of ditzy female stereotypes.
"Dancing," she exclaims. "When do we go!"
As if that makes the prospect of being barbecued again all the better. Doesn't she remember what she was doing the last time she went time traveling and nearly became a cave girl flambeau? That's right. She was DANCING!
But I guess Santa Claus will make sure that idiot Doc Wonmug doesn't drop a coke on the time machine this time.

Speaking of the time machine, since when has it become nothing more than a venue for Oop's personal vacation jaunts? Doesn't the good Doc have anything better to do with his time (pun intended)? Or perhaps Oop has the right to call in favors whenever he wants on account of his having served as Doc's time traveling guinea pig these many years.

Cartoon or not cartoon?

Anybody remember "Sam's Strip" from the early 1960's? There was a famous sequence in which Mort Walker and Jerry Dumas had a couple of panels from a realistically drawn action strip followed by a cartoony panel with a punch line. The jarring effect of two clashing art styles were used - back then - to a humorous effect. These days Oop and other strips like Gasoline Alley are doing it straight and for-real. Am I alone here, or is it just plain disconcerting to see our gorgeous, cartoony Ooola morphing into Terri Hatcher or ... I don't know ... maybe even Roseanne Barr if you squint your eyes a little. The third panel continues with Ooola morphing back, and it ends with a very cartoony Oop babbling something about Santa Claus. I'm sure the artist was happy with that middle panel - it's not a bad drawing at all. It's just not Ooola.

Alternate responses ...

In the first panel, Oop looks so happy, and he's running toward his lady love so quickly that he's raising up little puffs of dust. Ooola, on the other hand, has a bone to pick with the Oopster. "Couldn't you at least have been with me for Christmas?" Oop promptly apologizes. I think rather than capitulating so easily, Oop could have said a number of other things, such as ...
1) "Sorry to mess up your holiday, but I was off saving an imprisoned village of men, women and children."
2) "Santa Claus held me up. No, really! Just like he appeared in that Narnia movie!"
3) "Well, I was going to give you a present, but since you're so dang nasty about it ..."

Dancing with the Oopster

It's the era of ballroom dancing, folks. Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez made it look hot a few years ago. Last year "Dancing With the Stars" was a hit in the ratings, and ABC is determined to make lightning strike twice with a second season that stars uber-tan George Hamilton and the babe from "Wayne's World," Tia Carrere. Into this foxtrot frenzy comes, at the suggestion of St. Nick himself ... Alley Oop? Look, if Nancy Sinatra's boots were made for walkin', Oop's feet are made for stomping out forest fires. Check out panel one and take a gander at those dogs. But somehow Santa seems to think that a few trips around the ballroom floor will do for Ooola what 70 years worth of saving her life have failed to do. As Monroe says, I guess we'll have to just hope for the best.

Alley Oop, wet blanket

I almost called this post, "Alley Oop, stinking ingrate," but thought that would come across a bit harsh in large type. Anyway, Oop is feeling so sorry for himself these days that he's becoming an annoying schlep. I wouldn't blame Santa if he was reaching into that bag for a gun after that last remark.

Singin' the Ooola blues

(Note: I've been misspelling her name by leaving out an O) Was Ooola always so fickle in her affections for the Oopster? The way her character is being scripted today I would advise Oop to just throw in the towel and go look for someone else to court.
Now that it looks like the story is turning back to the Oop/Ooola saga, let's review some of the most recent developments in their 70-plus year relationship.
First, we had Ooola giving Oop the ultimate slapdown for his marriage proposal. "I need time to think about it."
Then she carelessly discards the dress she had spent so much time picking out for their "honeymoon."
And then, upon returning to Moo, she immediately begins flirting with that dreamy new guy, Mountain. And don't forget that it wasn't that long ago that she fell head over heels for Dolph during one of Oop's extended time-travel jaunts.

What more does she have to do to get it through Oop's thick skull that it's over? It was just a fling as far as she's concerned. Or like Butch Hancock wrote and Jimmie Dale Gilmore sang, "She said babe, you're just a wave, you're not the water."

Poor Oop. It's not like he has ever had a wandering eye himself. He's not like James Bond or Star Trek's Capt. Kirk, bedding young women everywhere they go. No, Oop has always been totally faithful to Ooola throughout all his worldly adventures. And this is the thanks he gets. So what more does he have to do to prove his worthiness to his long-time sweetheart?

Looking Moo-wards

This is the most Oop-like that Alley Oop has looked in quite awhile. Given the space limitations of comics in the papers these days, our artist has managed to still pull off a beautifully classic Oop panel with only the silhouette of a couple of trees, a plant, some lines indicating a waterfall in the distance, and Our Man perched on his beloved dinosaur. In fact, I would be pleased as punch with the whole enterprise if I just didn't have to read the words. Oop is back to what has become his losing battle, and it just kind of frustrates me.

Calling all chickens

While Tunk's chicken-hearted, feeble-minded, potential army(?) gets let out of the hole, Mountain tells them the biggest whopper of all time: Tunk is gone "forever." My great-grandpa used to claim that he shot and killed Santa Claus every year too, but that didn't make it so. The last we saw, the abdominal was chasing Tunk out toward parts unknown, pursued by an army that will never, ever catch him. That doesn't spell out "forever" to me, but maybe Mountain is just too innocent to know. Since he's the sharpest spoon in their drawer, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. And hey, look folks, someone left a giant Baby Ruth bar outside of the cave entrance, right where that lady could trip over it!

Mountain and Puny - munchkin style

I was looking at today's strip, and thought something up in the corner looked a little peculiar. As you Oopophiles might remember, Mountain and Tiny are a good foot or so taller than the Oopster. This morning, they appear to be somewhere around five feet tall or shorter, dancing in front of Oop like the kids in "A Charlie Brown Christmas." ARE they Mountain and Puny, or just some random mountain people? If they're not, then where the heck did the giant boys in panel two come from?

Enter Abdominal, Stage Left

Cheemaneester?!? What the heck is that? It stumped Google. I can't find any reference on the web to such a word.

Well, as predicted the real snow monster has finally appeared. Though why at this particular juncture in the story I can't say. It would seem that he is a little late to the party at this point. I thought it would have been better for him to show up before Tunk was unmasked and defeated. Nevertheless, here he is as if on cue.
It would seem that he is unhappy about something, though I'm not sure what. Is he upset that somebody has been impersonating him?

I also find it odd that Tunk was able to exactly replicate the look of the monster using mammoth fur when he apparently didn't even believe that it was real in the first place.

And speaking of staging, what happened to Mountain and Puny in the final frame here? Did the Roar! of the real snow monster cause them to suddenly vault backwards 20 feet?

You do the hokey-pokey and you turn yourself around ...

This is a Mike Thomas-style post, and it goes back to my common mantra lately - "It's all about staging!"

Granted, we've got at least a split second between panel one and panel two, but in that time, Mountain has released Tunk and shifted from his side to the front. In the meantime, Oop has also released Tunk, also shifted to the front, has grabbed his mask with his right hand, has shifted the mask magically to his left hand, and is drawing back to wallop Tunk again. Tunk, who has had has head caved in with an ax, has been jumped from the back by Mountain, has had his butt set on fire, and has received an upper cut by Puny, is suddenly no longer on fire and isn't even trying to escape, though everyone concerned has let go of him.

In the meantime (lovely meantime), Oop's outfit has turned back to a dark colour, while the boys are suddenly dressed in white in panel two. Odd, that.

