9 Chickweed Lane

1-12-2023

"Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it [...]"

While nothing at all like the Song of Solomon, aka the horniest part of the Bible, I guess you could make the claim that the Book of Genesis is also horny because it talks about humans having children? Kind of? If you squint?

Anyway, I want you to imagine that you're in junior high or high school. You're relatively young. You're sitting through class glad you're no longer doing "Jesus of History: Christ of Faith" like you slogged through last semester. Your Headmistress is about to delve into the Book of Genesis and ecology or something and the weirdest kid in the entire school stands up and starts babbling about the Hokey-Pokey. Amazingly, he's somehow never gotten detention before. He keeps going.

It's a nice diversion.

Baffling, but a nice diversion.

Now I want you to imagine that someone other than Amos is doing this.

Sister Steven mentions The Sixth Day, creation of man and woman, etc. Some guy starts going "bow chika bow wowwwwwww."

He gets detention.

He keeps going.

"I'm in Eden, baby! Can't stop, won't stop!"

I can guarantee you nobody writes in to McEldowney amused by the way his characters' lives so closely resemble their own, their own children. This is no "For Better or For Worse." This is no "Arlo and Janis." Nobody's clipping this out and putting it up on the fridge next to yellowing strips from "The Family Circus" or "Hi and Lois."

Kids say the darndest things.

They do not generally say them about the Book of Genesis in reference to Adam and Eve doin' it to The Hokey Pokey.

12-09-2022

This abrupt shift in characters is jarring. I don't know if McEldowney just ended his "hot makeouts under the mistletoe, in public, while children watch" story line abruptly or if this is an emergency rerun. It's fairly standard for non-soap story newspaper comics to have a story run from M-F, sometimes M-Sa, with a Sunday strip that isn't connected. (By non-soap story I mean not soap opera, and with a continuing story line not gag-a-day.) McEldowney often interrupts a story or running theme (having an orgasm while playing piano, Edda dancing and showing off her legs, having an orgasm playing cello, etc) with... a bit of a different story, or a gag, or something else that really interrupts the flow of things.

So, for instance, there'll be a flash back WWII Nazi Story with people fucking in bath tubs that goes on for six months, and then it's interrupted so Edda and Amos can make out under mistletoe, then it's back to more tub fucking.

Other reasons for suddenly shifting gears usually involve running old strips, which I believe this one is, and it could be because:
A strip was pulled for, say, using a slur
A strip was unable to be loaded to the syndicate/host (apparently some creators are having issues with GoComics and Luann is in reruns right now as a result)
The creator is ill/on vacation

We see here Sister Steven who is sometimes referred to as "Mother Superior" with her brother Cardinal Feeney.

They hate each other, as you can see. They bitterly hate each other. And unlike most Irish-American Catholics they can't keep it to a sullen quiet seethe, expressed only passive aggressively. No, they snipe at each other sotto vocce while attempting to work together instead. Which, you know. Is a thing. For characters to do. How very Christian of them.

I've been puzzled about Sr. Steven's habit for a while now. It's a blouse and a jumper (sleeveless overdress, not sweater) and I haven't seen that before this strip. It doesn't really look like any Catholic habit I've seen and it's not street clothes as all the sisters dress the same. There's established rules as to what habits which Orders wear, the styles and the color (blue indicates her Order is dedicated to The Blessed Virgin Mary), the accoutrements, etc. For instance, she wears a large pectoral cross but doesn't wear a rosary at her waist.

She looks absolutely normal next to His Eminence over there, though. I don't know if that's a cassock or a black shirt with clerical collar but it looks like he's wearing a red cut-off sweater vest over it. It certainly doesn't look like a mozetta, the button-up capelet looking thing Cardinals sometimes wear. He's not wearing his pectoral cross, either. If he's sauntering about casually accusing his sister of Mattel-fueled idolatry he'd probably be in a cassock with scarlet sash and not... whatever it is he's wearing there.

If you asked me to draw a Cardinal from memory I absolutely would make mistakes but you could probably tell what I was getting at. (My rendition of a Bishop in ceremonial vestments would probably be more recognizable, I have more experience interacting with them.) McEldowney is a professional artist who's been doing this for thirty years and has access to the internet to remind him what various religious vestments look like. It's kind of insulting that he hasn't put any effort into this at all.

And yeah, it sucks that no matter how devoted she is Sr. Steven will never be permitted access to a position as prestigious or powerful as Cardinal simply because of her gender. The fact that he lords this over her speaks volumes as to Cardinal Feeney's character and general opinion of women.

Here he is drawn a bit more accurately.

9 Chickweed Lane for 11-24-2022

Have you ever sat up a beanie baby and then seen it slump forward?

That's how Amos used to stand. His spine just completely relaxed, shoulders slumped down, head drooping, pelvis jutting forward. I mean... stand up straight then just let your whole spine slump down. Feel how your body changes with that bit of posture alteration?

By 2000, though, McEldowney had graduated to Amos standing fully upright. He was still in high school, he still wore baggy old man pants (something that has never changed, it's a bedrock of the universe), but he had good posture. Straightening his spine, squaring his shoulders, also pulled his pelvis into place.

McEldowney had depicted Amos in these flashback sequences with... really weird posture. He's slumped, but his shoulders are sometimes back and not forward, like he has a major spinal issue that thrusts his pelvis forward. His head juts forward. When he walks, or stands, he leans with his groin. This position looks uncomfortable to maintain.

It not only differs from the way McEldowney actually drew a younger Amos, this is the stylized way a lot of people (including McEldowney) draw old men. Amos has always hitched his pants up to his nipples but where it once looked like "nerd kid who doesn't understand how belts work" it now looks like "70 year old retiree cosplaying as high school student."

The guy's been drawing comics for 30 years and even if he hasn't kept old strips himself to refer to he can easily comb through the archives hosted by various syndicate sites, including gocomics.com. It would not be hard to go back and LOOK at how he used to draw Amos. It also wouldn't be hard for him to use a search engine to look at the way that human bodies work, how humans stand, what different postures look like.

Anyway, in this strip a teenager has just informed his principal, who is the member of a religious order, that he and another student are going to grow up and have sex.

This is a normal thing that teenagers do all the time.

If there's one thing teenagers do it's go out of their way to find religious authority figures to announce their sex plans to.

McEldowney not only wants us to know that these two have always wanted to have sex and have children, he wants all the adults in their lives to know it too.