Ooops! That must be Alley’s cue...

Like helpless 2-year-olds, the womenfolk have gone and gotten themselves into a big mess again. Poor Alley, can’t turn his back for a second without one of them wandering off and getting eaten by a sabertooth tiger (or is that a sabertooth sloth cosidering how slow it is?) or stupidly rapelling halfway down a cliff and getting stuck because she didn’t use a long enough rope.
Now Ooola has tripped and will no doubt end up dangling on the end of the rope with Dee where they will have to wait for Alley to come to their rescue.

Graverobber

My Lord, this is getting downright creepy! What the hell is wrong with these people? The look in Dee’s eyes is just sick as she practically drools over this recently dead neanderthal’s remains. Doesn’t she realize that what she is doing is in essence graverobbing?
She is not at some archeological site thousands of years in the future. She got in a frickin’ time machine and traveled thousands of years into the past, just shy of when the neanderthals were living, and is now digging up gravesites under no more than a few inches of top soil (considering that she uncovered it with a little hand trowel in less than a minute).
Ooola was right to react disgusted by what Dee is doing. This IS disgusting!
Maybe Dee will next fixate on Ooola’s pristine cavewoman skull. Imagine how much she could learn from that!
“Hey Dee! What are you doing with that axe in your hand? Whoa! Watch where you’re swinging that thing. You could take someone’s head off!”

Time traveling archeologist?

Let’s see if I can get my mind around this. I don’t know what era Moo is supposed to be in, but just for grins let’s say it is 10,000 BC.
So, Dee wants to know what was going on in 15,000 B.C. and she has access to a time machine. So what does she do?
She goes back to 10,000 B.C. and then starts an archeological excavation!?!?
Does anybody else see something wrong with this picture? Did it ever occur to her to simply get back in the time machine and go back another 5,000 years or so?
Maybe if we are lucky she will get eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger before she does too much digging.

Dig this!

I assume we are going to get up close and personal with each one of Alley Oop's myriad party guests which should drag this out for several weeks at least. That's OK, I suppose. It could be worse.
First up was Will Rogers who became a setup for a lariat gag with Ooola. Next was Doc Wonmug's former assistant who has now promised to stick around and upgrade the time lab with new software (and new bugs, no doubt).
Now we get Doc's daughter Dee who tells Oop today that she is leaving her job as a museum curator to do archeaology.
"I can't wait to do some digging around Moo," she says.
Ummm. Why? Can someone please explain why someone with ready access to a time machine would spend time on archeaological digs?

The Surprise Party

I’ll bet nobody saw this coming! A gathering of all the characters from the recent storylines to wish Alley Oop a happy 75th birthday. I can see Fill, the barbecue guy; the bongo-playing physicist Richard Feynman; dance instructor Rudolph Valentino; Will Rogers; Dave Wowee; and the usual cast of characters including a few surprises like King Tunk and Oscar Boom. Awful nice of them to let Boom out of that bottle to celebrate Oop’s birthday.
I can’t make out everyone in the strip today. It is kind of small on the computer screen and blowing it up just makes everything fuzzy. Plus, I’m just not up on all my Oop history. So I’m requesting some of my readers to help me out and pick out who some of these other folks are.

Blame the syndicate

Alley Oop bursts into the Bender’s studio swinging his ax and what does Jack do? He cowers in a corner and points his finger at Carole.
“All I can do is draw whatever Carole writes,” he whimpers.
Sheesh! It reminds me of the episode a while back when Guz cowered in his cave while King Tunk took control of Moo.
And then what does Carole do? She blames the Syndicate! Brilliant! A nameless, corporate bureaucracy is ultimately to blame for all of Oop’s problems.
In fact, I think she nailed it. I too blame the syndicate - for hiring the Benders to do the Alley Oop strip in the first place!
So what is Oop going to do now? Bust down the doors at United Media? Or give up and go home in defeat just in time for his big surprise party?
It’s a shame the Benders didn’t take their cue for this storyline from Stephan Pastis who draws the “Pearls Before Swine” comic strip. He recently had a segment in which he introduced a caricature of himself which had a twist that most Alley Oop readers could appreciate...

Alley Oop meets YouTube

On a whim I did a quick search of YouTube for anything about Alley Oop. Wading through the bazillion references to the popular basketball dunking manuever, I came across these curious clips harkening back to a 1978 cartoon show I was completely unaware of.
The first clip is the intro to the cartoon series called Fabulous Funnies featuring what I believe to be is Foozy. The short-lived show featured animated versions of comic strips such as Broom Hilda, Nancy and Sluggo, Katzenjammer Kids and Alley Oop.



The second clip is of a video review show that pans one of the Alley Oop episodes found on an old VCR tape. It is the only other clip I could find that had any pictures of the Alley Oop characters. Even the video versions of the old Alley Oop song by the Hollywood Argyles doesn’t show any of the Alley Oop characters.



Y’all can provide your own withering reviews of the Fabulous Funnies version of Alley Oop in the comments below.

Who Can It Be Now?