Not that it's perfect, but I've sketched out a possible alternative layout that keeps our chess pieces moving in a logical direction. You could move the "camera" in tighter for a more dramatic presentation, but I think this would work. Also, while in my doodle it looks as if Oop is wiping himself, he's supposed to be holding the mask - in the correct hand. I imagine he could also be positioned shaking the mask over Tunk's head in rage and it would work too.

Space-time anamolies ...

I know that Jeff has suggested that we are probably being so critical of the Oopster that we can't just sit back and enjoy it anymore. Maybe so, but I'm just MST3K'ing this stuff anyway, because it seems so darn odd. I'm really enjoying this strip on several levels. Comparing this strip with the previous ones, it's as if Oop has drifted into the Bermuda Triangle ...

1) Torches magically appear in a darkened pen.
2) Either Oop has just stepped out of the shower and wrapped a beach towel around himself, or he's on his way to a toga party.
3) Mountain has magically disappeared from the fray.
4) Being on fire is unacceptable. Having your head caved in with a stone mallet (see previous strip) is no biggie.
5) Speaking of which, Oop's mallet/ax/flute has vanished. It's not even visible on the ground.
6) Not only is Tunk screaming because he's on fire, but I'd also expect him to mention that he has a flaming ice cream cone crammed up where the primordial sun don't shine. Flame + severe abrasions = sad monkey.

World's worst come-on line

Judging from the first panel, it appears that something truly inappropriate is about to happen here.

Never fear, though, soon it's back to the rock 'em sock 'em action we love, with Mountain apparently focusing on one of Tunk's upper vertabrae.

Calling Alice the Goon ...

Am I the only one who expected Alice the Goon to come a-runnin' when Puny sounded out his pterodactyl call? Alice, that bizarro creature from the Popeye strip whose bloated, hairy, naked body kept children awake at night once upon a time, also tended to speak in this odd oscilloscope kind of lingo. Now we know what a pterodactyl sounds like - a resident of Goon Island. What does a Goon sound like? Umm ... err ... uh ... I dunno. I think I would have just opted for a cool sound effect like "EEERAAKKHHH!" or something here. You tell me. What is a pterry s'posed to sound like? On a side note, doncha just love the fact that Mountain is about to take on a smaller, unarmed man in a monkey suit with a club the size of a horse's leg? Is that class or what?

Mammal? What's a mammal???

Jeff touched on this strip in a previous post, but it's interesting that in the Sunday Christmas continuity, Oop has, seemingly for the first time, run into a deer-like creature. Actually, he and his posse seem a lot more surprised by this reindeer than they ever were by the Abdominal Snowman in the daily storyline. Pretty odd. Now granted, the Oop strip plays fast and loose with prehysterical time, but you'd think that he would have run into a deer or ancient variety of antelope at some time in his life. Neanderthals had a sweet tooth for deer, as a matter of fact, as well as each other. My favorite part of this strip is when the Wizer refers to Guz, Foozy and himself as the "three wise men," deliberately leaving Oop out. He's our hero, but he ain't the sharpest knife in the drawer.

You're in the Army now

I'm having a really hard time following Tunk's logic through this ordeal. He wants to invade Moo, but rather than gearing up for that battle he chooses to leave his Army who knows where and climb up into the mountains wearing a monkey suit. There he proceeds to terrorize a bunch of defenseless, cowardly people who subserviently file themselves into a makeshift concentration camp without a struggle.
And now Tunk wants to recruit these folks for his Army???
You've got to be kidding! If they won't defend their own homes, what makes him think they will do any better fighting for him?

Announcement

I want to take just a moment to welcome Michael Fraley as the new co-author of this blog.
Michael has graciously agreed to pitch in and help me as we continue to follow the travails of our favorite time-traveling caveman. Michael, as most of you know, has been a frequent commenter on this site. He is also a cartoonist and a long-time fan of Alley Oop with an extensive knowledge of the strip's history. So please welcome Michael and wish him all the best.
And don't worry about me. I plan to continue my usual feverish pace of posting comments on this blog as always.

Cowards of the county

When Mountain first appeared on the scene we were supposed to be impressed by his immense size and strength. Then we met his little brother Puny who turned out to be even bigger. So we were left believing that the people living up in the mountains were supposed to be a race of hardy giants. One would not want to go up against an army of these folks.

As it turns out however, Mountain and Puny seem to be the exception to the rule. Most of the mountain people are average sized folks who are apparently too docile to put up a fight when confronted with someone or something threatening their villages. Now we see today that after being freed from the prison/fortress that sprung up in their midst seemingly overnight, they are all going to cower inside a cave and let Mountain and Puny face whatever dangers are out there alone. How pathetic is that?

Haven’t we seen this before?

Today’s strip is a complete and utter retread that does nothing to advance the story. It is so redundant that they were able to recycle art from a strip that ran just a few days ago. Compare the strip for today (dated 11/10/05) with the one in the post immediately below this one (dated 11/4/05). Notice how the second panel in today’s strip simply combines the image of Oop from panel two of the earlier strip with the image of Mountain from panel one of that strip. All they did was change Alley’s hands slightly. Both characters have the exact same expressions and positioning. Even the little puff of frosty air above Oop’s right shoulder is the same.
That said, I still can’t understand why Oop is so insistent on keeping those poor folk locked up in their prison. Why doesn’t he just use his stone ax to chop away the poisonous vines and break them out of there? Does he think he needs to leave them there as bait to lure monkey-suit guy back?
I guess we will find out eventually whenever the authors tire of recycling all their old artwork.

Alley Oop: Expert Horticulturist

This prison/fortress is some engineering feat for one stone-aged guy in a monkey suit to have pulled off. When you get that high up in the mountains the tree line shrinks back considerably. That is why mountain peaks are bald. And the trees that you do find are short and scraggly. So to build such an enormous fortress out of wood would have required hauling tons of lumber up from somewhere else. Quite remarkable that the mountain people didn’t even notice while this construction extravaganza was under way.
How did King Tunk build the prison anyway? Hammer and nails? Now that we are getting a closer look from outside it seems that all the timbers are strapped together with vines. That would be more consistent with stone age construction knowledge, but it would also make it much easier to tear down, poison vines or not.
And that brings us to the revelation today that the vines are chock full of poisonous thorns, according to our resident expert horticulturist Alley Oop. But why would Oop know this when Mountain and Puny did not? Imagine how many vines you would have to gather to build a fortress like this? You would assume the vines are growing all over the place in that case, so why would Oop, a non-native, know they are poisonous while Mountain and Puny are clueless? Did Tunk import all the hundreds of yards of poisonous vines along with the tons of lumber?

Oop Takes Charge

Nevermind the fact that he is in unfamiliar territory (he didn't even know to dress warmly) with two guys who grew up in that area, Alley Oop is clearly in charge here.
Here he is instructing the natives on how to track people in their own backyard while they look on as if they had no clue what to do next.
But that is our Alley Oop - the globe-trotting, time traveling, superhero! He has already figured out that the snowmonster is just some guy in a monkeysuit without even a glimpse of the critter at this point. Now all he has to do is lay they guy out with one swing of his stone ax and that will be it. Mission accomplished.
So what are the authors going to do to complicate things further? I still think the real snowman will make an appearance in this series at some point.

An introduction and an explanation

I think it is long overdue that I wrote a general comment providing an explanation about Alley Oop Watch and why I started it.
First, let me say that I am overwhelmed by the response this blog has generated. I believe I may have more regular readers here than I do at my main blog. I know it is not because of anything I write in particular, but more because it has developed into a gathering place for people who share a common interest - either positive or negative - in Alley Oop. I think that is terrific.

