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.