Sunday Comics Survey from The Washington Post: We Love WUMO

Greetings to our blog readers in Algeria, Serbia and Lithuania.

Today, we reveal our ten favorite comic strips from the Sunday edition of "The Washington Post," which came out on Sept. 21, 2014. The newspaper has an eclectic mix of comics, some of which are aimed at young demographics ("Reply All," "Knight Life"), some of which are aimed at folks over 50 ("Doonesbury"and "Sally Forth" ) and some of which are aimed at people who are 92 or older and living in a retire home in Bethesda, Md. ("Dennis the Menace," "Pickles").

The images above are of 1) the planet Mars which was the subject of a gag in "WUMO," 2) Mae West for "Sherman's Lagoon" since the strip was focused on Sherman's wife who is quite sardonic and 3) dragons in Varna, Bulgaria, for "Rhymes with Orange" as Hilary B. Price which had dragon ordering 'hero sandwiches' from a fast food place..........yes, we presume the hilarious strip will be misunderstood in Uzbekistan as well!

Here is the top ten:

1) WUMO

2) Pearls Before Swine

3) Sherman's Lagoon

4) Rhymes with Orange

5) Judge Parker

6) Lio

7) Speed Bump

8) The Argyle Sweater

9) Dustin

10) Frazz

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

For our "Roanoke Times" comics survey, go to our sister blog: http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com

Sunday Washington Post Comics Survey: Tell Jeff Bezos We Love "Dustin"

Yes, we have had distractions this week, but we are back with our weekly survey of our favorite comic strips in Sunday newspapers. It should be pointed out that we also love several comic strips not published in either "The Washington Post" nor "The Roanoke Times," the two newspapers' comic pages we survey; these include "Bleeker," about a robotic dog, "Pros and Cons," about the legal profession, and "The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee," about a slightly overeager science whiz kid.

Jeff Bezos who made his fortune in Amazon, we are referring to the e-purchase site not the river in Brazil, took over "The Washington Post" recently and on Sunday, there were noticeable changes to the paper as a whole, but thankfully, no changes, for the better or worse, were made to the comic strips pages. Nevertheless, we hope Bezos understands that we really enjoy "Dustin."

The comic strip about a single twenty-something bears a bit of a resemblance to Dustin Hoffman's title character in "The Graduate," as both are seeking out how to establish themselves in the world. One of the key differences is that there is no Mrs. Robinson in "Dustin" (the comic strip). In this week's strip, Dustin takes a selfie at the DMV, only to be told that is not allowed.

In "Brewster Rockit: Space Guy," a strange looking alien literally robs the title character of everything he owns. While in Keith Knight's "Knight Life," there is a funny tension between the title character, an African-American male modeled after Knight himself, and his German wife, over the subject of interracial marriage.

Here is the rest of our survey:

1) "Dustin" (see top image of Dustin Hoffman)

2) "Brewster Rockit: Space Guy" (see middle image of Gil Gerard and the cult '80s NBC sci-fi series "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century," Gerard is still alive at age 71).

3) "Pearls Before Swine"

4) "Knight Life" (see bottom image of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner poster)

5) "Lio"

6) "Speed Bump"

7) "Reply All"

8) "Candorville"

9) "The Argyle Sweater"

10) "Foxtrot"

"Sherman's Lagoon" just barely missed out, but we're sure it will crack the top ten again soon! That was also the case with "WUMO."

"Brewster Rockit: Space Guy" is also available in the Sunday print edition of the "News and Record" (Greensboro, NC).

http://dustincomics.com/

http://www.gocomics.com/brewsterrockit/

http://www.gocomics.com/knightlife

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

http://www.news-record.com

Our Favorite Comic Strips from the Sunday Washington Post: Black Friday at Gal-Mart

Today, in honor of "Brewster Rockit: Space Guy," we are featuring a photo of Gal-Mart, well actually we couldn't find an image of Gal-Mart, but we did find one of Wal-Mart the store he was satirizing. The science fiction satiric strip focused on how Christmas insanity leads to overspending and basically turns us into barefoot starving children in Uganda.

Black Friday also turned into a very ugly scene in rural Tazewell, Va., which is near the borders of West Virginia and Kentucky in southwest Virginia, as one man stabbed another man for a good parking place.

But, the comics are here to take us away from the madness around us.

Other favorites, included a painful yoga workout in "Reply All," an educational look at elk in "Mark Trail" and lightning striking a beach full of tourists in "Sherman's Lagoon."

"Barney and Clyde" which is co-written by Gene Weingartens, an award-winning journalist/columnist for "The Washington Post," ranked number two in our survey. The comic strip this week made fun of cartoonists running on empty and using the same gas routinely.

Here is our list:

1. "Brewster Rockit: Space Guy"

2. "Barney and Clyde"

3. "Dustin"

4. "Pearls Before Swine"

5. "Reply All"

6. "Foxtrot"

7. "Agnes"

8. "Sherman's Lagoon"

9. "Prickly City"

10. "Mark Trail"

http://www.washingtonpost.com

7 Words in Turkish (6 of 7): Oysters

Greetings to our blog-readers in Argentina, Belgium and China.

Even though I am 90-percent fluent in Turkish (or maybe just 89 -percent), I didn't know the Turkish word for oysters; it is ISTIRIDYE; I am not using all caps because I've gone insane or towards political extremism, but rather because the Turkish word for oysters is hard to spell. And, we certainly didn't want to eff that up.

For some genuine underwater laughs, we recommend the "Sherman's Lagoon" comic strip. The Sunday edition of the strip is carried by the Sunday editions of "The Washington Post" and "The Denver Post" as well as other newspapers throughout the United States (see link below).


http://www.shermanslagoon.com