I will confess that I started this blog two years ago as a lark. I never thought anyone would be reading it other than myself. But thanks to the miracle of Google searches it has brought together a small, but devoted group of Alley Oop fans and critics. Here is the backstory on how it all started. I was visiting my mother one weekend and was telling her about my blog. She seemed interested so I decided to show her how easy it was to set up a blog on Blogger.com. The Alley Oop strip I had read that morning was still fresh in my mind when I took the two minutes or so to set up the new blog. I had been reading Alley Oop since the mid-’90s and often would be frustrated by some stupid inconsistency in the storyline, but since I didn’t know anyone else who read the strip there was no one I could talk to about it. On the spur of the moment I decided a blog would be a good place for me to vent my frustrations about the strip.

I know that at the top of this blog I refer to Alley Oop as “The world's stupidest comic strip...”, but that is clearly an exaggeration. There are many other comic strips that are far worse than Alley Oop. I just choose not to read them. There is obviously something about the Alley Oop strip that has kept me reading it all these years in spite of my frustrations. I see the criticisms leveled at the strip here as mostly a tough love operation. I don’t want to see the Alley Oop strip ended. That said, however, I welcome comments from Alley Oop fans and critics alike (and most probably wear both hats).

As for the comments, it has been pointed out that the older comments have been disappearing from the site. That is a problem that I hope to rectify soon since I think the comments have added a tremendous amount to this site. Unfortunately, I have tried to do this on the cheap for the past two years. I’ve never invested a penny into the site which is hosted on the free Blogger service and uses the free Haloscan comments. But now it looks like I will need to upgrade my Haloscan account in order to access comments that are more than a few months old. I will try to do this sometime in the next few weeks.

I want to thank everyone for dropping by and leaving your comments.

Scooby Doo, Where are you?

So the snowmonster turns out to be Moo's arch nemesis King Tunk wearing a costume made of mammoth fur. That's original. All we need now is for the Scooby gang to show up and pull off his mask at an inopportune moment.

Of course, as in most of these stories, there are still a lot of things that don't add up. For instance, how is taking over these mountain villages going to give Lem any advantage over Moo? Alley Oop didn't even know they existed before Mountain showed up so they can't be in a strategic position for launching an invasion. Is Tunk planning to conscript all the Mountain people into his army? That's about the only way I can see how it could benefit him. They don't have a lot of wealth and Mountain said they were starting to run short on food.

Another problem is that Tunk isn't all that big compared to Oop and Guz and all the other cave people. Yet when we first glimpsed the snow monster he was towering over the frightened villagers, at least a foot taller than the biggest man, and snapping huge boards over his head using his bare hands.

Now today we have Tunk laughing about the primitive mountain people because they still believe the snowman exists - as if that was some kind of stretch for people living side by side with dinosaurs. But when the story began Mountain and Puny talked about a snowmonster who they got along with fairly well. So my prediction is that the real snow monster will show up at some point and possibly confront Tunk.

Abominable gulag

This is getting silly again.
Mountain’s homeland has apparently been ravaged by the mis-named Abdominal Snowman and now we see that all the people are being rounded up and herded into some kind of wooden fortress where they are to be held captive for some unknown reason.
Maybe if there was an army of snow monsters I could see this happening. But one snow monster who is at best maybe six inches taller than any of the men from Mountain’s village? What’s wrong with these people?
As Michael Fraley pointed out in comments, these people are used to dealing with T-Rex’s and other fearsome creatures on a daily basis. How is it that they allow themselves to be cowed by one measly snow monster? Why don’t a group of the men get together, grab a few clubs and go and subdue the creature? Is Alley Oop the only one capable of such feats?
And if they were truly terrified of this creature you wouldn’t have people glumly being herded along like cattle into a cage. You would have everyone running off in five different directions.
I’ll tell you one thing, the snow monster from the Rankin and Bass Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Christmas special was a heck of a lot scarier (and bigger) than this creature.

Abdominal Snowman?

What the heck is the Abdominal Snowman? Is he a fitness freak who works out all the time trying to build up his abs? Maybe he has been terrorizing the Mountain people by trying to get them to do excercises to build up their abdomens too.
You don’t suppose the Benders meant the Abominable Snowman, do you?

The Mountain saga continues...

The writers came up with a better way to conclude the strength competition in the daily strips than they did for the Sunday section. Oop managed to salvage his reputation as a hero after initially falling into a self-pitying rage fueled by his jealousy of Mountain.
Now it looks like they are planning to use Mountain’s character for another adventure they are setting up, this one having to do with the impending Ice Age that may be threatening Mountain’s village. That could prove to be interesting. Maybe Moo will soon find itself overrun with evacuees in a story that parallels the travails of the displaced residents of New Orleans.
The brief merging of storylines with the Sunday strip seems to have been a temporary experiment that the authors decided to cut short. That’s good because it was a serious drawback to the daily strip to have each week’s storyline outlined in advance.
I’m wondering how long Mountain’s character will stick around. Do the strip’s writers see him as a new major character with a recurring role?
Perhaps he will become so popular that he will muscle Oop out of the strip altogether. They could rename the strip Alley Oop and Mountain. It’s not unprecedented. Just look at how Barney Google became Snuffy Smith, or more recently the way the strip Ernie became Piranha Club or Robotman became Monty.
Naaaahhhh! They would never do that.

Right arm, left arm... whatever

This is so unbelievably stupid I just can't believe that the cartoonists in charge of Alley Oop these days actually did it.
We are currently suffering through one of the most boring storylines I have ever seen at Alley Oop and to top it off they make one of the most incredilby stupid blunders I have ever seen in a daily comic strip this Sunday.
Here we have Alley Oop and Mountain engaged in an arm-wrestling competition to see who is stronger. Notice in the first frame they are wrestling with their right arms, but then just a couple of frames later Mountain defeats Alley Oop and suddenly they are wrestling with their left arms.
This is just appalling. Do the Benders even care about this strip anymore or are they just churning this stuff out to collect a paycheck and could care less how badly they insult the intelligence of their readers?

And to make matters worse, the strip's current authors harve recently decided to merge their storylines for the daily and Sunday papers. That means that we get to see a week ahead of time what is going to happen so that reading the daily strip becomes a mind-numbingly boring experience. I'm just wondering if they are going to have the same right arm/left arm screw up in the daily comics like it was for the Sunday version.

Jealous Again

Haven’t we been down this road just recently? It was just about a year ago that Oop returned from one of his time traveling adventures to find the residents of Moo smitten by a newcomer - Dolph - who turned out to be a bad guy intent on taking over the kingdom. In that case, as with this one, Oop’s immediate reaction to the newcomer is intense jealousy.
This time the newcomer is a walking giant named Mountain. I don’t think he will turn out to be a bad guy because he seems to be based on some real-life figure (possibly a football player) who I’m unfamiliar with.
Mountain saves a family trapped by a boulder in front of their cave entrance. Oop is embarrassed because he could not budget the boulder before Mountain walked up and pulverized it with some kind of football blocking manuever. Instead of congratulating Mountain and celebrating the rescue of the family, Oop storms off in a huff. Why do they insist on making Alley Oop so petty these days? Was he always this way?
Next Oop finds Oola taking a big plate of food to the “dreamy” Mountain, further enflaming his jealousy. Once again I have a hard time understanding Oola’s character. She has been Oop’s steady girlfriend since the dawn of time but when Oop finally asked her to marry him several months ago she blew him off and said she needed more time to think about it. Apparently that also meant more time to have flings with other characters whom she seems to fall for at every opportunity. Has she forgotten about Oop’s proposal or does she even care? Is it time for Oop to take that long ride to nowhere with Dinny that he almost took when she was head-over-heels for Dolph?