I was on vacation for awhile and it looks like things have really been cookin’ at Alley Oop Watch while I’ve been out. Things have gotten really bizarre in Alley Oop’s world lately with a sulking, thoroughly self-obsessed Alley Oop about to go postal on the current day authors of the comic strip.
`Not that the Benders don’t deserve to have Oop go postal on them, but it shouldn’t be over something as pathetic as his insistent whining about people forgetting his birthday. What he should really pound them about is turning his heroic character into such a whining wuss. Not to mention making him such a vengeful, arrogant, conceited doofus to boot. How dare those Moovians consider the anniversary of their country to be somewhat more important than Oop’s birthday! Such an outrage!!! I guess Oop is like a kid who was born on the 4th of July and thinks all the fireworks every year are for him.
Meanwhile, during the course of this bizarre, time-skipping, multi-dimensional, reality-bending scenario we have learned that Hamlin and Graue aren’t the slightest bit perturbed when Oop comes banging on their door, but the Benders are obviously terrified. What’s that supposed to mean?
Oh, and Dave Wowee is apparently an homage to Dave Graue.
Well, I have to say that the premise of the latest episode, while outlandish, is at least somewhat original and, dare I say, interesting. So good news all around for the poor, forsaken fans of Alley Oop who have had to suffer these many months through one awful series of strips after another.

You just said that

Well I’d have to say that today’s Alley Oop strip advances the storyline not one iota from yesterday’s nearly identical strip.
What’s up with this?? Did the authors draw two versions of the same strip and then decide to use both of them just to be lazy? Did they forget that they said the same thing the day before? Do they not know where they are going with the story next and are thus attempting to stall and delay the storyline?
I’d say the answer is “All of the Above” based on what we have seen from the authors these past few years.
And what is with this “Boppo” character? Have we seen him before or is he a new invention? Is he supposed to be a long-lost Marx Brother or something?

And we’re off again...

Finally time for a new adventure and already the first panel has lots of problems. Look closely at the two panels side by side, both from the same perspective with Guz’ cave entrance in the upper right corner. In the first frame we have Oop in the center of the panel rushing up to talk to a guy holding a spear. Oola is on the left side of the frame facing towards us and addressing another woman.
In the second panel, the only person still in the correct position is the spear guy, although he has swapped the hand holding the spear and the strap that runs across his chest in panel one is now gone.
Meanwhile, Oop has run all the way to the front of the panel and turned his back to us, while Oola has completely flipped sides, turned her back and replaced one of the men who had been standing behind the spear guy.
“Anybody know what’s up here?” Oop asks.
“Not a clue!” spear guy says.
And apparently neither do the cartoonists. They don’t know what’s up, down, left, right or sideways.
Sheesh!

Catching up...

OK, I know I’m behind, but it’s not like the story is zipping along at such a pace that I can’t catch up.
I’m torn now as to what is most annoying. Is it the really, really big dumb things in the strip, like introducing an Alley Oop look-a-like out of the blue with no explanation? Or is it all the little dumb things that add up over time, like in today’s strip where Queen Umpa tells Oola to “send word” if she needs help when we’ve already established that she is going alone? What is she going to do? Whip out her cell phone?
This Early Oop character’s sudden insertion into the strip reminds me of the fourth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where they suddenly revealed that Buffy had a sister named Dawn. And the most shocking thing about it was that Buffy, who we had understood was an only child up until then, reacted as if nothing was out of the ordinary and as if she had always had a sister. Of course, it was quickly explained in the series that Dawn wasn’t really Buffy’s sister, but an ethereal being known as “the key” who had the power to destroy the world if she were to fall into the wrong hands. Therefore, a group of magical creatures seeking to protect the key had transformed her into Buffy’s sister and then altered everyone’s memories so that Buffy would protect her. Or something like that. At least, they made the effort to explain the situation, unlike our Alley Oop writers who apparently don’t have enough respect for their readers to give them that much.
Finally, I want to second the comments in the previous thread about the inexcusable behavior of the Early Oop character with the implications that he is an abusive serial stalker and a menace to society. How the hell did that escape everyone in Moo’s notice up until now?

Burning biscuits

Foozy knows the good Oop, so that would seem to be a strike against the notion that Alley accidently wound up in Early Oop’s parallel universe. So does this mean that Early Oop is intruding in Alley’s universe, or are we just supposed to accept that Early is just another character in this universe, who just happens to look like Alley, and has the same last name as Alley, and knows all about Alley (and Oola), and apparently has it out for Alley, and.... yet we the faithful readers are completely in the dark as to who this new character is.
A long-lost brother? Does anyone know if Alley ever had a family? Parents, siblings, cousins?

Meanwhile, when would a caveman ever use the phrase “burn his biscuits”? Are the Benders still hung up on the last storyline? Because that sounds like something Will Rogers would have said, not Early Oop.

Happy New Year

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

Could they be related?

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

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

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

Is it over yet?

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

That’s using your head, Oscar!

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

Wasted opportunity/wasted time

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

Why, I oughta.....

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

The destruction of Oscar Boom

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