What a long, strange trip it's been...

I've never been so thankful to see the "ZANG" effect before. This whole storyline was way beyond dragging. It had lost steam a month ago, had slowed to a stop and was starting to roll backwards.
Then they had to go and torture us further with the suggestion that they would extend this sequence by taking Rudy with them for what commenter Jim aptly described as "The Last Tango in Moo."

But before they go, Oop has to throw out that last stupid comment: "We've got a long trip ahead of us."
What does he mean 'long trip'? The time traveling is pretty much instantaneous, isn't it? Unless Doc Wonmug screws up and ships them off to the wrong century again, they should be back in Moo or in the time lab the next time we see them.

Please stop the torture!

We've been dragging along with this "dance lessons" storyline now since before Christmas. It's had a few good moments, but overall it has really strained our loyal readership here at Alley Oop Watch. Now, finally, it looks like we may have reached the finale with this Valentine's Day strip.

I think frequent commenter Jeff says it best:

I really, really, REALLY hope this tortureous storyline is over. I beg you, Jack and Carole, zap Oop out of Ooola’s arms RIGHT NOW, and into a MANLY adventure. (Wouldn’t THAT be a riot if they did? What with Ooola being fully supported by Oop in the last panel of today’s comic, and Wonmug zaps Oop into another time leaving Ooola to fall on her ass!)

Ooola is evil, blardy blardy blah

I've read and appreciated the posts that have appeared on today's strip already, but I thought that it was worth a separate post anyway.

I'm not going to dwell on what's being done with Ooola in this storyline for very long, because it's more of the same, as far as my comments about
Ooola's treatment of Alley goes. Rudy wants to make Oop jealous. Ooola plays along. Oop gets mad, and suddenly he's the bad guy again. Blah, blah, blah.

What's telling is Rudy's reaction to Oop. He doesn't come off as being a real "man's man" here, and for Ooola to have to protect the world's greatest lover from her "insignificant other" is pretty sad. In short, Rudy can deal it out, but he can't take it. And he gets drawn to look like Shemp from the Three Stooges to boot!

Anyway, I got tired of thinking about this story, and decided to splice together my own story from other strips. So I've enlisted Oop from today's strip, Bucky from "Get Fuzzy," a panel from "Mark Trail" that I hijacked from joshreads.com, and a great "Pearls Before Swine" panel to tell a story about a caveman trading insults with a cat, hill folk with questionable thoughts, and a hungrily affectionate crocky-dile. From murderous love to loving murderously. Boredom is a wonderful thing.

Wasting time

Today Ooola gives us our first clue as to why she gave Oop the brush-off when he finally got around to proposing matrimony. (Personally, I think it’s because she just can’t stand the thought of being named Ooola Oop.)
It seems that Alley Oop is always off on his time travel jaunts leaving poor Ooola to sit at home in her cave and sort rocks. This, of course, brings up the question as to why time travel takes up so much, ummm, time.
Is there any reason why Doc Wonmug couldn’t return Oop to the same precise time that he picked him up following each adventure? That way it would be as if he had never left and the people of Moo would be none the wiser.
That would certainly be the smart way to handle things since it would reduce the liklihood that they are screwing around with history by constantly removing Oop from his home. As it is, it seems that everytime Oop is away some tragedy befalls the poor people of Moo that Oop has to straighten up when he gets back. Imagine how much potential there is for distorting the timeline everytime they zap Oop away for an extended period of time. Perhaps he was meant to marry Ooola and have a whole bunch of kids, but now the relationship has been strained and they never get together and whole generations of descendants are snuffed out.
Of course, there is also the possibility that the Moovians are a historical dead-end. Maybe their society goes extinct at some point and therefore messing around with their timeline doesn’t make any difference. Perhaps Doc Wonmug knows this and is thus not worried. Just some food for thought.

Nothing to Prove

Apologies to all for being out of action for the past few weeks ... it's been an intensely busy time at work. Darn making a living, anyhows ... But on with the show ...

For the past couple of weeks, the Oopster and Ooola have been prancing around in what the dailies have told us is a 1915 dance studio with future silent movie heart throb Rudolph Valentino. Actually, Oop has been learning to dance with a Gwyneth Paltrow look-alike, while Ooola gets to spend some quality time with The Sheik himself.

One of my favorite things about this past week has been the increasingly "Yellow Submarine" cartoon look to Oop's feet (see second image for a comparison).

In this condensed Sunday version, the whole idea seems to be to get Oop to snap out of it and actually show that he cares about Ooola, which is ridiculous. For this scenario to make sense, we have to make ourselves forget that Oop has been remarkably faithful for decades, has proposed marriage, has been refused, and has spent the past ... geez, how long has it been now? ... either pining away for this prehistoric shrew or acting like an eager little puppy whenever she's around? I would be asking Santa Claus (who provided the impetus for this jaunt) for a refund or a better idea right about now ...

Flip flop redux

The Sunday strip this week is, once again, a summary of the previous week's continuity - and as far as that goes, it's OK, especially if your local paper doesn't also run the daily. As Mike pointed out earlier this week, there's some flip flop fun going on here - and the fact that it's condensed flip flop fun on Sunday just gives us more to look at, I think. We've got a magically disappearing hat. All right, I think I can understand why the hat is here. It provides a continuity point with the last panel from the previous week. However, it conflicts with the panels right next to it. In panel two, there's a good amount of space in which Rudy could have been seen taking off his hat with his left hand. Would've made for a smoother transition, anyway.

In panel three Rudy has moved into Oop's spot next to Ooola, and in panel four the flip flop is complete. Effectively, these three have been doing square dance moves for about ten seconds' worth of conversation.

The last fun element in this strip is that rather Freudian arrow in the last panel. Believe me, this is an easy problem to run into when you're drawing comics and trying to guide the eye of the reader. I've looked at this page, trying to figure out where else in the layout the arrow could be positioned, and I'm not sure I can think of anything better. Let's just say that having an arrow pointing at the "naughty bits" of a couple doing some romantic dancing ... well, it's just unfortunate.

So - good individual drawings, delicate color, a magic hat, square dancing, and a naughty arrow. Not bad for one Sunday.

Flip-flop

They must do this on purpose. There is just no other explanation. I think the Benders are intentionally placing these errors of perspective into the strip just to keep me entertained.
I can find one in almost every strip they draw these days.
Look at today’s strip (Jan. 10) for example. In the first frame, we see Rudolph Valentino in the background where he is gesturing with his right hand. In the immediate foreground we see Alley Oop with Ooola standing to his right.
Now in frame 2, we have suddenly shifted perspective and are now looking at the back of Valentino’s head and over his shoulders, but now suddenly Ooola is standing on the left side of Oop. (At least Valentino is still gesturing with his right hand.)

No wonder Oop and Ooola have exclamations over their heads! In less time than it takes for Valentino to say his name, they have been transposed. They are no doubt looking at one another and thinking “How did I get over here?”
For artists who routinely changes perspectives in each strip, why is it so difficult for them to keep something this simple and this basic straight?

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.