We interrupt this blog...

I want to take a quick break from Alley Oop for a moment to note a new comic strip by Michael Fraley, a frequent commenter on this site.
Michael’s new strip - Burnie and Clyde - can be found on the Comics Sherpa site where new comic artists are provided a chance to show their stuff and perhaps build up enough support and momentum to get into syndication. Here is Michael describing his new venture:

It's about time I put my money where my mouth is. I've got a new strip on Universal Press Syndicate's "Comics Sherpa" site for undiscovered talent. I've done various other “serious" things, including a series of "Arthur: King of Britain" comics that Caliber published back in the 1990's - but folks always seem to like the scribbly, goofy stuff I do best. OK, here it is, a strip about a conservative little turtle and his duck friend who only has one toe dipped in the reality basin.

Best of luck to Michael and his new endeavor. Be sure and check it out regularly.

Now back to our regular scheduled programming...

Waste not, want not

alleyoop 7-18-05
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

Do you suppose Doc Wonmug ever gets tired of buying new clothes for Alley Oop?
Everytime Oop goes to the future he gets a nice new set of clothes that perfectly fit his bulky frame.
You would think he might appreciate this and perhaps leave the clothes there at the time lab when he is not using them. But no! He obviously doesn't give the clothes a second thought.
Here we see Oop transported back to Moo still wearing his modern clothing which he promptly strips off and leaves lying on the ground.
Why couldn't he take a few seconds to change into his caveman clothes before being transported? Why does he have to be so wasteful, especially when he knows his friends have been struggling financially lately. What an ingrate!

Ignoring basic rules

Alley Oop 7/7/05
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

So that’s it?!?! Wowee takes the remote control buttons back and Poof! Suddenly everything is back to normal?? This is ridiculous!

First, I can’t believe they’ve been time traveling for nearly half a century now and this is the first time this “basic rule of time travel” has ever come up.
This is such a stupid way to end what seemed at first to be an interesting and promising storyline.
Good grief! Alley Oop screws around with things everytime he travels anywhere in time! We just finished a segment a few months ago where Oop and his dinosaur halted an English attack on a Scottish castle. Then he went back in time to “observe” a Greek wrestling legend to purportedly prepare for the Olympics and ended up beating the poor guy up and demoralizing him to the point where he wanted to give up wrestling altogether.
I think its a little late to suddenly be issuing a Prime Directive for this strip!

And another thing... Those remote control buttons aren’t the only thing Wowee brought back from the future! He replaced their entire time machine because Doc couldn’t remember how to fix it himself!
Surely the authors of this strip aren’t so completely dimwitted to not realize this is an even bigger alteration than those silly remote control buttons!! Arggghhhhh!!!

Transdimensional e-mail?

Alley Oop 6/20/05
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

Commenter Max is correct to point out how ridiculous it is for Dave Wowee to have Doc Wonmug’s e-mail address on his computer in the future. Unless they have invented some way to send e-mail through time it makes no sense. Will there be some explanation for this at some point later on? I doubt it. Sadly, I’m afraid it is just another inconsistency that has been overlooked by the strip’s current authors. I’m sure they thought it was clever to have Doc’s e-mail on the computer screen and didn’t stop to think that it wouldn’t be practical.

Still unresolved is the question of how such a dramatic shift in the nation’s political and social structure took place without Wowee being the slightest bit aware of it. It has been suggested that the remote control transporation devices accidently sent them to an alternative universe where historical events unfolded differently. That would probably make for a facinating storyline. Unfortunately, I doubt it is something this writing crew is capable of coming up with and it looks now like the more likely explanation is that Wowee is just as much of a clueless idiot as his benefactors from the past.

The Red vs Blue divide is an interesting plot device so I am curious to see where they are going with it next. In what seems like a political commentary on our present situation, the Red States (i.e. Crimsonia) have become obsessed with capturing terrorists to the point that they do not hesitate to invade people’s privacy ( Patriot Act) and abuse prisoners (Abu Gharib, Guantanamo) to accomplish their task. I’m curious to see how the Blue States (i.e. Azuria) will be presented - perhaps overrun with tree-hugging, terrorist-appeasing, hippie pacifists?

Blind coup

alleyoop 5-31-05
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

I’ve put off commenting on this latest Alley Oop series for a bit while trying to figure out where the heck they are going with all of this. So far Alley Oop and Ava haven’t progressed much further than the broom closet where they wound up after transporting themselves back to the future. They started off in a mad rush to try and save Doc Wonmug and Dave Wowee from some kind of futuristic prison where they’ve apparently been beaten senseless. For some reason Ava is unable to use the time machine to track Doc and Dave’s whereabouts and just zap them back to the present. So she and Oop launched themselves willy-nilly into the future and then just sat inside a closet for the better part of two weeks watching helplessly as the bad guys ransacked Dave’s laboratory.
They got there at just the right time to witness the bad guys planting bogus information in Dave Wowee’s computer that would incriminate him in some sort of global terrorist plot and now they have conveniently stumbled across the computer chip that was used to plant the bogus information that the bad guys carelessly left behind. The cartoon at right shows the ridiculous circumstances whereby one of the bad guys picks up a ream of paperwork in an awkward fashion and then fails to notice that the computer chip has slipped off and fallen on the floor. Why was he so careless with the computer chip and why does he need all that paperwork? Why do they even have that much paperwork in the future?

Ah yes, the future! Here are a few observations we can make so far about our future based on the sketchy details the strip has revealed so far.
Dave Wowee’s ridiculous hairstyle is ridiculous even then as everyone seems to either be bald or wearing fur-lined caps. We have yet to see any future women either.
Wowee’s cape is also not common in the future which leads us to the conclusion that rather than demonstrating some futuristic style of dress all this time, he is really just an eccentric wierdo who doesn’t fit in any better in the future than he does in the present. That might explain his willingness to abandon his future home and live in the “past” with Doc and Ava.
As I’ve noted before, the computers of the future must still be interfaced with a keyboard, but at least they float in the air and vanish when not in use.
The bad guys are wearing some kind of uniforms with medals dangling from their caps and goofy looking goggles which don’t appear to serve any purpose. Wowee is apparently not put off by these uniforms so maybe they are commonly worn by military folks of that period. But then we get this interesting exchange where Wowee tries to defend himself claiming his rights as an American citizen only to be informed that he is no longer in America. What!?!? So does that mean that there was a coup and the government was overthrown and Wowee is so clueless he didn’t even notice?
But then as an explanation all we are told is that we are now in some new country called Crimsonia and then the matter is dropped.
So where does that leave Oop and Ava? If the country has been overthrown by some nefarious group that is responsible for framing Wowee, who are they going to show their evidence to?

Empty time labs

alleyoop05042005
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

Couldn't Ava have just said "Alley Oop! Doc and Dave need help!" Instead we have already dragged this new storyline along for a week and a half as she launched into a long flash-back sequence that conveniently saved the most crucial points til the very end.
But the real question I have is why does she need Alley Oop in the first place? She had Doc and Dave pulled up on the time machine's view screen. Why couldn't she just zap them back to the time lab? What am I missing here? Is she not competent to operate the time machine by herself?
And here is another crucial point... Who is left in the time lab now? I assume that it is currently empty, so how did she manage to zap herself back to Alley Oop's time and how does she expect to get the two of them back? If this is not a probelm, why do they need a remote control device like the one that Dave Wowee was offering?

"Somethin' feels wrong here..."

alleyoop042805
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

Or so says Alley Oop at the start of this latest adventure. Why an experienced time traveler like Oop would find it strange just before Ava is zapped into Moo is not clear. Nevertheless, we are immediately presented with a distraught and inarticulate Ava babbling about needing help but unable to say why. Instead she launches into a lengthy flashback where we find ourselves in the time lab with Doc Wonmug just as his cousin Dave Wowee from the future shows up with "remote control transportation buttons."
I wonder if this will be connected with Doc's recent memory problems.

In the flashback, Ava seems alternately concerned and indifferent to the new gift from Wowee. Or maybe she is just disoriented from being transported all over the page by the cartoonists who can't keep her in the same spot from frame to frame. (See Thursday's cartoon where she starts off in the far background behind Wowee and then ends up in the immediate foreground in front of Doc Wonmug. No wonder she has an exclamation mark indicating shock or surprise!

But it was Wednesday's cartoon that threw me this time. Here is what Wowee says about the new gadgets from the future:
"We should have set you up with these long ago!"
Is he joking? What does he mean long ago? He came here in a time machine which purportedly could have been set to go as far back in time as he wanted. If he really wanted Doc to have these things sooner, he could go further back in time and give it to him then.

Guz - The Teflon King

Alleyoop 4-18-05
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

Why aren't the people throwing rotten fish at King Guz too? Why are they only going after J'on Fish?
It's not like J'on Fish could have inflicted his evil tax system on the people without the full support and cooperation of King Guz. And yet Guz walks away from this smelling like a rose (as opposed to rotten herring).

Attack of the jack-booted thugs

Alley Oop 4-8-05
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

This latest storyline by the Alley Oop writers is really pushing me to the limit. It is essentially a right-wing rant attacking the very foundations of our government and civilized society. It starts off with the ridiculous notion that Moo is some kind of utopian society where King Guz has been able to provide food, shelter and security for his people without any type of collective support system and where even the most primitive idea of "taxation" is completely foreign. How did Guz acquire all of his wealth in the first place that he must use to pay for the army that guards Moo's borders and for the stockpiles of food and the aid for the elderly and the infirmed (all of which he acknowledges to J'on Fish is provided by his kingdom)?
Now we have the evil J'on Fish (who Michael Fraley notes looks a lot like the Harry Mudd character from Star Trek) in charge of a despicable band of thugs who are terrorizing the citizens of Moo - taking the food off their tables and even swiping dolls from little girls - and playing out every right-wing fantasy about the horrors of the IRS.
Now we are just waiting for the inevitable anti-tax revolt that will be lead by Alley Oop to get under way. Jeez! Just get it over with, already.

Pencil pusher

alleyoop22805
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

Here we go again. We've spent 10 days worth of strips introducing the new bad guy. So far the only thing we know is that his name is J'on and he wears one of those sterotypical accountant's visors and carries a pencil behind one ear. But I thought Moo was set back in the stone age, so what is this guy doing with a pencil?
And then there is the annoying fact that the cartoonists can't keep straight which ear he carries his pencil on. Check out today's strip (2-28-05). In the first frame the pencil is behind his left ear. In the second frame it is behind his right ear. And in the final frame the pencil has vanished.
You may also have noticed that the size of the guy's bounty from Lem has more than tripled in size since he found a cart to requisition. When he was carrying the stuff on his shoulders it looked like a sizable load, but now that he has placed it in the cart it looks like he would need a team of mules to pull it along.
Today we finally get to the point where J'on meets Alley Oop and he immediately stumps our dimwitted hero with one of those big fancy English words "sovereign." Since everyone in Moo apparently speaks English, why is Oop stumped by this particular word? I guess we are supposed to come away with the impression that J'on is an elitist snob who is going to try and swindle them with his fancy talk and big words.

What's up with Oola?

Alley Oop 2-15-05
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

OK, now I'm really confused.
I've noted before how strange it is that after being Alley Oop's steady girlfriend since before World War II, Oola says she needs time to think about it when Oop finally gets around to proposing marriage.
But what's the deal with giving her new clothes away? She spent all that time going through shopping malls with Ava during the last trip to the future. They must have tried on hundreds of dresses during their weeks long shopping trip and now she just gives her prized new dress away like it was a hand-me-down rag?
I don't get it.

Right hand/Left hand

alleyoop020805
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

Notice in the first frame here that Heck and Marko (i.e. the bad guys) are holding their guns in their RIGHT hands. Then in the second frame, Alley Oop swings in on a rope and kicks the gun out of Marko's LEFT hand.
Why can't the artists keep these things straight??? Arrggghhhhh!!!!

"I thought sure I told you..."

alleyoop1-13-05
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

Some time back I speculated quite facetiously that Doc Wonmug might be suffering from Alzheimers. I brought this up because of the ridiculous storyline where Doc was unable to repair the time machine that he had invented. I noted that if Doc was unable to keep the time machine going long enough to pass the knowledge down to his heirs, there would be no way that a distant relative from the future would be able to come to his rescue and give him all new equipment. It just wasnâ??t logical, not that that has ever stopped these cartoonists before.
But now I am starting to wonder if they really intend for Doc to have Alzheimers or some other age-related memory deteriorating ailment. Note the latest strip above in which Doc seems confused about what he has told Oop and Oola since they came back from 15th Century France. He tells them there is a problem in Moo, but hasn't mentioned that he was bound and gagged by a couple of hoodlums who usurped his time machine for their nefarious oil drilling scheme.

"Didn't I tell you? Funny, I thought sure I told you..."

So maybe was are going to have segment coming up that will address Wonmug's mental state. I will be interested to see.

Next Position Please, Part II

alleyoop1-12-05
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

As I have noted previously, the artists who draw the Alley Oop strip have a difficult time keeping the characters in positions that are consistent from frame to frame as they constantly change perspectives.
In this strip, we see Oop and Oola facing Doc Wonmug following their latest time travel jaunt. Notice that Oola is standing at Oopsâ?? right side. Then in the final frame we see Oop and Oola again, only this time from Wonmugâ??s perspective and now suddenly Oola is standing to the left of Oop.
Why is this so difficult for the artists to keep straight?

A summons

alleyoop1-6-05
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

Interesting choice of words here by Doc Wonmug.

"I'm nearly free. Then I can summon Oop and Oola back."

Summon? To order to come or appear with authority or great urgency (Websters New World Dictionary). It makes it sound more like he is practicing the mystical arts rather than doing actual science.
Will they have a choice in the matter? Or don't they get zapped regardless?

Then there is the issue of parrallel time again. The narrator asks "But will Doc be too late?" (Answer: Yes).
Too late for what? He is tied up in 2005. Oop and Oola are in 1482 France. Why are we assuming that all these events are happening concurrently? Why can't Doc just "summon" them back from whatever time period he chooses? Grab them from the moment they left so it would be like they never went on this misadventure in the first place.

Swinging from bell towers

This latest Alley Oop series seems almost promising despite the bumpy send off. We began with Oop and Oola about to use the time machine to transport to modern Paris for a romantic vacation when suddenly a mysterious floating shelf appears above the time machine controls and drops a Coke can that somehow manages to reset the time coordinates to 1482 just as the characters are shipping off.
At first I couldn’t figure out why the writers were shipping them off to that time period when nothing particularly historical or noteworthy was taking place. But as it turns out the point was not historical, but literary and we are soon introduced to Quasimodo, i.e. The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Meanwhile, back at the time lab Doc Wonmug gets jumped by two hoods who were sneaking around outside and watching everything from a window. They tie him up and announce that they are going to use the time machine to travel back to ancient Moo with plans to lure a bunch of dinosaurs into a pit so that it will turn into a rich oil field by modern times. It is an odd get-rich scheme for someone with a time machine at their disposal, but it is workable.
Back in Paris we see that the shapely Oola has attracted the jealous ire of the local women who accuse her of being a sorceress after she stops them from throwing tomatoes at Quasi as part of their annual Festival of Fools. So she is carted off to prison while Oop stands around with his hands in his pockets. Oop does note that he could easily take out the two guards who are carting her away but chooses to do nothing because Doc told him that he can’t change history. Of course, this has never stopped him before, but for now we are supposed to accept this sudden adherence to some kind of time travel prime directive.
But then Oop changes his mind when he learns a little bit later that they are planning to burn Oola at the stake.
Up until this point, at least, the storty has seemed somewhat plausible. But now Oop has decided that the best way to rescue Oola is to disguise himself as Quasimodo, climb up to the top of the bell tower and swing down on a rope at the last moment. I can’t even see Spider Man pulling this one off.

The mysterious floating shelf

Alleyoop floating shelf
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

OK, what is with this floating shelf that comes out of nowhere? Look at the time machine in this comic strip. In the first frame we are looking over Doc Wonmugâ??s right shoulder as he hovers over the time machine keyboard preparing to send Alley Oop and Oola to current day France for a vacation. Then Oop suddenly wants his all-important flute that he claims to carry with him at all times even though we have never seen it up until now. So now Doc walks in front of the monitor to a table that wasnâ??t there before while Oop and Oola have mysteriously vanished. And behind him we see this floating shelf come out of nowhere suspended over the time machine.

Where did the shelf come from and what is holding it up? Is there now a wall there that wasnâ??t there before? Tomorrow we will get another view looking over the monitor and there wonâ??t be a wall or a shelf. I guess after the soda can defies gravity and leaps off the shelf on cue the shelf is no longer needed and is thus forgotten.
Obviously, the authors are setting us up for the next adventure and they needed someway to have things go wrong. But is this the best they could do? Weâ??ve seen already that they have no sense of space or proportion and no consistency in placing characters from one frame to the next. But having walls and shelves appear out of nowhere for convenience sake?? That must be a new low even for this crew!

Of course, the soda can has knocked things out of whack and the idiot Doc and the idiot Dave Wowee donâ??t notice or even bother to check that the time on the machine has now been reset to 1482. Earlier, Doc made a point of giving Oop and Oola a wad of cash which of course will be worthless in 1482. But how much do you want to bet that they wonâ??t have any problem with the language barrier? Iâ??m sure everyone in medieval France will speak perfect English.

Where does he keep the flute?

Oop flute
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

Where did this flute come from? I've been reading the Alley Oop strip now since 1995 and I've never heard of Oop having the slightest interest in music. Suddenly today Oop pulls this flute out of nowhere and starts playing it. Doc Wonmug obviously has never seen it before either when he makes his "Nice flute" comment. But Oop insists that he always carries the flute around with him along with his ever present stone axe.
So I have just one question. Since Oop normally goes around wearing nothing by a loincloth, where does he keep the flute? I can think of only one place and I'd rather not mention it.

Forced perspective

alleyoop9242004
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

One thing the current authors of the Alley Oop strip do with great regularity is have the characters talk to one another with their backs turned to each other. Presumably, this is so they can always show their faces to the comic-viewing audience. But they also have a bad habit of not keeping the characters in their proper places as they constantly shift perspective.

In today's strip you can see Doc Wonmug and Dave Wowee having a conversation with their backs to one another (Wowee is in the foreground). Now notice that in the first frame if the Doc wanted to see Wowee he would look over his left shoulder while Ava is standing over his right shoulder. But in the final frame of the strip they are reversed. Wowee is now over the Doc's right shoulder and Ava is over his left shoulder. Why can't they keep it straight? Am I the only one that sees this??

Oh, and what's with the French joke? Are they trying to make a political statement? Pretty lame.

Time keeps on slipping...

alleyoop Sept. 9, 2004
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

I just don't get this time business in the Alley Oop strip. How is it that these guys have a time machine and still seem to have no control over time whatsoever?
In this latest series, it begins several weeks ago with Doc Wonmug suggesting that Oop travel back in time to visit with some famous wrestlers in preparation for entering the 2004 Olympics. He does so and ends up visiting with three historical figures (one guy he sees twice). Each encounter couldn't have lasted more than 20 minutes before he was whisked away to the next destination. So today Oop is back from his travels and we find out that he has actually been gone for several weeks and the Olypics are now over back in the time with the time lab. (Note that Doc Wonmug has recorded the highlights of the games on a VCR tape. Talk about being behind the times!)
My goodness! Oop must be famished since he never ate anything. And he must be exhausted due to lack of sleep! And what has poor Oola been left to do all this time? Has she spent the whole month on a never-ending shopping spree with Ava and Dave Wowee? (Apparently so)
I was wondering how they were going to handle having Alley join the Olypics after the games were already over in our time, but this is just ridiculous. Even if travelling in time for 20 minutes equates to two months in present time, you would at least think that Doc Wonmug would know this and wouldn't have sent Oop in the first place. But you can never give these characters enough credit for being dimwitted.

Time travel ethics

alleyoop2003050740825
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

It seems like there should be certain rules in place for time travelers so they are not constantly manipulating the time line intentionally or otherwise. Maybe a book of ethics or at least good manners are needed. One of the first rules should be to not continuously shock people from the past by zapping yourself away right under their noses.
The Alley Oop cartoonists seem to delight in doing this as they have had Oop zapped away to the amazement of two historical figures in recent days - famed wrestling coach Dan Gable (pictured here) and turn-of-the-century wrestler Frank Gotch earlier.
Oop took pains earlier to hide the fact that he is a time traveler by telling Gable he had read about something Gotch once said after slipping and making it sound as if he had talked to him recently (which he had). So why, if he is trying to shield Gable from the knowledge that he is talking to a time traveler, would he zap away in plain sight rather than waiting until Gable wasnâ??t looking? You know that Doc Wonmug is watching everything on a big view screen and can choose the moment when he wants to zap Alley away. So what gives?
Of course saying that Oop tries to hide his time travel status isnâ??t always true. Most recently he has zapped back to ancient Athens to visit the demoralized wrestler Milo while still wearing an Iowa University sweat shirt. Of course, Milo doesnâ??t seem to notice this oddity. He is too busy carrying a huge bull on his shoulders -something he had done for years to prepare for the Olympics. Now Oop is going to â??adiviseâ?? him that to win at wrestling he needs to get in shape and be in top physical condition. Yep.

Dumbed Down

alleyoop2045761040817
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

Whenever the Alley Oop cartoonists introduce a historical figure into the cartoon strip they usually manage to dumb them down in their effort to have them interact with the imbeciles who make up the regular cast.
In this strip we have Dan Gable, the former Olympic wrestler and coach at Iowa University, trying to give wrestling advice to Oop.
Here is his advice:

"If your friend is in top codition, he'll have the stamina to run his opponent all over the mat... until he runs him out of gas. You know.... wears him out."

"Runs him out of gas???" I certainly hope that Coach Gables didn't really talk like that. Or that he had the bad speech habit of always saying "You know..."

Oop is typically clueless, but then a light comes on in his tiny little pea-sized brain. We can only imagine what that means...

Breaking the Ice

Alley Oop has supposedly been sent back in time to ancient Athens to find the great Greek wrestler Milo so that he could learn from him in his own bid to become a wrestler in the 2004 Olympics. But Dr. Wonmug sent Oop to a time before Milo had a chance to compete in his own Olympics so I’m not sure what Oop was supposed to learn from the guy. Anyway, once there Oop challenges Milo to a match and promptly throws him 20 feet in the air so that he comes crashing down on his face. Now Milo’s spirit has been broken and he is contemplating giving up his dream of being an Olympian. So Oop promises to go find other historic figures and ask their advice for Milo.
Next Oop gets shipped to 1900 Iowa to meet Frank Gotch, another famous wrestler from history. Once there Oop inexplicably grabs the guy and throws him 20 feet in the air so that he too comes crashing down on his face. Afterwards, Oop says “Oops, Sorry. Guess it was a conditioned response.”
A conditioned response!?! To grab some guy who is walking past you and throw them violently to the ground??
When Gotch gets up his head is spinning with little stars floating around. You might think he would be a bit preturbed with Oop at this point, but you would be wrong. Instead he says “Now that you have my attention, what is it that you want?”
Wow, some icebreaker. Good think it didn’t break Gotch’s back too.
So Oop asks this guy who he has just slammed to the ground for wrestling advice, as if he needs it. Gotch has two things to contribute. First, he makes the brilliant observation that a wrestler needs to be in excellent physical condition. Great. When we first met Milo, he was walking around with a fully grown bull on his shoulders. He explained that he had been carrying the bull around since it was a calf to help condition himself for wrestling. So Oop is going to go back now and tell Milo that he needs to get in shape??
Gotch’s second bit of advice is to smile at your opponent to take them off their guard. I’m sure that will be a big help for Milo too. And that is all the advice he has. Then Dr. Wonmug zaps Oop away while he is still talking with Gotch, no doubt traumatizing him for the rest of his life.
Next Wonmug turns around and ships Oop to 1972 Iowa to meet wrestling coach Dan Gable, supposedly the greatest Olympic wrestler of all time. Once again Oop wrestles the guy but this time the match ends in a draw. So what kind of advice does Alley need anyway? If he can beat or best the greatest wrestlers in history, what could they possibly tell him that he would need to know?
Of course Gable’s first pearl of wisdom is that a wrestler needs to be in top phsical condition. Well, Duh. I think we have heard that somewhere before and once again the information will be of no use to Milo.

Honeymoon in Athens

So now we are off on an Olympic-themed adventure. Just a short time ago, Alley Oop had finally proposed marriage to his long, long, long, long-time girlfriend Oola. Suddenly Dr. Wonmug pops in uninvited and invites the pair to come back to the future for a “vacation.” Oola is immediatly shipped off on a shopping spree with Ava. Despite the fact that she comes from a prehistoric culture with no money, Oola is surprisingly well versed in our modern day consumer culture. I suppose that Ava is going to spring for all the things that Oola might want to buy.

Meanwhile, Oop’s “vacation” seems to consist of mainly sitting on a couch with a beer and watching sports on TV. One thing this comic strip does well is fortifying sexist stereotypes. But then out of the blue we have Wonmug suggesting that Alley Oop drop everything and start training for the Olympics. This should make most readers suspicious of Wonmug’s intentions in bringing Oop back to the future at this point. Maybe he is planning on making some bets on the side.
Oop, of course, has now forgotten all about asking Oola to marry him and is ready to transport back to the past to meet an ancient Athenian wrestler to help him train for the modern games. He doesn’t even bother to change back into his caveman outfit, which would probably be more appropriate for the time period than the slacks and polo shirt he is now wearing.
In a most remarkable turn of fortune, the first person Oop meets after his transport is Milo, the wrestler he is supposed to train with (Imagine that!). Milo takes no notice of Oop’s strange clothing and all his curiosity as to the identity of this strange person is completely satisfied upon learning his name.

Next position please

One of the things that drives me crazy about the Alley Oop strip today is the way the artists can't seem to keep the character's positions straight from one frame to the next. Take today's strip (July 2, 2004) as an example.
Notice in the first frame we see Dave Wowee facing forward with Ava just to his right and Oola is across the room in front of him. Alley Oop is to Dave's left across from Ava.
Then in frame 2 Oola is suddenly behind Dave and to his right. Then in the final frame, Oola is back across the room and Ava has switched sides and is on Dave's left with Alley Oop nowhere to be found.

A modest proposal

So Alley Oop finally gets around to asking Oola to marry him after 71 years (the Alley Oop strip began in 1933) and Oola says she needs time to think about it!?!?! Aaarrrrgggghhhhh!!!
But before we have to deal with that any further the incredibly annoying Dr. Wonmug suddenly pops in from the future. He has obviously been snooping on them with his time machine and decides to barge into the middle of their intimate encounter to invite them on a “vacation” to the future. Golly! It’s not as if they had ever been there before.
So what is Oop’s reaction when Wonmug suddenly barges in just moments after he has popped the big question? He asks if the time machine has broken down again. That’s like having someone drive up to your house and your first reaction is to ask if their car is broken down. No, you idiot. That’s how I got here.
Now remember that it wasn’t too long back that Oop was trapped in a Scottish dungeon when Dr. Wonmug couldn’t figure out how to fix his broken time machine and during his extended absense from Moo he nearly lost Oola to another suitor. So one might think that he wouldn’t be real hot on the idea of jumping back into the time machine for another trip so soon. But of course you would be wrong. They are ready to go without even a thought of going back to the cave to do any packing or to get a change of clothes. So, off we go again. Whoopee!

The Pit

I sometimes wonder how far in advance some cartoonists craft their stories, especially when world events begin to converge on the action taking place in the comic strip.
Surely, I wasn’t the only person who cringed when the storyline about Dolf wrapped up with King Guz sending him to “the pit” at the same time that the Abu Gharib prisoner abuse scandal was making big news around the globe.
Dolf, of course, was the mysterious interloper who started wooing Alley Oop’s girlfriend Oola while our caveman adventurer was out on one of his pointless time traveling jaunts. When Oop came back he went after Dolf like Ken Starr went after Bill Clinton - digging for dirt, spreading rumors and innuendo and generally trashing his character to everyone who would listen.
But unfortunately for Dolf, the strip’s authors had it out for him in the end. As Oop’s obsession with Dolf grows, we see the cheerful, good-natured Dolf suddenly transformed into a dastardly villian right before our eyes. Now, instead of smiling pleasantly at everyone, he has a nasty scowl on his face whenever he is not dealing directly with one of the main characters. We also find that in addition to being a vile evil-doer, Dolf is also an idiot (which explains how he was able to fit in so well with the rest of the Moovians).
It turns out that Dolf has been drugging King Guz to get him to say where his troops are stationed on the border between Moo and Lem. You see, Dolf is a Lemmian who is secretly planning to lead an invasion force into Moo to take over the country. But this begs the question, if he already has King Guz under his thumb why does he need to invade? What would that accomplish?
And if he can’t defeat the Moovian forces at the border and only plans to sneak by them, what is he going to do when they come in from the border to confront him once he is inside Moo with his invasion force?
These questions are never addressed, however, since Alley Oop has already devined what Dolf’s plan is and is there to foil him when he leads his ragtag group of invaders across the border. During the melee that ensues, Dolf has a chance to escape, but stupidly decides to stop and see if Oola is still enamored with him. She of course slugs him and he is carted back to King Guz in handcuffs. When Guz learns of Dolf’s treachery he immediately sentences him to be thrown into “the pit” which I guess is Moo’s version of Abu Gharib prison. No trial, no appeal, no legal counsel, not even a chance to contact family members.

The spy who made me jealous

I know I haven’t posted here in a while, but the latest Alley Oop story line has just been too awful for words.
Let’s see if I can summarize the past eight months in a few paragraphs...
The idiots at the time lab have finally returned Alley Oop to Moo where he finds that during his lengthy absense a new character named Dolf has moved in on his territory by charming the citizens of Moo, befriending King Guz and, to top it off, is courting Oop’s longtime girlfriend Oola.
One might wonder at this point why the time mavens can’t return Oop to Moo closer to the time that he left so that his absense wouldn’t be noticed. I mean, it’s a time machine for crying out loud! But nevermind.
And so naturally Oop’s first reaction is one of intense jealousy and anger. He is so distraught by the notion of a competitor for Oola’s affections that he gives up on asking Oola to marry him (She has been his steady girlfriend since the strip was started in 1933 and he is just now getting around to thinking about matrimony??) and he doesn’t even bother to let her know that he is back from his recent spate of time travelling. Instead he decides to take off on a pointless trip to nowhere with his one remaining true friend - Dinny the dinosaur. But before he can take off for good he spies Dolf wandering about and decides to stalk him. Based on no evidence whatsoever, Oop is suddenly convinced that Dolf is some kind of villian who is up to something. Oop soon runs into his friend Foozy and in no time at all has convinced him - still based on no evidence - that Dolf is bad news and they start plotting ways to foil Dolf’s nefarious plans.
Things are getting a little creepy at this point with Oop conspiring against this poor guy for daring to court his girlfriend while he’s been gone when the authors decide to give the readers a broad hint that (gasp!) Dolf really is a bad guy and so all of Oop’s worst suspicions are dead on. (Note to future spies who want to help overthrow the Moovians: Don’t get Alley Oop jealous and you will never be found out.)
As it turns out, the nefarious Dolf has been drugging King Guz - using a truth serum made by the wizer - in order to learn the position of his troops guarding the border between Moo and Lem.
So now catching up to present day we find that Oop has singlehandedly ordered all the troops to be repositioned without even telling King Guz what he is doing or why and is preparing to set a trap for Dolf.

Feynman to the rescue

Now they have pulled the reknowned physicist Richard Feynman into this lame story line. Incredible! And in keeping with the standards of the strip, they have to make him appear to be just as stupid as the rest of the characters.
Here is some of the gibberish that they have Feynman saying just moments after being accidently zapped into the time lab by the new time machine:

"Perhaps if we analyze the physical dynamics of the coordinating vectors used in the space-time continuum used as your foundation, we could reconfigure the fundamental synchronicity involved!"

Not only does that make no sense whatsoever - even using Star Trekkian sci-fi logic - it is not even good grammar.

So now it has become clear that not only is Dr. Wonmug a complete idiot who has no idea how his own time machine is supposed to work (in addition he is a complete jerk as demonstrated by the scene in which Feynman is first zapped into the lab and very naturally asks "Who are you people", instead of answering him, Dr. Wonmug rushes up to him with an angry scowl and screams in his face "No, Who are you!!!" - as if it was his fault for coming to the time lab rather than Alley Oop - sheesh!!) but we now know that future-boy Dave Wowee - Dr. Wonmug's "cousin" from the future - is also a complete idiot who doesn't have the foggiest notion how his own time machine from the future operates.
So now we have to pull in a famous historical figure from the past to help our crew of dimwits fix their problem. And of course, Feynman is eager to jump into this problem just moments after being zapped into the lab in the middle of one of his bongo drumming sessions.
Maybe once Feynman fixes the time machine he will confiscate it and take it away from these dangerously stupid people who have no right to be messing around with technology that they do not understand.

The end is near

This painfully awful Alley Oop segment appears to finally be drawing to some sort of conclusion. First Dr. Wonmug has been thoroughly humiliated by his inability to repair his own time machine, then his "cousin" Dave Wowee from the distant future comes to the rescue with a time machine from the future... and now we find out that even future boy has no clue as to how the time machine works. After spending what seemed like weeks doing calculations on a yellow note pad, Wowee finally returns Oscar Boom to the present time period but is then mystified that Alley Oop didn't transport with him. So what was that he said earlier about needing to have all the precise coordinates in place, blah, blah, blah...
Maybe when they finally show that Alley Oop has mysteriously transported back to his time period in Moo the writers will anounce that they are retiring the strip and relenquising their pens. We can only hope.

The lovefest continues

This whole lovefest between Alley Oop the wimp priest and the king who is supposed to look like Sean Connery is getting way too syrupy now. And I like the way that Oscar Boom has suddenly dropped off the face of the planet. I mean, as far as the king and the priest are concerned Boom is just a criminal who should still be in the stockade. Aren't they concerned that he is standing there wielding a broken board like a club? While Oop is soaking in all this adulation and being granted his freedom will he even remember to say "Oh, and what about my friend over here?"

Well armed prisoners

Wow! Alley Oop looks absolutely sinister today as he waits to pounce on his captors with a vicious looking polearm that was conveniently left lying around in his cell. I mean, how stupid is that? That they would leave these kinds of weapons lying around in a cell where they keep their prisoners locked up?
Meanwhile, the wimp priest who was totally won over by Alley Oop during their two-second chance encounter seems to have forsaken his own faith in favor of worshiping the time-traveling caveman. It is the priest and the king, who is supposed to look like Sean Connery, who are approaching the cell in such a noisy fashion. Do you suppose Oop will lop their heads off with his polearm before they can explain that they have come to free him? We can only hope.... Meanwhile, what's up with the morons back in the time lab? Are they taking a coffee break or something? They zapped Dinny the Dinosaur away about a half hour ago and still haven't done anything to retrieve Oop and Oscar Boom. Oh well.

Thanks be to Alley Oop!

As I predicted, the priest has been declared a hero by the denizens of the Scottish castle after Dinny the dinaosaur is zapped away by the time machine. He has been carried back into the castle to be presented to the King (who bears a striking and most certainly not accidental resemblance to Sean Connery). Despite the fact that the King is the one who sent for the priest in the first place and sent him on the mission to vanquish the dinosaur, the Scotsmen still find it necessary to introduce the priest to the King (sigh). And for a good example of how poorly and illogically the Alley Oop strip is drawn these days check out the June 5 segment when the King reaches out with his left hand to shake the priest's hand and the priest in turn reaches out with his right hand. You can't shake hands that way, morons!!
Today, we have the King congratulating the priest on his accomplishment, but the priest stops him and says that he cannot take credit for what has happened. Now any good priest would be expected to say this and of course would insist that the credit for the good work be given to God. But not this priest. He is sure to give credit to Alley Oop and ask that he be released from the dungeon. The only question that remains is whether the idiots controlling the time machine will figure out how to zap Oop and Boom out of there before they go down to release them. Remember that for no logical reason we are operating in concurrent time frames here, so how long does it take them to reset the time machine now that it has been upgraded with all this fancy gadgetry from the future?